Cary Tennis's Open Salon Blog

Suddenly I know what my memoir's about

Mon, 2 Apr 2012 14:04:45 -0400

It came to me out of the blue after long thought why I should write a memoir and what it should be about. I am so excited now. I want to plunge right in.

It was a year and a half ago that an editor at a major house wrote suggesting I write a memoir. I have been toying with the idea and grappling with my own feelings since then. Mainly I have felt that although it would be fun to write about my life in any way I chose, I could not really justify such a project unless there were some overarching purpose. Why should I write a memoir? Just because people are curious about me? That is not enough. People are curious about a lot of things. There had to be some reason that would excite me. My teenage years were very colorful and dramatic and I lived a very unusual family life. The title came easily. It'll be called Rainbow Drive. That was our street name. 320 Rainbow Drive. Our house was the split-level hippie house in the clean Hollywood, Florida suburbs and we had many brilliant, beautiful, fun, young, tragic, eccentric friends and many adventures in the midst of the "turbulent '60s" -- rock and roll parties, demonstrations, pregnancies and abortions, promiscuity, hallucinogens, war resistance, underground papers, long hair, lots of pot, road trips, rock festivals, communes, bands, etc.

But who needs one more boomer reminiscence? It had to be more than a reminisicence. It had to have a thesis.

And then I hit on what I really want to do. I want to talk about the basement of our house with the Frank Zappa poster and the van trips and pot smoking and my brother's fight with the FBI and my eccentric parents and the swimming pool with the frogs in it and my brother's van and everything, but until I thought about the Occupy Wall Street movement and our current national nightmare I didn't see how that all fit in.

Now I do. Here is the story I want to tell. I want to talk about what it's like to be a kid growing up in a country that is scary and doesn't make sense, and how you don't have a program or a blueprint but you know you don't want to live like your parents and don't want to accept what the state and the large businesses have planned for you, so you do something. You dress the way you want and love hugely and often and publicly. You stage spontaneous freakouts in public places. You gather in huge crowds. You adopt a system of signs and coded speech to identify each other. You put your lives on the line. You take huge risks, forgoing the college career route, forgoing stable housing and family life. You meet passionately with others who see the world the way you do and you ask over and over again what can we do, what can we do, what can we do?

You don't know how to change the world or where it will lead but you have to do something. And so you are misunderstood and you try things. It makes sense to me why thousands of people would go live in tents in an urban park. It makes sense why thousands and millions would invent new music and a new language and inhabit new emotional spaces. I get that. And I know that I don't have the answers and that nobody is looking for the boomer generation to give them answers.

But I do have experience now. I have a tale to tell about what happens when you are young and wild and free and have no concept of what life will be like in five years, and then five years comes, and 10 years comes, and 20 years comes, and 30 years come.

You keep trying to live this true-to-yourself, marginal existence, avoiding the deadening trappings of mainstream suburban life and the exhausting rituals of work and family, but it's not sustainable. Communes are not sustainable. Living your own private protest movement is not sustainable. You look around you at the security and material comforts gained by those who took no risks and conformed, and you try to get some of that without giving up who you are. But it's bigger than you. It's stronger than you. You think you can balance it but bit by bit it takes you over. Alone, you have no chance. But where is your movement? Where is your culture? It survives as a consumerist adjunct; it reads Rolling Stone and pays to go to concerts. It buys weed and smokes. But the essential dream of a new life is gone.

Your culture isn't there for you anymore. It could not be sustained. It had no infrastructure. It had no long-term plan. And so you start thinking about how does a cultural movement sustain itself? How does it take into account that everybody in it is going to keep on aging, and is going to want to maybe have kids and family and stability and not live in the woods or on the street, and is going to want some conveniences and some comfort like the other people who sold out, and is going to want a political program that makes sense? How do you plan for that?

That's my story. How we reached for the stars and fell back to earth with a thud and picked ourselves up and found we were not in a big crowd anymore; we were not at Woodstock anymore. We were on our own. And so we did the best we could but we were on our own. So it looks to some like we sold out but to me what it looks like was that we never had an enduring structure for our movement. We neglected to plan for the long-term. Ad-hoc was OK at 18. It didn't work at 35.

So my message to the progressive, change-minded youth of today would be: Have a 30-year plan. Have a 30-year vision for you and all your comrades. How?

I don't know how. If I had known how maybe we would have done it. But somehow you must capture the essence of your vibrant, brilliant culture of change and transformation. Don't compromise, don't water it down, but recognize that in 10 years you are going to be 10 years older and you will want different things. How will you get those things without giving up your ideals? Create a sustainable plan.

Assume that real social and cultural change is going to take 30 years.

That's what I figure. Today's progressive youth need a 30-year plan. It took about 30 years of right-wing planning and pushing and strategizing to get us into this mess. I figure any plan to get us out will take at least as long.

So what's your 30-year plan?

Meanwhile, I'm going to find me a book agent and put together a proposal and write this thing.

Reflecting on the workshops (dreaming aloud)

Sun, 18 Mar 2012 22:03:38 -0400

Well, So I posted here about my day. And I tweeted about my day. And now I'm doing Open Salon about my day. It was a nice day.

Tomorrow I go back to work writing the column, but I think I need to take Tuesday off for doctor's appointments. It's not that it's anything serious, and it's not that I'm a super primadonna or something, right? It's just that I really have to get into a pretty dedicated, chilled-out mind to do the writing. If I start out going around to doctor appointments I'm all scattered and weird. Maybe that's when I write the occasional weird, less-than-brilliantly-successful columns ...

Well, you know what? I'm supposed to be putting the word out about the upcoming writing workshops and stuff. Of particular interest, I should say, is the success we are having with the online workshops. Who knew? I started the workshops so I could be with people face-to-face. But the online things are really cool. It's people from all over the world writing together. Very cool. Wednesay nights now.

And that's about it. Except for the million other things going on in the brain ... and except for the fact that I can't stop thinking about these two British New Wave films I watched on tv last week, Room at the Top and also, um, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning.

And I want to read this new collection of John Leonard's reviews and stuff. Man, that guy always really wowed me. I was always a big fan.

But who has the time to read? What do I get, maybe one hour a day to read? I wish I could spend all day just reading. That would be a vacation. But no.

OK. Don't get me started. Just saying hi is all.

later ...

A romantic wedding tale (how the Creative Getaway was born)

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 14:12:01 -0500

Norma and I got married in September 1993 at the Cliff House in San Francisco, right there at the mouth of San Francisco Bay, looking out over the Pacific.

Norma had this idea that since she was only going to be wearing the wedding dress this one day, and what with all the money that dress cost, she wanted to get the maximum value out of it. She was determined to keep that dress on as long as possible, to stay a bride all day until it was bedtime. So after the wedding and reception we drove across the Golden Gate Bridge toward Tomales where we were going to spend the night, Norma still with her wedding dress and her veil. People were honking at us and waving and shouting congratulations.

By the time we got to the Tomales Country Inn, we wanted some good food. Laura Hoffman, the innkeeper, came into the lobby and saw Norma standing there in her wedding dress and got all excited and told us if we really wanted some good food we should drive down to Inverness to Manka's, this former hunting lodge turned gourmet restaurant. So, Norma still in her wedding dress, we drove down to Manka's and caused a stir there, she with her veil and all, and people snapped pictures of us dining, and we had maybe the best dinner of our lives there at Manka's. Manka's was like this magical lodge in the forest, like something you'd find in Twin Peaks. With the roasting fire going in the lobby fireplace, stuff roasting there in the fire, and these huge timbers. It was like a dream. So we ate there and then drove back up to the Tomales Country Inn and Norma finally took off her wedding dress.

So after that, Tomales Bay became our place, our place of fun and refuge and memory and solace. And Manka's became our place to celebrate. We went there every Christmas Day for a few years, with our friends Ken and Alexis, and it anchored the year.

Then the Tomales Country Inn was sold to a Buddhist meditation group so it wasn't the same, which was sad. And Ken and Alexis moved to Hong Kong so our Christmas dinner companions were gone. Then Manka's dining room burned in a widely publicized fire. So Manka's still operates as an inn but the dining room is gone and our friends are gone and the Tomales Country Inn is gone but we still go up to Tomales Bay for fun and refuge and memory and solace.

So over the years, every time we would be driving up to Tomales or Occidental or Dillon Beach, or maybe to Freestone, or maybe just driving up the coast highway along Tomales bay just to feel the movement, we would pass this little sign on the road near Marshall that said Marconi Conference Center, and we always wondered what that was. There was this road winding up a hill, and we just noticed it the way you notice something but don't register it really.

Then, a few years later, we renovated our house in San Francisco and ended up with this beautiful front room, and at the same time I had begun writing the column in 2001 but in 2006 I found myself in a painful spot writing-wise; I needed some help, personally, with my writing as a practice, as a sustainable and deepening activity, so in 2007 I took a weeklong Amherst Writers and Artists writing workshop with Pat Schneider and was deeply moved and restored to some kind of creative health by that method of writing in a group. So then with Pat's blessing and encouragement I started leading AWA-style writing workshops in the bright front room of our newly renovated house out at Ocean Beach, and people would write together and it was really great.

But people from far away would email me and say they wished they could come to a workshop but they don't live here, and wouldn't it be nice if people could travel here for a few days, if there was some kind of retreat they could go to. So we thought we should look for a place and maybe we could put on some kind of a retreat. So naturally, wanting to share the beauty and healing force of this land, this strange, powerful California land full of mystery and beauty, we started looking around.

Well, we thought, what is that place we always see up there on Tomales Bay near Nick's Cove and Marshall, right up from Millerton State Park where we take the dogs on weekends? That sign at the bottom of that little winding road? Marconi? So Norma contacted Marconi Conference Center and made an appointment and we drove up there to look around, and they showed us around.

So in the lobby were all these antique radios in a glass cabinet and then we realized, of course, Marconi, the radio guy! This was the site of Marconi's first trans-Pacific wireless receiving station on the West Coast. And the concrete footers for the tower and the guy wires are still at the top of the hill up by the dining room. So this had a powerful effect on me, because of the powerful place radio has for me. I read the Marconi biography when I was a kid. We had a shortwave radio given to us by my grandmother. And we strung a wire for an antenna out our window and across the yard, and we listened to ships. A voice going across the air. Men in ships out at sea talking to each other across the vast dark ocean.

So they showed us a couple of meeting spaces up at Marconi and at first we weren't sure. These two buildings up the hill, kind of like bunkers. It wasn't looking promising. Then we saw McCargo Hall. Wow. This was one of original buildings, beautifully restored in a craftsman style, with a fireplace and a sunny veranda.

Now this was a place where we could be. This place had a vibe. This felt good. We wanted McCargo. So we started doing these getaways up there at Marconi, in McCargo Hall. And one of the first things we noticed was how good the food was. It stands to reason: After all, you're in this Northern California food mecca, with all this great local produce and meat -- the same reason that Manka's makes such fabulous food. But we weren't really thinking about that when we started. It was just a bonus. And after a day of workshops and after dinner we would gather in McCargo Hall and read poems and prose aloud and sing songs and stuff. It's pretty great.

So that is how we came to be offering these four-day stays on Tomales Bay. And now the January one is coming up and as usual we still have a few rooms left and as usual I begin to fret and fear that not enough people will sign up.

So I ask you to join us. Click here to sign up.

I think about healing a lot lately, especially after the cancer, speaking of which, incidentally, Dec. 17 is the two-year anniversary of my surgery, going into UCSF hospital and having my life saved. Which was nice. And now I'm pretty much "back to normal." Which is nice. So I think about healing and the many forms it takes, many of which are not healing in the sense of medical intervention, but more indirect, yet have the same powerful attraction and effect, and the same life-or-death importance. Creativity is healing. Nature is healing. Certain kinds of healing -- art, poetry, music -- draw people with the same urgency with which one might go to the doctor or journey to healing waters. Tomales Bay has that healing quality for us.

And to sit in a room above the bay and let the imagination wake up there, in that place of historic radio reception, it's like our radio waves are going out across the bay, like we're locked in somehow, like we're receptive, too, to the mysterious invisible signals in the air, like that old antenna up there, we're picking up signals from ships in the night.

So I woke up this morning worrying how I was going to communicate this. There's an example in this book I'm reading of a person going into a grocery store and an employee is following her around with these little food samples on toothpicks trying to get her to taste a sample and she doesn't want one and he's pissing her off with his insistence and then she walks out of the store to get away from him, and smells cookies. She is drawn to buy some cookies.

The idea being, don't force your stuff on people but let them get the aroma.

So I have to trust that by evoking the spirit of the thing, I'm putting out the scent, and that if you're moved by this idea, then it is calling to you, and that it may heal something in you or bring you something you need.

So if you're interested, if you caught an aroma of something enticing, ring the bell and I'll come out in my apron and serve you some cookies, as it were.

Knock on my door. Ring the bell.

I'll come out and serve you cookies.

What's wrong with my Web site? What should it do?

Fri, 7 Jan 2011 11:01:56 -0500

So, I live on Salon.com, but for all the other little things I do, I have a little Web site of my own, www.carytennis.com and it sucks. We all know that. I mean, it's kinda pretty but it doesn't do anything. And certain little things on it are broken. (ha ha find the broken links)

But what is it supposed to do?

How would I know? I don't use it like a user. I use it like a tool. I don't go to it wondering what I'm up to. If I want to know what I'm up to, I just look in the mirror.

So what should my own personal Web site do? I'm probably missing the point completely. All I know is, asking you has worked in the past.

So you tell me, if you would please: What is my Web site supposed to do?

And note, if you will, please, that I'm not asking this question on my Web site, or in my Salon column, but here on Open Salon. Which works.

Hmmm.

Man, I hardly ever post here

Wed, 10 Nov 2010 18:11:31 -0500

I wonder why that is. I gotta get my whole e-mail/newsletter/blogging/personal space/social netowrking site/twitter thing down, man. I gotta get this twitter thing going, and hook it up with my wikipedia, and get my blog in line with my e-commerce, and archive everything so it's searchable, and definitely up my SEO, because i'm feeling like a damn troglodyte, man.

I do know I like sending e-mail newsletters because they're like going to somebody. This Open Salon thing, this feels like writing on a rock out in the desert, hoping somebody'll drive by and discover me. That's what it feels like.

I gotta get better with all this. I gotta pull my Salon thing together with my Cary Tennis Books thing and my twitter thing and all my musings.

Uh, yeah. Dude. It's time to write your newsletter.

Oh, yeah. In a minute. I'm writing my Open Salon thing.

Oh, wait. Got a text here. I'm being texted at. I gotta text back. I'll speak to you in the physical universe at another location when some digital representations of time units have accumulated. OK? This present moment is stretching too thin. We're concerned about breakage.

there's magazines piling up. I'm taking the times, the wall street journal, fortune, poets and writers, the writer, writers digest, and the nyrb. they're piling up. i should hire somebody to read them all and do podcasts so I could listen to what I thought I was reading. Plus there are novels to read.

I don't think we're wired up properly for this session. There's a microphone missing somewhere.

You get what I'm trying to say? It's not like I'm having a breakdown, it's like I'm trying to match up the incongruity with some nonsequitorial riffs of my own. Like what key is this?

No problem. Sometimes you get like this and you just go, OK, I'm gonna clean my room.