rebeccakuder

What Can You Make Of It? (for Becky Teilhet, and Aliki)

illustration from p. 35 of What Can You Make Of It? (field mouse family making crafts at dining room table, 1977 picture book by Franz Brandenberg, illustrated by Aliki)
from What Can You Make Of It? p. 35

My neighbor Becky Teilhet was a baby whisper. When I had a baby, her first sleepover was at Becky’s house next door. Becky was a remarkable person, sweet and funny and a little mischievous and she had a beautiful, huge, loving heart. Her husband Justin is a ceramic artist. They made a living with art. Becky made beautiful quilts. Once, she loaned us a book she had read to their son Jay, called What Can You Make Of It? by Franz Brandenberg, illustrated by Aliki.

Published in 1977, the book depicts a family of field mice, who live in New York City (or near—the illustrations include a Zabar’s bag). The mice are preparing to move, and rather than get rid of their rubbish, they keep and move their collections of egg cartons, orange juice cans, yarn spools, old magazines, etc., which means they need seven moving vans. “Mr. and Mrs. Fieldmouse’s new house was an old house,” says the start of Chapter Two. Once inside the new old house, they must decide where to put all the rubbish. It lands in the garage. When Uncle Alfred and Aunt Kate come to visit in chapter three, the Fieldmouse family must clear out the garage so their visitors won’t have to park on the street. They lug the rubbish from the garage (“Garages are for cars,” says Mother Fieldmouse) into the new old house. The visitors arrive, and remark upon the nice new old house which has no place to sit down. In Chapter Four, Uncle Alfred—perched impossibly on the top of a tower of old magazines—says, “Look at all the things you can make with rubbish!” The field mice proceed to make lions, tigers, horses, bears, a top hat, then snakes, a trapeze, monkeys, a clown, a rattle, a family of elephants, a microphone, opera glasses, a hoop, a cannon, turtles, pedestals, cups, owls, a rabbit, and cages. “We have made a whole circus!” says Uncle Alfred. They take everything into the garage and present The Greatest Show On Earth.

Like my neighbor Becky, the illustrations are sweet and more than a little mischievous—these dear mice are always in motion, stuffing toilet paper tubes into bags, tripping over spools. It’s a fabulous book. (It’s out of print, but findable in libraries, and definitely findable on eBay or abebooks.) (Thank you, dear Becky.)

As soon as we read it, we decided to start a What Can You Make Of It? bin. We kept whatever seemed it would be useful. Our child made tons of creations from the bin. It became a reflex—if she needed something, someone would say look in the What Can You Make Of It bin!

#

I come from a family, a culture of rubbish-keepers. The central thing may be to find something to make from the leftovers. Letting it sit around and gather dust or take up space meant for other things will (eventually) stop working. To keep everything forever is not sustainable.

A lived life may be full of discarded rubbish. A day lived, memories, experiences. When I write memoir, I go to the bin, see what’s there, tape it together, arrange it with something else—trying, always, to see what I can make of it. If I make something, if I even try, even when it doesn’t turn out how I imagine, doesn’t that mean this life is more than just emptied and spent days? Doesn’t that mean it’s more than rubbish?

rebeccakuder

Grateful for connections (sweet review of Dear Inner Critic)

photo of cover of Dear Inner Critic: a self-doubt activity book

Grateful to Kathy Engisch of Teseract Books in Yellow Springs for her kind words about Dear Inner Critic: a self-doubt activity book.

p.s. Boycott Amazon and big box stores! Support your local, independent bookstores! These people and places support human culture, and they are vital to our survival!

rebeccakuder

Dear Inner Critic—Interview by Ariel Gore

sepia tone image of human, on the floor, with papers and material spread out, writing on a notecard.

I am so grateful for Ariel Gore‘s invitation to chat about Dear Inner Critic: a self-doubt activity book and other salient things. Read our interview here. Ariel’s Literary Kitchen (aka School for Wayward Writers) is where Dear Inner Critic was born, so to share the book’s story there warms my heart.

If you are like me, you know in your bones that these times call for much inspiration and fortification! So please do whatever you can to support independent, collective, human-scale publishing, and eschew the monsters of big capitalism!

Head over to the Literary Kitchen’s Underground Book Shelter to purchase fabulous, unique, humanity-expanding books.

rebeccakuder

The Hidden Messages in Water by Masaru Emoto

I recently read The Hidden Messages in Water by Masaru Emoto. This book is amazing. I know its premise may be wobbly, or pseudo-science, but when I don’t ask it to prove itself and when I allow imagination and read it like a novel (or at least as a non-skeptic), I find the narrative extremely compelling and hypnotic. Like, what if?

From p.151:

“We all have an important mission: To make water clean again, and to create a world that is easy and healthy to live in. In order to accomplish our mission, we must make sure that our hearts are clear and unpolluted.

Over the centuries, humankind has constantly robbed from the earth, and left it ever more polluted—the history of which is recorded by water. Now, water is beginning to speak to us. Through water crystals, it is telling us what we need to know.

Starting today, we must begin to carve out a new history. Water is carefully and quietly watching the direction we take—the direction that you take at this very moment—and watching over us all.

I only ask that you listen to and absorb what water has to say—to all of humankind, and to you.”

rebeccakuder

quiet, but things are happening

photo of cup of tea and boots overlooking pond

I’ve been quiet over here, but very busy.

In 2023, I took a fabulous year-long online writing class with Ariel Gore called Mavens of Mythmaking. Some highlights:

  • I completed a short story collection called What To Keep, for which I am seeking a publisher.
  • I finished a full revamp/revision of my novel The Watery Girl. This year, I will seek publication.
  • The memoir about my childhood home continues to emerge and evolve—in fragments and fractals—which, I am learning, is how this thing is meant to be written. Some day it will be a book.

My newest book, Dear Inner Critic: a self-doubt activity book, grew from years of renegotiating my relationship with the inner critic. Many readers have attended workshops and reframed self-doubt with me. Thanks for your good company! (Who knew a handful of tricks would grow into a real book?!)

  • This book is built from L-O-V-E. My keenest hope is that it will help people free the creative urge. (If I have anything to offer humanity, this book is it.)
  • On the journey toward creative liberation, I have trodden this self-doubt path myself. The tricks in this book have changed my life.

Soon, Dear Inner Critic will be available from the Literary Kitchen (literarykitchen.org). Please subscribe to my blog or follow my instagram for more information.

rebeccakuder

Broken River by J. Robert Lennon

My dear husband recommended I read Broken River by J. Robert Lennon because it features an inventive character called the Observer, and it’s also about a house, and what the house contains. (I’m kind of always writing about houses and what they contain, which is why Robert suggested I read this novel.) The Observer character evolves over time within and outside of several carefully constructed and smartly intersecting narratives. Overall I found the book really well made and engaging. It’s creepy in all the best ways (which is maybe evident from one glance at the cover). I recommend you read it especially if you want to see how someone can make something intricate and also smartly accessible, that isn’t shaped like most traditional narratives.

Here are some bits I particularly love—as is the case often in my posts, these passages are torn from context but maybe that doesn’t matter?—and maybe you will see why I love them. (Also, I have never seen anyone write about those weird tube men, and how brilliantly Lennon does so, below!):

p. 26: “In any case, the identity of, fate of, and story behind the previous inhabitants of the house is something Irena intends to research while she is here. If the results are interesting, maybe she can incorporate them, somehow, into her novel. Because at the moment, the novel has no real plot—it’s just descriptions of things. That’s what Irina is good at. She believes that she inherited this deficiency from her father, who is a visual artist and does not require narrative to make something of value. But if that’s her cross to bear, she will do it stoically.”

p. 118: “The observer lets her go. It is time to turn its attention to the family many miles to the north, though the Observer is increasingly aware that it needn’t choose one time, one place, on group of human being to attend to. Indeed, it is quite capable of observing anything, all things. But it has begun to recognize that its purpose, as opposed to its ability, is limited: or, more precisely, its purpose is to be limited. It is unconcerned with, bored in fact by, the enormity of its power. It is interested only in the strategic—the aesthetic—winnowing of that power.”

p. 119: “Of course the humans die. Quite possibly all of them. Perhaps the Observer will die as well; it doesn’t know, and it can’t imagine what it would do differently if eventual death were a certainty. But the humans, it suspects, know. This is likely why, years ago, at the beginning of the Observer’s existence, the murdered man and woman screamed, even before any damage was inflicted upon their bodies: they were justifiably fearful that their lives were about to end. If the humans know that death is coming (and, by the Observer’s standards, it would seem that it tends to come very soon), their words and actions must all be profoundly influenced by that fact. They fear making wrong choices, so they avoid making any at all. They keep very still, hoping that death might fail to take notice of them.”

p. 158: “Of course Eleanor wouldn’t have it any other way. She is not one of those parents who believes that her child must find a tribe, invest herself in society, hide her eccentricities in an effort to blend into the group—even though these are the lessons she herself was taught, and shat she has historically done, and what, despite her engagement in ostensibly solitary pursuits, she is presently doing for a living. No, what she wants for her daughter is intellectual and creative self-actualization without compromise. In other words: Don’t be like me. Be like your father.”

p. 203: “By hour three of her journey here, her lower back ached with a familiar, almost homey, pulsing intensity that bordered on nausea. She had completed the decrepit-barn-and-speedway portion of the trip and had entered the domain of inexplicable traffic lights, roadside diners, and auto dealerships outlined in colorful flags and punctuated by convulsing forced-air tube men. (She doesn’t understand the tube men. They catch the eye, yes, as only a madly flailing twenty-foot-tall monster can; but who decided such a sight could make you buy a car?) Sewn-on smile notwithstanding, the tube men appeared to her earnestly, even violently repulsive. Turn back, their frantic motions seemed to say. There’s danger here. We’re tall enough to see over the trees, and only nightmares await.”