Word Raccoon got too much sun yesterday.
She knows better, but she forgot—so now she’s pink.
Not blush-pink. Not beach-glow pink.
More like regret-meets-crustacean.

But she also submitted poetry, processed another rejection like she was made for it, and even arrived at the gym all in the same day.

(Accepting rejection is part of the writing gig, loveys. All it really means is: “Not the right place, hon. Try down the block at the Jiffy Lube.” I’ve received some truly encouraging rejections lately.)

Today, she’s writing from home.
Not just because the car is gone and we’re not in the mood to wander the neighborhood like a sad poet on foot. But because we stayed up submitting poems, tinkering with lines, and listening to the new Swell Season album, Forward.

Album Details: Forward by The Swell Season

• Artists: The Swell Season (Glen Hansard & Markéta Irglová)
• Release Date: June 13 (or July 11 in some territories, including the U.S.), 2025
• Label: Masterkey Sounds & Plateau Records (distributed via Secretly Distribution)
• Producer: Sturla Mio Thorisson
• Recording Location: Masterkey Studios in Iceland
• Musical Contributors:
  • Marja Gaynor – strings
  • Bertrand Galen – strings
  • Joseph Doyle – bass
  • Piero Perelli – drums and percussion

Track List (8 songs – approx. 36–37 minutes total)

1. Factory Street Bells
2. People We Used to Be
3. Stuck in Reverse
4. I Leave Everything To You
5. A Little Sugar
6. Pretty Stories
7. Great Weight
8. Hundred Words

It was a hesitant listen.
Because here’s the truth: Once is sacred.
And not just because it’s exquisite and tender and broke WR and I open in that quiet way only real art does.

So I listened. Reverently. Warily.
And here’s what I’ll say:

The album is welcomely slight, only 37 minutes, as you can see above. I listen to lots of podcasts that are longer than that, but the shortness of the album meant I was able to listen to it multiple times, first with attention, then again while doing chores.

Glen’s voice now has an Eagles-era wear to it, weathered like denim washed too many times. Years of unmitigated screaming will do that. Ask Word Raccoon what howling will do. Now Glen is living in those lower, more comfy sounding notes.

His voice feels conserved now, like he knows the guitar can take the heat, but maybe his vocal cords shouldn’t. That’s wisdom, though I suspect all of us miss some of that touch of fire and broken glass he used to sing with.

Markéta ’s voice?
It’s matured into something smooth, like rich olive oil, straight from a bottle on a balcony in Tuscany. Earthy and assured. Just lovely.

She’s more fully present in this album. I can’t help but love that for her, and for us.

(Please, god, no one forward this to them. This is just for you, dear reader. This would be so much easier if it could just be an email, right? Then I wouldn’t have to have a heart attack when I post about John Green worried he’ll read it. Worried he won’t, too. LOL. But that’s not how communicating via blog works, reader.)

Their first duet “People We Used to Be,” felt a bit too self-aware for Word Raccoon.

It’s not bad. Just performative, like it knew it had to be “a Swell Season song” and pressed too hard on the nostalgia keys, or so Word Raccoon says.

Word Raccoons resists feeling pushed by music. Ask her how much she hates it when she’s watching a movie with incidental music that says “cry now.” She’s like, “I will not and you can’t make me.”

Don’t listen to the lyrics of “People We Used to Be,” though, without a hankie.

The last song’s arrangement dipped too close to Up With People territory for me.
“Hundred Words” would have sounded better if they hadn’t added in those other voices (is it a children’s choir?), because when it was just their duet at the beginning, it was moving.

Those lyrics are future progressively wrecking me. I would say still, but that would mess with the effect of what I was trying to do and look, I did it anyway.

Word Raccoon said to say that.

The whole album feels more produced, IMO. Less live. Less Once, if you know what I mean.
The rawness, the grit, the corner-of-the-room magic?

(Seriously. I don’t like the sound of this particular studio as much. It sounds empty. Music needs warmth to capture and reflect it. I know plenty of people who would argue with that but I said what I said, HERBERT!)

(Messed around and made me yell at Herbert, WR. Eh, that old coot can go…)

 Marketa is surer of herself now. She inhabits her vocals, delivers the lyrics like they’re her life.

But maybe it’s unfair to compare it at all to Once.
It’s not a sequel. It’s not Once 2: Still Once-ing.
It’s something else. A grown-up version of something that once (pardon not one, but now two puns) wrecked us with its simplicity.

Because here’s the truth:
That kind of artistic connection?
It doesn’t dissolve with the relationship.
Their voices still braid.
Their music still flickers with that thing that happens when two people understand something sacred in the same key.

The pair remain linked in that way, no matter the headlines, the time passed, the breakups and reconciliations that don’t belong to us.

We’re all more guarded now, in today’s world. Even them.

This album was worth the listen. The more I listen, the more it gets into my “spirits” as they say in Nashville.

That was kinda of intense. Shall we give ourselves breathing room here, babes? Is it time to talk of shoes?

My headphones.
We should talk about them.

I have every configuration imaginable: two pairs of AirPods, over-ear headphones, a headband with speakers, even off brand new replacements for the earbuds that should be fine. And more.

But the only ones I actually use in bed?
The wired earbuds that came with my iPhone a presidential administration ago.

One earbud doesn’t work. The wire is chewed through in one spot, and honestly, I think Word Raccoon did it.

The one that works controls the volume on my YouTube videos, its most important task. The left one listens when I ask it to, unlike every other piece of tech in this house.

And no, I don’t sleep in AirPods anymore.
Because one night, I woke up… and one was in my mouth.
Yes. That’s a thing that happened.

Despite my family’s reassurances that it’s “basically impossible” to swallow one in your sleep, I can assure you:
It was halfway gone. Word Raccoon dreaming of plums, no doubt. Or maybe she was kissing another raccoon in her sleep.

So now? It’s wired or nothing at night.
Safe. Sensible. Embarrassingly old-school.
(Like my phone. Let’s not talk about how old it is. It still works.)

Maybe it’s time I order more earbuds, the real brand?

Unrelated:

This morning, Raccoon started harping for me to wake up before six.
But I think I’ve calmed her.
We revised poems. We submitted some. We hydrated with frozen blueberries.
We are dressed for yoga. (The gentle rehab-your-body kind, not that other.)
She hasn’t approved the bagel I’d really like her to eat.

She’s still mad about the lack of Coke Zero.
She’s glaring at me like I personally insulted her muse.

But I think she wants to write poetry soon.
So do I.

We’re not sorry we listened to the album.
We’re not sorry we stayed up too late doing the things we love.
And we’re definitely not sorry we still feel something when Glen and Markéta sing together.

Even now.
Even differently.

Forward isn’t Once.
But neither are we.

That doesn’t mean it’s not an album worth hearing.

That was the ending, and I was supposed to stop there, but Word Raccoon is listening to the album still and now “A Little Sugar” is playing and she kinda likes it. It’s definitely backward-looking musically, that one, but it reminds her, too, of this truth: music is to be enjoyed, not endured.

As is life, duckies.

As is life.

CW: Word Raccoon wrote some angsty, irreverent song lyrics below. I’m just in charge of her care and feeding, not her writing. Proceed with care.

Saturday night, I, the responsible adult part of this writing operation, went to bed.
Word Raccoon did not.
She stayed up writing poetry. Unsupervised. Again.

I thought she was doing research. Ha!

Sunday morning, I found her with smudged pages, wild hair, and a playlist that could only be described as emo-folk-existential crisis.

“Let me see your hands,” I said.

Yup, red ink and glittered covered.

I asked the obvious question:

“What did you do?”

She didn’t answer.
She just handed me a page that said:

I wanna mosh-pit my soul/Right into the night.
I wanna hit a tornado/ With all of my might.

And:

You gave me dead roses / That you sniffed dry / You love me best / When you watch me cry.

To be clear: sometimes she channels things old and new, things that drift by from outdoors and she’s like, to a passing stranger, “This? Is this yours? I found it floating in a cloud. Like what I did with it?” as people snatch it back and ask Do you mind?

And sometimes, yes, she gets melodramatic and turns the porch light into a metaphor. To be fair, writing on a porch watching darkness fall and solar lights come on and the fireflies in between is pretty romantic. Maybe it’s not her fault. Maybe it’s mine for unwittingly lighting the scene as I was taught to do in creative writing class.

WR is tapping me on the chest.

“You read them wrong; we don’t rhyme poetry. They’re lyrics to a song.”

Oh. Now I get it. Songs are a different matter completely. And this one seems more punk rock than anything. WR…you’re not 17. And what year do you think this is?

To be on the safe side, I’m tweaking her playlist.
(She’d been listening to My Chemical Romance, St. Vincent, and Father John Misty—obviously. She knows she has to be careful with the feeling music.)

I thrust a post-poetry writing kit of her treasures into her hands to keep her otherwise occupied:

• Two pieces of sea glass. (Because one is never enough.)
• A white shell that looks like an ear on one side, the man in the moon on the other
• A piece of quartz that wants to be a fire starter
• A small piece of driftwood that looks like all that remains of a sea tiki bar
• A snack (not pictured, a protein bar; I made her eat it ASAP)
• And a phone queued up to John Green reading e.e. cummings’ “o sweet spontaneous”
  Here’s the link. Don’t tell me you don’t love that poem because…wow!

Before you judge her use of John Green reading poetry again, as soon as you pony up some audio of you reading poetry, dear reader, maybe she won’t need to outsource her poetry needs.

✍️ More Lines from the Chaos Draft of WHAT ARE WE CALLING IT??:

I’m not effing Moses / And even he needed someone / To prop up his arms.

The porch lights flicked on like a lesser sun. / My heart whispered, “I’m undone.”

Rewriting the Laws of Combustion: I burned. I rose. I molted. I chose. I churned. I learned.

I also fed Word Raccoon an album I just realized is newly out. She has opinions, but she wants to listen to it all before sharing. I just realized this may send her right back to midnight poetry writing. Hang on while I go take it back.

And just in case she wasn’t just flirting with the universe Saturday night, I set a playlist curfew last night and strictly enforced it.

It didn’t much matter. She was spent and only wrote a few lines anyway before falling asleep early. When I asked her about it she just said Meh. I have no idea what she means by that.

Oh, silly Word Raccoon. What am I going to do with you?

NOW PLAYING: “Strange Mercy” by St. Vincent

I tried to read The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden before the Book Review podcast aired their episode on it. (I don’t even have to mention the layered title, do I? Dear Reader, keep it in mind as you read. It’s perfect.)

Then I tried to read it before that episode disappeared behind a paywall.

Then I tried to read it before the Libby app yanked it away from me with the smug efficiency of a digital librarian who’s just following protocol.

None of that worked.

But I had made it just far enough into the novel that it had already cast its spell. Quietly, like a curtain slipping off a rod. I needed to finish it. So I marched myself to our local library and snapped up a hard copy.

Within two days, Word Raccoon and I drank it all. Gladly.

During those two days, I wrote little. But sometimes, the well needs to be refilled. And The Safekeep did just that.

Word Raccoon was there, of course. She’s been reading over my shoulder lately, wearing her pom-pom earrings, chewing the inside of her cheek like she’s trying not to shout spoilers. She offered no commentary this time, just raised one furry brow now and then as if to say “oh, we’re in it now.”

And we were.

Yael van der Wouden’s debut is set in the Dutch countryside, 1961. A woman named Isabel lives alone in her late mother’s house, seemingly removed from most things: community, intimacy, complication. Enter Eva, her brother’s new girlfriend. A guest, a disruptor, a question mark in red lipstick.

(Remind anyone of a particular raccoon??)

The novel is exquisitely detailed in a way that makes a writer jealous, freshly structured, and contains some of the most tender, conflicted moments of first love I’ve ever read.

The way it sweeps you up and along is truly amazing, and its length is perfect for summer reading, especially when (hand raised) you’ve been more poetry-writing focused than reading focused.

Van der Wouden writes tension like a seamstress: small stitches, perfectly placed. You feel it long before you realize what you’re feeling. You see her word dress and you think, Oh, that’s what you were sewing all along. It’s gorgeous.

The house itself feels like a closed mouth. There’s so much about control here emotional, historical, domestic. It’s about what we hide, what we inherit, what we hunger for even when it terrifies us. (Ah, control. Admirable, sometimes understandable, yet extremely frustrating in a person when it amounts to a tinman refusing to allow himself to be oiled. When he pretends not to have a heart, but the reader can hear it beating from across the room. Be patient and read on.)

There are echoes of WWII and generational guilt braided through, but never in a heavy-handed way. Just fragments. Shards. The kind of things you find when dusting what used to belong to someone else. (You’ll get that after you read it, too.)

Meanwhile, in the real world, I was eating watermelon sprinkled with Tajin this afternoon and wondering aloud (to no one in particular) whether the heat had scared off all the birbs and squirrels. We haven’t seen many the past few days. Maybe they’re hiding. Maybe they know something we don’t. Plenty of cats in the neighborhood, so maybe that explains it. Yikes!

On Friday, Barry had a minor, one-car accident. He’s fine. His vehicle? TBD. I delivered him safely to his gig uptown Friday evening where an appreciative crowd enjoyed The Strays while he subbed in on keys and acoustic guitar.

As for me, I’ll be on foot until we hear back from the body shop, which, if it weren’t for the heat and a full laptop bag, would be great. I’ve missed my walks. I’ve missed noticing things.

And The Safekeep? Well, that book reminded me to notice things, too.

As if I miss much. It’s a built-in Word Raccoon feature. Which is why it’s such a delight when an author can surprise and delight the reader. van der Wouden does just that.

Read The Safekeep before your app times out. Before the episode locks up. Before the heat melts your concentration. No matter how you access it, it’s a book well worth chasing down.

I’ve never been the type to need a lot of things.
I don’t collect lots of keepsakes. I don’t hoard tons of mementos.

I keep some of both, of course. I’m not a monster.

Usually, when my family divides up what’s left behind (too often in recent years), I say:
“As long as someone has it, that’s enough.”

Not this time.

This time, it’s a ceramic frog.

An ugly one. One made out of what seems like chalk and flat paint.

One that originally belonged to my grandmother.

It sat in the background for years, watching everything in my childhood home.

During a particularly tough time when I was a child, I wrote something on the underside.
A message.
A wish.

A hope.

I remember carving those letters on the bottom, hoping I wouldn’t get found out, wouldn’t get in trouble and doing it anyway, because I needed something solid. Something I could hold that would hold me back. As if people go around checking the bottoms of tchotchkes anyway.

Just a few words to tether myself to the world when it felt like it was disappearing.

No one knows they’re there.
Not even the person in the family who has now decided it’s important to them, too.

And I want to be fair.
I want to be generous.

I want to once again step aside.

But this frog has brought something fierce and primal out of me.
And I’ve finally realized why.

A few months ago, I remembered something I forgot as a child, and hold on because this sounds facile and all, like a second-grade teacher talking, and just know I’m flinching too:

My feelings matter.

They’re not shameful. They don’t need to be shrunk down or polished up to be allowed.

They’re not “too much.”
They’re mine.

More than they’re mine, they’re valuable, maybe the best thing I own. They’re powerful. They can make things. They can undo things. They can build. They can restore.

And sometimes feelings remind us we’re alive.

We can just look at them, stop shrinking from them, stop pushing them down and away and hating ourselves more than a little because what kind of person…

And sometimes?
We can even ask for what we want.

And when it matters?
We can go to the mattresses for it.

Put that frog in my hands.

I’ll kiss it.

Maybe he’ll become a prince.

He always was, to me.

He kept me safe.

Or maybe what I wrote on him kept me safe.

Maybe both.

Either way, that’s my goddamned frog.

Now Playing: “Lovefool” by The Cardigans

I woke up this morning and found Word Raccoon in my blue chair downstairs reading. 

“Hey,” I said. 

She waved a paw in which she was holding a protein bar. In her other, she clutched the novel we’d fallen asleep reading the night before. 

“Give me that,” I said, but she simply put down the protein bar wrapper and picked up a glass of something that looked suspiciously like Coke Zero. 

“You know you only get that when you’ve done all the things,” I said. 

She sucked from the straw while staring straight into my eyes, then went back to reading.

“Fine, but only for half an hour,” I said. I set a timer on my phone. She laughed and went back to reading. She was probably 70 pages from the end.

The timer might not do any good, but it was the only defense I had against her and the possible rain. 

“We are a poet. We are a novelist. We do not spend all day reading except when it’s scheduled.” 

She made a gesture at me. 

Rude, Raccoon! 

When the second timer went off, she was reading the acknowledgements. (As we do, because sometimes we know the people mentioned and it’s always fun to spot someone we know.) 

“It was a romance,” she said, as if the library label on the book didn’t say so. “We don’t usually read romances,” but she looked at me like maybe we should. 

“We read them when they’re as strange and funny and tender as this one,” I said. I wasn’t about to pretend I wasn’t as into the book as she was. 

“Now,” I said, “I let you read for a whole hour. Get off your dead ass and get ready to go do the things. And it’s hair washing day. No, don’t give me that look. I know you hate having wet hair indoors, but we are not spending time drying it. If the sun comes out, we’ll sit outside. If not, deal.”

Surprisingly, she got up. 

She put in her signature earrings, naturally and her bracelet from Rome. The string is getting weak on it, so she’d better consider restringing it soon. Although looking at it more closely today, I don’t see the Parthenon. Maybe I should repaint one of the tiles so it’s there. I don’t really need two pics of the Trevi fountain. Definitely not two of the Coliseum. That place has bad vibes. 

And her earrings? For some reason people ask to touch them. Which…okay? 

Word Raccoon says I need to be fair and tell you that she was busy yesterday. She claims she is hardworking. I’m not as impressed as she is, but whatever. 

I saw her sneak that novel to the gym yesterday. How hard are you working if you’re reading there? (Okay, maybe I’ll give her that for now if she’s showing up.)

We wrote two poems, “Knocking Stars Out of the Known Sky,” and “Alluding Perusing.” 

We revised them both and submitted them. (I know, I know. Let them mellow. But also, when you know, you know? Until I don’t again. I’m onto me and this cycle.) 

We took a stash of our poems that were all rolled together and created separate google docs for them. We added some to our master list that we had overlooked.

We put more themes to the poems on our master list. Miles to go, but we’ll get there and we will thank ourselves when we do. 

We discovered a poem that refused to be tamed or shaped and it won’t hear me that it’s really not a poem. It’s a drunken slurry of words. 

We rooted around and found some markets to investigate yesterday, too. I love it when I see one and think, “Yes, you’re my people.” But they have to agree. 

Do you know how long it takes to hear back, usually? Weeks. Months, even. 

That’s okay. I can be patient when it’s something I really want. 

Anyhow, would you like to know more about the book we finished reading on this rainy day that may or may not rain more? 

Serial Killer Games by Kate Posey (her debut novel!) is charming, adorable, and not at all what I expected. 

I got pulled in. Hard. Not in the way I expected, either. I’d picked up the book thinking it would scratch that dark thriller itch. You know the one, murders, twisted psychology, creepy office temp who might be a killer and might just be muy caliente.

Note: we don’t like knives or gore. In fact, I often have to give myself a pep talk before using my largest knives. And being in the presence of someone else using one? Even watching it on TV? Flinch city! 

But we do like trying to understand the mind of serial killers, especially when presented in a quirky way. 

But Posey so sneakily, so sweetly, drops you into a slow-burn romance that pretends it’s going to be all about murder, and instead gives you a cat-and-mouse flirtation that’s deliciously off-kilter. Definitely Word Raccoon fodder. 

Jake and Dodi (yes, Dolores dela Cruz, but Dodi to him) leave each other tiny, deranged gifts which are hilarious. I’d like that, but not the deranged part. Strange, sure. Just not that strange. 

Pebbles? Single flowers? A pinecone? Sure. 

I guess every couple has their unique love language. I don’t think Dr. Chapman has that one on his list, though: Gifts. But doll parts and… yeah I can’t tell you more because it would be a mild spoiler.

The pair speak in doublespeak, all while watching each other out of the corners of their eyes like people who are trying so hard not to fall. But we know it’s already too damn late. 

It’s weird. It’s cute. It’s a little unhinged in the best way. There are so many tiny heartbreaks along the way, but just as many true moments of connection, and you’re hoping all the way through that neither of them is it. 

Here’s one of those heartbreaks:

“The thing is,” I say, “I have a life.” 

She continues… “At the end of the day, when we’re done playing our stupid serial killer games at the office, I go home and my real life begins.”

“This could be real life,” he says. 

…It was self-defense, your honor. (Dodi imagines.)

This book was not what I expected, and I’m thrilled about that. And let’s just say the ending is not what you’d expect, either. 

Kinda like life sometimes. 

All in all, I’d say it’s a novel that leads to justifiable non-scheduled reading time. 

Then again, WR does not like schedules. Don’t tell her we are (sometimes) on one. 

Word Raccoon is out of the hammock and coming for the to-do list.

🎵 Now Playing: “Unwritten” by Natasha Bedingfield

(It’s Word Raccoon’s Tuesday morning mood. And don’t give me any shizz about this feel-good song.)

Yes, it’s Tuesday. But don’t tell Word Raccoon that; it’s her Monday, and she’s got pages to devour. Poems to massage. A novel that’s giving her side-eye and she’s giving it right back. And oh, she is ready.

The long weekend was relaxing (with a pinch of Word Raccoon mischief). I cover it all below.

Barry practiced his keyboard set for subbing in at this coming Friday night’s The Strays gig in our lil’ ol’ town square. (I’ll be in the crowd promptly at 6:30 with my folding chair and fizzy drink, promise.) Locals, come join the fun oldies. And by that I mean the songs are oldies, not the guys.

While he practiced (and in days in between), I got down to some poetic meddling. I kept to my modest goal of five poems, and wrote a few more because who follows their own rules? I tried to stop, I really did.

Weekend stats:

• 📝 Wrote five (plus a few bonus) poems
• 🎤 Karaoke & a G&T
• 🔥 Grilled, toasted exactly one marshmallow
• 🎬 Walked out of a movie with an hour to go because Word Raccoon was bored (Word Raccoon has opinions. Ask her, she’ll tell you.)
• 📚 Finished Rick’s excellent short story collection. Review incoming
• 🎸 Watched a fab video on famous stolen guitars (some returned like prodigal sons! I love these musical works of art even if I can’t memorize model numbers to save my life. Anywho, watch it. You’ll enjoy it.)
• 🍫 Made the brownies
• 📺 Rewatched 6/10 episodes of Platonic. Before you judge, that’s only 3 hours.
• 📖 Raided the library and walked out with a book tower. I may have giggled. Out loud.

Library Book Theory (You heard it here first):

Library books go stale if you wait too long to read them. I read and drop ’em in the return box as soon as I’ve finished one. Today’s haul! I felt giddy over my choices — I had to sit down and relish my precious ones.

🍎 The Apple Poem Nobody Asked For

Because I had feelings about apples today. Of all things. Also, I own nothing Hello Kitty. But apparently my poem does. This poem is wonky; I own that. But I am also not going to do anything with it but share it here, because I know it’s a petty poem, so that’s fine.

To Eat an Apple While Brownies Bake?!
—after Robert Frost. Sort of.

Whose red undelicious apples these are
I think I know.
He didn’t eat his lunch, though.

He will not catch me standing here
Beside the stove with brownie cheer.

My Hello Kitty potholder
Gives a shake
To ask if there is some mistake:
To eat an inferior apple while brownies bake?

The oven hums, the batter sets.
(The goddamned gas station wine of apples, really?)
I bake regrets.

Red Delicious, my ass.

Poem Themes, Catalog in Progress

Listing themes with my poems really will help in answering calls for poems and deciding what the best homes are for them (please find homes, my little soul flares), though it is time consuming. It’s gonna take a minute, but I’ve got this.

In the meantime, here’s the current mood board of themes across my poems:

• Love & Desire
• Grief & Loss
• Family & Inheritance
• Aging & Time
• Illness & Decline
• Pop Culture & Media
• Gender & Sexuality
• Religion & Faith
• Power & Control
• Nature & Animals
• Domestic Life
• Identity & Selfhood
• Memory & Nostalgia
• Class & Labor
• Technology & Modernity
• Art & Creativity
• Humor & Satire
• Freedom & Confinement
• Loneliness & Connection
• Justice & Injustice
• Body & Embodiment
• Myth & Archetype

It’s going to be a big poem week. Word Raccoon is caffeinated and coming for her legacy. (Maybe just one more brownie first.)

But first, she’s only about a third of the way through that serial killer novel she found at the library today.

What, you didn’t know that would be the one she would start in on?

Oh, my dear reader…you’ve got a lot of catching up on Dremaness to do.

And that’s okay.

All in good time.

For years, I’ve counted Anne Tyler as one of the three living authors who’ve most shaped my writing, alongside Toni Morrison, who at the time was still with us, and Amy Tan.

When I listed those women on my grad school application as my greatest writing influences, I decided that if the program didn’t find that acceptable, then it wasn’t the place for me.

I also only applied to one program because it was the only one I wanted to attend. Apparently, they shared my literary taste, and they must have liked my writing, because I graduated from the program. (Yay.) I really wouldn’t recommend that strategy to most people; you have to be willing to walk away, and I was.

Though there are dozens of authors I adore, those three women remain central to who I am as a reader and writer, in part because they kept me reading and growing after I’d left any kind of reading or writing community and before I returned to university and then went to grad school. For years, they kept me thinking, feeling, and writing.

I was delighted, and honestly, surprised, recently to see our reclusive Anne Tyler giving interviews. For decades, she was famous for avoiding publicity, and while I don’t know what has brought her back, I’ve been thrilled to see her emerge. I’ve learned more about her in just a few interviews these past months than I ever knew before.

Now, at 83, she’s giving us a peek not only into her life at long last but also at her famous Blue Box of scribbled observations. She goes to it when she wants to write a book. Spoiler: it’s no longer blue; she outgrew her original recipe box. It’s now a black-and-white cardboard box labeled “Blue Box,” stuffed with index cards where she jots single words or snippets of conversation for future use.

Word Raccoon WANTS IT! But I’m sure she’d have to wait in a very long line to get it.

I adore so many of Tyler’s novels. They’re all quiet, with a magnifying glass on details others miss in ordinary life. She has an eye and ear for characters who are everyday people no one else has thought to write about, and she makes them special, important, when most would just ignore these people. I love her for that.

(A certain someone in my life says I collect “characters.” I think I do have a high threshold for unique people, but actually, introvert though I am, I think I just like people. Most days.)

The first book I read of Tyler’s was a random library grab. I picked up Ladder of Years from our local library to take with me on a trip to Ohio during a week away with my husband and our daughter. As my daughter swam, radiant and tireless, and my husband attended classes, I sat poolside wrestling with my own sense of motherhood. We were newly a family, and as Delia Grinstead drifted away from hers in the novel, I…felt things. How could I find my way when everything felt so uncharted?

When we returned home, I read all the Tyler novels the library owned. Then I saw the list of books she’d written inside one of her paperbacks, and I felt cheated because the library didn’t have them all. (I don’t know if I didn’t know about interlibrary loan yet or if I thought that was only for scholarly books. At any rate, I didn’t use it.)

This book-finding mission of mine was before Amazon or eBay. Instead, I searched secondhand bookstores and flea markets, finding her novels one by one until I had them all.

I’ll never forget grabbing hold of A Slipping-Down Life in its red paperback cover. It had been one of the more elusive titles, since it was first published in 1970. I remember scanning, scanning, titles among the overheated scent of yellowing paperbacks crowding the flea market tables, until my search was finally rewarded.

I think I paid two dollars and told the seller to keep the change — I would have paid ten times that. Since I wasn’t driving, I began reading it on the way home.

In A Slipping-Down Life, Evie Decker, a lonely teenager, carves the name of a musician into her forehead—a desperate act of longing to be seen, paralleling Delia from Ladder of Years in certain ways. Reading Evie’s story as a young adult reminded me that the search for identity starts early and never really goes away.

Revisiting both novels now, I see a conversation spanning the whole arc of my adult life. Delia and Evie are women I carry with me, reminders that identity is slippery, that reinvention is both frightening and necessary, and that it’s possible to come back to the surface even when you fear you’re drowning. Maybe especially when you think you’re drowning in what you see as your most important roles.

If Ladder of Years and A Slipping-Down Life helped me wrestle with identity, The Accidental Tourist may be Anne Tyler’s novel that most impacted me. I’ve read it at different points in my life, and each time it has offered a new mirror—one that reflects not just who I am, but how I move through love, grief, and the rituals of everyday survival.

In Tourist, Macon Leary is a man, a travel writer for those who want to travel but encounter as few changes to their daily routine as possible. His grief for his murdered son has frozen him into rigid routines that he then wants to perpetuate on other travelers. Sigh.

His life is almost stagnant until Muriel Pritchett, fierce and chaotic, blusters into his world with her dog-walking service. She teaches Macon that life doesn’t wait for you to be ready; sometimes it grabs you by the collar and makes you come along. Tyler shows, with her signature wit and compassion, that healing is messy, nonlinear, and often arrives disguised as inconvenience or even annoyance.

A pause: the rain has begun, and a breeze and its scent are coming in off the pavement and sidewalk, petrichor and ozone. Every muscle unkinks when I smell that. How fitting that it should happen when I’m writing about St. Anne on the sunporch. I really should consider closing the windows, but not yet. I’m not ready to let go of that marvelous scent.

Word Raccoon is reminding me that we haven’t finished this post yet and that until we do, she will not eat supper and she’s ready, ready, ready. What would I do without this little dear to help me? (She also says to tell you that she received notice her Coke Zero earrings are now in the process of being made! She will show pics when she has them!)

Okay, apparently supper awaits. We write on.

Not just singly, but collectively, Tyler’s beautiful, quiet prose lives together for me in a dense mesh of what it is to be alive, like the roots of a tree. I’m not always sure I can trace each novel back to its original story; it’s more the comprehensive impression they’ve left on me along with lines and characters.

Her latest novel, Three Days in June, is one of her shortest, yet no less compelling, novels. I read it mostly in one sitting, the best way to read if you can.

At 83, she’s still exploring the joys and heartbreaks of love, marriage, and family life with the same deep sensitivity she’s always brought to her work. Her protagonist in June, Gail, is so churlish you almost don’t want to root for her, yet somehow, you do.

Or maybe you find yourself voting for her ex, Max, a bumbling yet loving man.

I can’t remember every physical place I’ve read Tyler, but one stands out: I brought Clock Dance to Japan, and it was such a nice distraction because it was days before I slept more than a couple of hours. First of all, jetlag, but also, the beds were like baby crib mattresses, thin and full of springs. They were awful! At least I had Anne Tyler’s newest to keep me company. (I know that story is incredibly “first world problems,” but I swear, I could not wait to get home.)

There’s such fairness in Tyler’s writing gaze. She isn’t judging. She doesn’t tell you that this person is good and that one bad. There are no villains in her stories, just differing points of view. I love that, because isn’t that mostly the truth when it comes to life?

So many novels of hers to love, every one of them. But most of all, I want to offer Anne Tyler a thank you for her Blue Box, her quiet gaze, her unwavering faith in the beauty of everyday people. I’m grateful beyond words to have walked alongside her stories all these years.

Now Playing:“She Cleans Up” by Father John Misty

Okay, heat, now it’s personal. Word Raccoon and I have not been to the dunes once this summer, and we are pissed.

Well, mostly we’re pissed. Also, we’re hot.

Remember my post the other day saying I’m fine sitting in the heat? No, really, I’m fine.

I am officially not fine now. How dare you, heat? 

I sat outside writing for a couple of hours yesterday morning. Why? Because being indoors feels like leaving recess early. Nothing smells, sounds, or looks the same inside. It’s like I’m being punished by the weather, like my senses are forced to nap when they’re not tired.

I am devoted to writing outdoors, but even a devotee can get heatstroke. Even if Word Raccoon’s earrings did get her free refills from the nice man at the cafe today. 

Also, a patron there on a motorcycle offered me a job. Alas, I do not have the required expertise, but it was kind of him to ask. Word Raccoon was miffed that he did not offer her a ride on his motorcycle. (Don’t worry, I wouldn’t have let her get on.)

Tentative Weekend Plans

Earlier today, I was full-on spiraling about my writing. Looking back at my notes from then, I have to laugh. Drema, knock it off. It’s not that serious. 

Except in the moment, it always is. Word Raccoon just stared at me with her big loving eyes and offered me half a Benadryl. It made me thirsty and sleepy, but no more spiral for the moment. Don’t worry, I don’t do this often, but at least I didn’t fling my MacBook into the street. (Hyperbole, I promise.) 

Let’s say I did actually, totally suck at writing and everything I’d ever written deserved to be purged from the earth; even then, so what? I would still be a human worthy of love. (Most days I know this.)

I’m the only one ever feels this way about ye olde writing abilities? Cool, cool…cool. That’s not embarrassing.😂

In other news, there is a huge grill in our dining room. Barry spent hours putting it together, and we’re supposed to take it for a spin today; I’ll just be relieved to get it out of the house. That’s not the statement piece I want to decorate around, you know? 

Word Raccoon says it might make a nice bed for her. If I see her fluffing pillows in it, I’ll worry. Who would sleep at the foot of the bed and wake me with poems and songs if she slept in it instead? 

Anyhow, we have tentative holiday weekend plans that all hinge on energy and the heat. 

Lucky you, this is helping me refine my list.

* See the latest Mission Impossible. (At this point in a franchise, I don’t bother learning titles. But I do like an action movie on occasion.)

* Grill for the weekend. Cook once, eat for days.

* Attend the fireworks. If it’s not too hot. 

* Toast marshmallows in the backyard. Thoroughly. She likes them charred. 

* Read. It’s been too long since I finished a whole book; I have three going right now and am actively ignoring titles the Libby app tells me it has ready for me. Sorry, hon, thanks but no.

* Convince someone to start rewatching Platonic with me. Season two is coming in August! It’s soo good!

* Bake brownies really early or really late in the day to avoid the heat. Add walnuts. Obviously. 

Writing Goals, (Semi) Lightly Defined

I’m trying to stay fully present this weekend, so I’m keeping my writing plans minimal:

* Write no more than five poems. (I wrote about twelve micropoems the other night without meaning to; thankfully, I found a lit journal seeking poems under fifty words. Fingers crossed.) 

* Finish a blog post on Anne Tyler. She’s one of my favorite authors, and she’s giving interviews again after years of avoiding the spotlight. Yay!!! 

* Revise five poems. Prepping for submission shows just how rough some of my drafts are. Word Raccoon, please add some meat to those bones!

* Submit poems to five journals. This doubles as sneaky revision time: if a poem needs more than a quick tweak, it goes back into the folder until it’s ready. If it’s close, we revise on the go. Still relying on my ear; not sure how else to know. 

Also, I received a cool award for my novel Southern-Fried Woolf. Later, Word Raccoon. We will share that another day but we are very pleased. (She’s twirling her whisk earrings with joy!) 

Confession: Travel Anxiety

This is normally a dunes weekend for us, but HEAT!

While I miss the dunes, I’m also slightly worried about traveling or having people I care about travel. It’s a superstitious, PTSD-like feeling. When we went to Mackinac Island in May, my mother’s health, while already poor, declined rapidly while we were gone, and days after we returned, she passed away.

Now I’m a little afraid my loved ones will disappear if we travel, and I’m also afraid for them to travel. I know it’s irrational, but anxiety usually is. 

Don’t worry. It’s just a background buzz.

And the summer isn’t over. I’m sure we’ll squeeze in a weekend or two at the beach. 

Do you think the waves miss me as much as I miss them? 

Poems in Progress

Here are the only new poems I’m allowing myself to work on this weekend unless words start spontaneously coming to me (and they might): 

* He Would Nevuh** (I have three stanzas so far.)

* One about Frida Kahlo. The working title sounds scandalous, so I’m keeping it private for now.

* A poem about our original family cemetery in West Virginia.

* A vague concept. Nothing to see yet. Just trying to write the uncapturable? 

* Why Scrambled Eggs and Other Tasteless Things. The title says it all.

And btw, I just opened my notes app and discovered five ideas for poems I wrote there just yesterday. NOOOO!! I think I’ve discovered an extra sense: poetry detector. Actually, I love it. 

Housework and a Secret Plan

Barry’s best friend is coming over to discuss music stuff with him one day this weekend. I’m happy about it for a few reasons: he’s a welcome guest, it gives us a good excuse to tidy up, and I can sneak in more writing time. I’ll visit with them, maybe eat with them, then hurry back to the keyboard with Word Raccoon. Shh…

She’s got poems to write, and, when she’s feeling less mortified about it, a novel to backspace, blinking on it like nobody’s business. (What does that even mean, WR? Eh, the wind knows.)

Catch you on the other side of the marshmallow roast. Unlike Word Raccoon, they’re vanilla flavored.