HELLO, Miss American Pie

It was a setting as American as … well, apple pie. Young moms pushed strollers with impatient toddlers kicking their feet, past buckets of lilacs ($10 each), baskets of strawberries, five different kinds of lettuce, jars of honey, hummus, oranges, bread, so on ... Puppies tugged on leashes, vagrants strolled with overloaded shopping carts, and a lone guitarist played acoustic covers to this eclectic assemblage of passerby.

Beth’s gingham check RV was easy to spot at the Pacific Beach Farmer’s Market, and so was she – looking feisty and fit and happy. Although I feared she wouldn’t recognize me she did, and in between book buyers and other groupies we had a brief chance to catch up.
I had not seen Beth for about 10 years ago (or more) - when we both worked for Quokka Sports and she was my boss’ boss’ boss. ‘So high up the ladder that honestly, we rarely interacted, although I admired her work, her style, and her decision to assign me to cover a round the world race.

Halfway into the race though, she left, saying once our site (BT Global Challenge 2000/01) launched, the excitement was over. Conversely that’s when I started having all the fun ~ and barely noticed her departure, and the next person’s, and the next … until April of 2001, while Jen and I were on assignment in South Africa no less, the company finally went belly-up ... but that is an entirely different story.

In Dec 2009 while surfing the web in Mariano Roque Alonso, Paraguay for news of friends and civilization, (because that’s what you do when you find yourself living in a third world country) I clicked on Beth’s blog and happened on the news of her loss. She was, as she put it in a subsequent email to me, “still reeling” and now – two and a half years later, that emotion had been transmuted and contained between the hard-covers of her recently published book MAKING PIECE.

And I was here to buy a copy. A fan of Beth’s blog, a fan of Beth’s for years before, it was a combination of moral support, curiosity, financial support, and a strange sisterhood of writers. I picked her brain a bit: because some day I hope to write my book – and she gave me some solid pointers (whether she knew that was the aim of my insistent interrogation I don’t know) and I walked away inspired. It made me feel good to SEE her book, and feel the tangible permanence of it (oh so much more than a magazine or the web) and hear a little about the protocol and finally see her as the author, on tour, having her photo taken, signing books, …  with pie crust gunked under her fingernails, a bundled up apron by her side, looking very happy, very successful, very real. (Visualize!)

Where am I going with this?

She reminded me to keep writing, keep practicing my craft.

Although I am writing my ass off these days (and am very pleased with my work!) they are all assignments. Conveniently formulaic and superficial (as far as emotion goes).

So I promised myself to write. Anything. Every day. And this mishmash is it for today. Good night.