I suspect silence reads as a lack of activity.  And I’ll confess, that’s what’s bothering me.  In the last few months there’s been a ton going on, and over busy-ness renders me less talkative here.  So I guess it’s not just fear of looking idle, it’s that I miss talking here- with the hypothetical you, there.

Here’s what I’ll attempt- a post a day for ten days- to see if it greases the wheels and makes it easier to pop in and talk, even when I’m trying to do and write a lot elsewhere.

The glitch will be that the posts are gonna be singular and short.

Like: Last month I was in New Orleans for the Faulkner House annual Words and Music conference.  It was very worthwhile.  It was a great time.  My new book (yet unpublished) placed on the short list this year.  2 editors (Random House and Orr Books) read 50 pages of the new novel and said they’d like to see the whole thing.  I had lunch with the editor of the Times-Picayune and exchanged birth stories with him.  I saw old friends.  My husband bicycled all over the city with our kid on a handlebar baby seat.

See you all tomorrrow.

For the tenth anniversary of 9/11 the New Yorker has published an extensive The Talk of the Town section with fourteen contributors from David Remnick, the editor, to a diverse set of voices including Ian Frazier, Nick Paumgarten, Lorrie Moore, Jonathon Safran Foer, Zadie Smith, Ian Parker, Elif Batuman and several more- all reflections on 9/11.

Ian Parker’s piece is on oral histories taken by Columbia University’s Oral History Archive after 9/11.  Many archivists went to Union Square to take oral histories in the days after 9/11.  They were instructed that in the absence of a randomized system of selecting subjects, they should approach the person they felt least inclined to interview.  In subsequent years a theater piece, A City Reimagined” was written and is now being rehearsed in Soho, the text taken directly form these 9/11 oral histories.  Parker includes in his Talk of the Town piece three pointed testimonials.

I’ve mentioned before in this blog that I work at 90 Church Street, a federal office building next door, to the North, of the World Trade Center.  The state department I work for moved into 90 Church Street in 2005, when the building was finally repaired from a hole that had let the elements in for four years.  Moving our office into 90 Church was a symbol and an act of the state’s commitment to help revitalize lower Manhattan.  They installed double-paned windows on our floors, because they were aware that the air quality wasn’t what it should be, 5 years later.   

Ian Parker describes a Columbian-born blind food vendor who was interviewed after 9/11.  Before I see where the vendor worked, I wonder if this is my blind candy vendor.  The piece goes on to say that she was indeed a vendor in 90 Church Street and that her oral history describes people running and screaming past her stall in the lobby, no time to close her storeroom, and the dreams she had afterwards of losing her hands. 

Mary Marshall Clark, the Director of Columbia’s oral histoy department, contemplates this blind vedor’s dream while she listens to the rehearsal of “A City Reimagined.”  She imagines the vendor is experiencing a re-traumitization of her blindness.  Her hands are like her eyes, her dream is like becoming blind again.

This morning, as I entered the lobby of 90 Church Street, and saw the candy vendor in her booth, I remembered the piece I’d read last night.  It was quiet and she was alone under the glow of bright lights in her booth.  I came over and said good morning.  “I think you are written about in this week’s New Yorker.  Did you know that?”  She smiled with a pleasure that seemed a little knowing, but said no, she did not.  I said, “There’s a piece about people who were interviewed after 9/11 and I think you’re part of it.” 

 ”Would you read it to me?” she asked. 

It took me a few minutes to find Parker’s piece in the magazine still in my bag.  While I flipped the pages, she stocked chips and candy.  I said, “I think it’s you, are you Colombian?”  “Yes,” she was still smiling.  I said several times, “One minute, I’ll find it.”  I appreciated that she didn’t care that it was taking me time to find the piece.  She wasn’t concerned about that.  “It doesn’t say your name.  What is your name?”  “Maria”  “I’m Rachel,” I said , still turning pages.  While I located the exact paragraph that mentioned Maria, another woman came to buy something and said, “Hi, Maria,” reminding me how other people get friendly so much faster than I do.

When I was ready, I said to Maria, “It’s sad.”  because it all came back to me, what she says about losing her hands, and perhaps she hasn’t thought about this since 2001.  I began reading.  When I got to that part and read her own dream to her, I asked if she remebered that, having that dream, telling them.  She shook her head ambiguously.  But when I read on, that her hands were her eyes, and losing them was like becoming blind again.  Maria said, “Yes, yes!  My hands are my eyes.”

She thanked me for showing her, by pressing her hands together.  I said I’d come back later today with a copy of the article.  I’m wondering now, where Maria went after 9/11 when 90 Church Street was struck and damaged and closed for years.  And what did she do with her hands until she came back.  I’ll ask her tomorrow morning.  

It’s been a long time since I’ve been able to drop in here and do some writing.  Life has been so hectic recently that all writing, my fiction, email, letters have shrunken considerably.  140 charcters would suit me fine, but the last thing on my mind is tweeting.  The only writing that has lengthened of late is grocery lists and to-do lists.  I’m back at my day job in public health, maximizing my evening hours with the baby, and then after he goes to bed, steaming and pureeing baby food, laundry, my dinner, occassionally talking to my husband, even more occassionally talking to someone else, and so on.  We’ve been a little more crazy lately because of my husband’s writing life, a new freelance script, a film festival, family visiting.  But yet, here I am, very much in the mood to write something and connect again to anyone who cares.  My second novel hasn’t fallen away from me as badly as this blog has.  I’ve been reading it.  A very important step that you writers out there will knowingly nod at.  Ah, she’s reading it.  It’s a sympathetic task, let me assure you.  I got to the end of my restructuring.  I implemented a lot of people’s notes.  I took a step away and went back to the beginning.  On the front page, I changed my name.  I’m now Rachel Stolzman Gullo, depending on which ID you ask.  I added a quote that helps explain the title.  I took a step back, and I started reading.  I’ve now read the first six chapters.  There were two chapters I broke into four from reading it.  That’s what reading can do.  Reading, by the way, means printing a clean copy and reading it on paper.  Hopefully it is pages you haven’t read in six months or more.  Hopefully, you don’t recognize the words, and have laser sharp criticism of your own work.  What’s wrong leaps out in all its stupidity.  What’s particularly weird and unexpected gives you a satisfied sense of pride.  You did that weird thing.  So, I’m reading.  A little too slowly, and getting through another degree of revision with each chapter.  It’s inching.

But I’ve spent more time lately in other genres.  What are they?  One is called Lotus Notes.  That’s the New York State’s Department of Health email system.  I’m on it from 9am to 5pm, and respond to most emails in real time.  I’m instant messaging with the agencies around the city who are conducting HIV prevention and care with women and with my DOH colleagues in Albany and New York City.  We received an email recently about appropriate emailing.  It reminded us not to be overly casual and familiar in our outgoing emails.  That our emails are not from us per se, but represent the state.  Wow.  But I kind of liked being reminded of that.  It made me notice how often I told someone, “This is crazy- how can I ask you to do this- it’s insane- please forgive me!  I need a new budget mod.”  I’ve known half the people I now manage for ten plus years- why wouldn’t I get casual and familiar.  But I’ve been dialing it back.  I pretend the new Commissioner of Health is reading all my emails.  Which he can, our emails are not in any way private of course.  I tell people the simple news.  Here’s the situation, what I need, what they can and can’t do, how I can help.  And you know something, they like it just fine.  And you know something else, my fiction would benefit from this too.  And there’s always the phone when you want to say, “What the fuck!”

The other genre I recently wrote was a birth story.  I’m a doula and when I support a family with their birth, part of the job is writitng their birth story.  Well, I’ve been doula-ing and writing birth stories since 2005.  And what do you know, but I’m changing the way I write those too.  In 2005, and 6, and 7 and 8….I thought it was only proper to write a clinical, factual, primarily medical account of a birth I attended.  It would be wrong to leave out unpleasant memories, low points, hostile providers, negligent husbands, bodily fluids.  Was I insane?  Please forgive me!  How can I ask you to read this!  I’ve grown up, I’ve learned.  No mother or father needs to know exactly what time their membranes were stripped, the third resident gave a painful vaginal exam, or what words they spoke when they felt most defeated.  Or how many hours exactly they kept their doula in the hosptial, how many damned nurses changed shifts.  I recently supported a beautiful birth, for a family I worked for four years ago too.  I wrote this recent birth story to their newborn daughter directly.  I told her how awesome her mother was- which was utterly true.  I told her how her personality showed from even before her birth and how her tiny hand shot out like a rebel warrior during her own birth.  I told her how her parents loved and supported each other for the whole labor.  And you know what?, it was as true and precise as any birth story I ever wrote, and it didn’t mention a single time of day or night.

I’m gonna go work on the song I’m writing now on my ukelele.  Because there’s still plenty of time to be new again.

Next week ends my six month maternity leave.  Maternity leave must be a concept that most first- time moms don’t really get.  First off, I thought my 8 year old yellow lab would love it.  I’d be home everyday, practically all day.  We’d take long walks in Prsopect Park with the baby, everyday- before 9:00 am, when dogs are allowed off- leash everywhere.  Then I thought I’d finish the final draft of the novel I’m working on and submit it to my agent, only to have her fall in love, think it’s publication ready, and start sending it to publishers.  Then I thought I’d fly to the west coast a couple times to introduce the baby to friends and family.  Then I thought Bill, Enrico and I would have a honeymoon- since we got married at 7.5 months pregnant, going somewhere special and far away- Italy was one thought.  I thought 6 months was a really long time.  I’m almost too depressed to finish this blog entry.

The dog, Caleb, didn’t love my leave.  Afterall, there was a newborn babyat home everyday, practically all day.  And the voice I used to use to speak to Caleb, began to be used for Enrico.  I never took Caleb to the park before 9.  Well maybe 5 times in six months.  In fact, I had a cesarean birth, and couldn’t walk Caleb for 6 weeks at all!  (He’s 100 pounds and a puller.)  If you’ve ever read my blog before you know where my current novel is at.  It’s not horrific.  But it certainly isn’t going to my agent again any time soon and she’s not showing it to publishers anytime soon.  Travel?  Well we did just come back from Portland and that was a great vacation, and we went to DC and upstate and to KY too.  But I was sort of thinking bigger. 

Back to work is a strange saying too.  Maternity leave is full of work.  I play a little game at night where I leave on a light in an area that needs cleaning, tidying, poop removal, spackling, power scrubbing.  Then when the whole apartment is lit up like a Chritsmas tree, I fall asleep before washing my face.  This hasn’t been a vacation.  And yet, I want it to go on and on.  And on and on.  I really hoped I’d be a little tired of being at home with the baby when it was time to return to work.  I’m not at all tired of it.  And I know time will rocket ahead once I’m back.  But alas, some good things will come of it.  I will wear leather shoes again.  I can wear pull-over shirts that don’t open in the front.  I will go to Manhattan four days a week!!  I will eat lunch by myself without it being like a speed eating contest everyday.  Soon enough, I’ll eat that lunch outside, in the sun.  I will get a paycheck.  My husband can actually have more time with Enrico and be a bigger caregiver.  I will walk Caleb every morning before 9.  Maybe I’ll get back in the habit of blogging too.

When I started this blog, two and a half years ago, everyone had a blog.  But now, everyone has a blog.  I don’t mind.  Actually, I want to spend more time reading really good blogs.  They can be inspiring.  They can be about subjects that really interest me.  They can teach, connect and help us with our careers.  But they do even more for the people who write them.  They are a way for us to flex a writing muscle, develop a different voice than we write with in our respective genres, write things that other people actually read in our daily lives, instead of once every 38 years, as in my first novel.  The things we write in blogs are most often read by our friends and family, and they provide a way for us to move them and to let them get to know us better, a part of ourselves that we want to be known.

My husband and I have a an 8 week old son.  So last weekend, my big dream for Friday night, was to get a couple people to come over for a four person card game and cocktails.  This idea felt like it could salvage a pretty claustrophobic week.  So, in the evening, after my husband Bill had visited a friend for tips on his new blog, one friend, Shannon, came over to have a bite pre-cards, and we talked about what she should name her new blog.  Then during our five person card game it came out that all five of us have blogs.  We made fun of each other’s blog’s names.  And still, I’m excited about all these things to read from interesting people I know- who are even willing to play cards with me on a Friday night, while Enrico gets used to living in this bloggy world.

Our son has arrived.  In fact, this Friday he will be one month old.  He’s miraculous and beautiful, consuming and a zen master at keeping my mind in the present at all hours of the day and night.  We’ve noticed many people in our lives are fast-forwarding to when he’s older, when he can go to museums, ride a bike, talk, visit Ireland, and it seems strange that neither my husband nor I are engaged in that kind of thinking.  Until you remember that we are caring for him in his present state 24 hours a day, usually at 3 hour intervals, not having slept more than 4 hours straight in a month.  And yet, I’m enjoying every day and even more so the nights!  These are sweet and inexpicable times; I instinctually get how quickly these days and weeks will pass, and I stay present without effort or choice. 

I haven’t written since Enrico was born.  Not here on this blog or my novel in progress.  Enrico was eight days late and during those eight days I reviewed feedback on the darft of my novel from my husband, Bill, my writing group friend, Anne, and my agent, Joelle.  I had one session of work in the library, about 5 days past due, where I re-outlined the entire novel and felt great- ready to cut and dice, or at least ready to try three more variations on an outline and meditate a whole lot more.  This is structure I’m talking about.  Then the radical, life-altering, and I will confess- nearly unbearable labor happened, and the magnificant Enrico arrived in our open arms.  When he was about ten days old I piled 400 pages of notated manuscript on our coffee table and presumed that while hours floated by in the living room between feedings, changing, sipping 10 times re-heated coffee, I’d look at notes.  I had the sad and amusing experience of noticing a minor character’s name on a random page, and thinking, “who’s that?”  It did come back to me.  It will all come back to me I’m sure.

I discovered a new book blog recently, because, as a treat (pun intended), this blogger discovered me.  A few times I’ve gotten a random email from a reader, often another writer, who wanted to say they enjoyed The Sign for Drowning.  This one intrigued me because he or she, wrote a rather cryptic email about not having time to make the chocolate souffle for bon voyage, but that I should check out their review on Food for Thought- their blog.  Well I did get around to checking out this blog, and I really like it.  The blogger, Jain, takes either a dish or recipe mentioned in a novel and makes it.  Then Jain posts a book review, and beautiful, inviting photos of the dishes she made.  Well The Sign for drowning contains a bon voyage party for Anna and Adrea, who are headed to france for a sumer intensive program for deaf children.  At the party, Maritza, the head teacher, serves up French food for the other children to experience.  There’s several quiches and a chocolate souffle.  Jain made some beautiful spinach and mushroom quiches, and photographed slices of them, with greens of course, on some decorative little French plates.  I like this blog a lot, it made me want to read and cook.

Jain also mentions in her review and blog entry how she goes about choosing the books to read.  And yes, it’s by their cover.  I think Jain doesn’t always judge a book by its cover.  But she mentioned periodic buying sprees on Amazon, where she’ll select a bunch of unknown titles, like a box of candies, and fire away an order of new books.  This reminded me that books really are about one cent on Amazon.  So, I decided to check on The Sign for Drowning, and see how cheaply it could be found there.  Indeed, there are two (hardcover!) copies for one penny.  A few for under three dollars.  And amusingly, two “collectibles” meaning a signed hardcover for $14 and $40.  Are you thinking what I’m thinking?  You should grab up that $14 signed hardcover!

Over the past year, I’ve maintained this blog as an author blog, a place to discuss, hash out, share with readers and friends things related to my novel, to writing life, books, you know.  Although it’s sometimes hard to continuously find writing-related things to discuss here, it has always felt right that this remain a writing blog.  However, there has been occassional temptation to slip in some more personal blogging.  I’m not that big on personal disclosure in my work life, but I really appreciate connecting with people on a personal level, about writing and otherwise.  And isn’t that an underlying desire in writing or reading- maybe especially for blogs?  Well, lately I’ve been very tempted to get a little more personal here because my life has been full of big changes.  The biggest being that I’m expecting my first baby!  In fact, this summer, my boyfriend, Bill and I are getting married and expecting the baby too, in the span of one summer.  Talk about year of the Tiger.  Well a baby, among other things, is a big motivator.  And the timing is such, that I quickly realized I could submit a draft of my next novel to my agent before becomming a mother.  And I could spend my maternity leave editing the novel with her feedback notes.  I know, all you parents out there, amidst getting to know and learning how to take care of a tiny human being and sleep deprivation!  But still- not going to my job for six months…some editing can take place, however adled this writer’s brain will be. 

Someone said to me at work the other day, “Well a baby is as good as another book.”  I certainly agree, a baby is better than another book.  But I was quick to tell her I’m striving for both.  It was a lot of fun emailing my agent recenltly to share that news and to tell her I’m going to make every effort to send her the manuscript before our baby arrives in August.  So there you have it.  I’m happy to share some very happy personal news with you, and I see I tied it into writing anyway!  Some people never change. 

p.s. This is me and my friend, Cassius.  I’m wearing a birthday crown he made for me, and I’m starting to show!

I received a welcome email from Rosemary James at the Faulkner House in New Orleans a few days ago.  She said she was including me and The Sign for Drowning on the home page for her literary conference, Words and Music, as a success story of the conference.  Indeed, I thanked Rosemary and her husband, Joe, in my acknowledgements as providing the literary event and celebration each year that also happened to give my book a new little engine.  Placing in their novel competition helped me secure an agent and ultimatley publish the book .  And attending Words and Music in 2006 and 2007, and visiting Rosemary at Faulkner House every year since, have given me a much greater sense of living a writing life- at least in part.  I am now able to envision what full time writers do.  They mingle with other writers and hear each other’s work.  They read, think about and discuss books.  You don’t have to write 40 hours a week every week of the year.  Rosemary also provided the connections to two of my favorite and most thrilling blurb authors for my novel, Julia Glass and Bret Lott.  I promise to tell the stories of getting those blurbs on this blog in the next month.  But meanwhile, if you’re an aspiring poet, essayist, short story writer, novelist- submit your work to Words and Music, the William Wisdom, William Faulkner Literary competition, and attend Words and Music this year.  You won’t regret it.

My cyber friend, Jill Dearman, interviewed me recently for a Barnes and Noble book blog.  This interview was thought provoking for me because Jill asked some questions I haven’t been asked before and made me think about events I haven’t in a long time.  I thought about who influenced my early reading.  My mom did becasue she was a big reader.   As I outgrew my childhhod books and young adult novels, I’d pluck what she was reading off her nightstand or off the shelves in the living room.  Lucky for me, she read good literary books.  I remember reading Saul Bellow, or Phillip Roth, or Elizabeth Rosner, and thinking- I can’t understand about 30% of this because I’m too young to get it.  Then my aunt Penny very forcefully wanted me to read the important books.  At age 14, I spent the summer in her home in Israel.  I was put through a literature tutorial including, Beloved, Song of Solomon, Sula, and other author’s who weren’t Toni Morrison but who I can’t think of now.  I also was instructed through many LP’s that had to be memorized, Bob Dylan primarily, Joni Mitchell, all the Beatles, and I learned how to make cake frosting and jelly squares, not to mention witnessing my first home birth of my cousin, Ya’acov. 

Long way of saying, talking to Jill provoked much reflection- on reading, writing and otherwise.

Also, if you’d be so kind to leave a comment at the B&N blog above, it’ll boost The Sign for Drowning in their esteemed ranking!