Year: 2012

It’s Not You; It’s Me

We'll always have Seattle.

Dear Seattle,

We have to talk.

No, no, don’t look at me like that. It’s nothing you did, or didn’t do. You’re perfect, just the way you are.
But…still, even you must agree that things have been a little strained of late. A bit chilly. Somewhat damp and dreary. Hell, who are we kidding? That’s just you being you!

It was draining (drizzle+rain) the day we moved into our rental house here. The workmen were still trying to finish cosmetic touch-ups to the small old bungalow with its cracked foundation and wall-to-wall cobwebs. But it had charm, of a sort, and we were new here. What did we know?

Well, six years later the house we’re leaving is sunny, bright and beautiful. The garden I’ve been working on in the backyard is blooming its heads off, and the weather…okay, it is raining today, but recently we’ve had several sunny days with the temps almost in the 60s. We’ve learned to take what we can get.

But…home, they say, is where the heart is. Yet the longer I live the more I find the heart is like a fractal coastline, fringed with inlets and coves of past pleasures and pains. Sometimes it’s smooth sailing; other times it takes all my concentration to avoid crashing into the rocks. My heart is overfull. The weight of the past clings like barnacles to the hull of my none too swift boat. And the only way I can figure to get myself going again is to start jettisoning some of the drek in the hold. Time to let go, let the sail out and head for the horizon.

The fact that this horizon is the very one I fled so willingly six years ago doesn’t signify. Time changes perspective. We don’t get to remake our choices. There is no rewind in this life. There is only forward, faster than it seems possible.

And so I’ve chosen to return to the scene of my youthful folly, to renew old friendships and reunite with family.

But…I will miss you, Seattle. I’ll miss your snow-capped craggy peaks, your glittering waterways, your quirky people. I’ll miss Fremont, and Ravenna, and being able to take great coffee for granted. I’ll miss the salmon and the blueberries and Grateful Bread. I’ll miss Robinswood and Amy Yee and all the wonderful tennis players I’ve met at those friendly public clubs. I’ll miss Pike Place Market, Third Place Books, totem poles, the gardens and the amazing trees. I’ll miss Green Lake, that oasis of serenity and goodwill, where dogs rule and everything’s cool.

And I’ll miss the Mariners, even though with the exception of Ichiro  and Felix the lineup has completely altered since I first started cheering for them. This year the new faces on the team are young and eager, hitting hard, fielding crisply, renewing hopes.

Back on the East Coast I’ll be rooting for the Nationals, another team which has languished at the bottom of the pack for some time. But now they’ve got Bryce Harper, a 19-year-old phenom whose starpower might just be the real thing.

But of course it’s not about baseball. It’s about time. Time I was going.

So this is it for me, Seattle. I’ll never forget you.

So long and thanks for all the fish.

Avalon, Amazon, Babylon, Con

So, I’ve been traded.

Not me personally. But Avalon Books, the little publishing company which first took a chance on me as a fiction writer, has been absorbed into the Amazon behemoth.

I’m hoping this will turn out to be a good thing. Usually I don’t pay a whole lot of attention to business news, but in this case I have a tiny vested interest in the outcome of this deal.

Founded 62 years ago as a family business by Thomas Bouregy, Avalon made its small but respected mark in the publishing world by limiting its production to wholesome genre works: romance, mystery and westerns.

The accent there is on the wholesome. While some genre publishers concentrate on fiction designed to make the flesh crawl or sweat, or generally heat up, Avalon’s focus since the 1950s was the sort of books you could loan to your grandmother without fear of offending her delicate sensibilities; the kind of books you didn’t have to worry about leaving around where your nine-year-old daughter might happen upon them. Chaste, morally grounded, straight shootin’ yarns.

When they offered to buy my first novel, back in 2003, I was thrilled. I had read their guidelines. I had cleaned up my novel to meet their standards, I thought. Then as the editing process began I got a list of various changes they required in order for the manuscript to meet their expectations. They had no problems with my  grammar, my plot, my characters, or my style. But my use of certain terms, my diction, my innuendos, didn’t sit well with them.

At first I chafed at this. I spent a few hours huffing and puffing before I calmed down and reflected on how lucky I was that anyone was willing to offer me a contract for my modest little romance. And once I accepted the challenge of rewording a few phrases and applying a touch of concealer to the more suggestive portions of the book, we got along fine.

The experience of being published at all was thrilling. But, as with so many thrills, after you come down from the top of the ride, you realize that you’re pretty much right back where you started. Avalon was a small company, with no promotional budget to speak of. At least not for me and my Tall Order. And marketing has never been my strong suit. I couldn’t sell Girl Scout cookies.

However, I have always felt grateful for that first success, because it gave me hope, the stuff of dreams. So I’ve kept dreaming. Five years ago I gave up on trying to interest conventional publishers in my works. The agents and editors I met at conferences and interviews were universally encouraging, but they were all looking for blockbusting, or in some cases bustier busting, works, and that’s not what I’m going for. Some people like books that are electrifying or terrifying. Others  love novels that aim to be heartbreaking, crushingly realistic, dismally honest and dark. Not I, said the duck.

For me, a great book is funny, thoughtful, and sometimes poetic. A touch of romance adds to it, but isn’t required if the humor is smart enough.  That’s the kind of book I’m trying to write.

Tall Order was a good first step for me, so I’m glad that if Avalon must vanish, as Avalons are wont to do,  Amazon will be taking over (as Amazons are wont to do). I’m hopeful that my first book will be digitalized and available on Kindle  and its kin.

The key word there is “available.” Because as a writer, the best reward is to have people read your work and respond to it. Maybe they like it, maybe not, but  if it brings a momentary lift to anyone, I’m thankful.

So roll on Amazon, swallowing everything in your path.  And me, I’ll keep searching for higher ground.

That Sinking Feeling

You tell me and we'll both know.

I’ve always been a sunrise kind of girl.

One of those annoying people who wakes up every day glad to see that the world’s still here, spinning away.

Every day feels like a fresh start to me, another opportunity to try new things, learn from past mistakes, and make some new ones. Of course you could keep doing the same thing day in and day out, year after year, if that’s your choice. But it seems to me as Ani DiFranco once sang, “You’ve got your whole life to do something, and that’s not very long.” So I’m always trying to make the most of each day, starting with waking up early, and trying to stay productive as long as possible.

But eventually we all run out of gas, and it turns out slowing down is just as hard as speeding up.

My Dad will turn 89 this week. He’s not really thrilled about it, but he’s wrestling with all the questions and emotions that come with facing your own finish line. Nobody likes to think about it, especially not at the beginning of life, or the high noon of life, or even the long restful mid-afternoon of life, after most of the heavy lifting is done and there’s more time for refreshments and reflection.

Lately, as I watch my Dad struggling to cope with the challenges that come with age, I’ve begun to appreciate the sunset view. Sunsets have a totally different dynamic than sunrises. Sunrises start slow and build to a glittering moment of breakthrough, and then the day begins and you sort of forget about them.

Sunsets also can build slowly, but they evolve in more symphonic style. Sometimes the sun simply drops below the horizon without any fanfare at all, just as some lives seem to finish with a similar quiet exhale. Done.

But the sunsets we remember are the ones that start off with a few clouds, then add some bursts of light, some dark drama, a rising wind, a flare of fiery color perhaps, a reflection sparkling on water, a mystical uplift that takes your breath away. In a good way.

All his life my Dad has been a man who could talk. For hours. On almost any subject. A man of strong opinions. He’s always been philosophical in his way, but now, as his sun is sinking lower, he’s gone quiet, but the light still burns in his eyes. He’s still looking for answers.

I get it now. The sunrise is a happy time because you think you’ve got enough time to figure out everything you need to know to understand life. But when the sunset comes, you may find that there’s never enough time to understand it all. The best you can hope for is to get the chance to appreciate it.

And all I can say is thanks, Dad, for all the sunrises, and all the sunsets of my life.

Half-cocked

Yesterday a mentally ill man went into a small cafe near where I live and shot five people. Four of them died. Then he fled, shot and killed a woman downtown and took her car. When the police finally cornered him in West Seattle he turned the gun on himself.

End of story? Not even close.

This sort of thing isn’t supposed to happen in Seattle. People here tend to think of themselves as free-thinking independents, concerned for the environment but  progressive in terms of social values. Generally it’s a peaceful place. But this year the number of gun deaths has shot well above the norm – as if there’s anything normal about gun-related deaths.

I understand the need for guns. Hunting is a primal activity, hard-wired in our genetic code. But when the line between survival and recreation gets blurred, when the perception of reality becomes unbalanced, as it does for thousands of people dealing with mental illnesses, the possession of a gun becomes more dangerous.

I make no claim to be an expert on the issue, but I’ve lived among folks who like to hunt, who get cranky whenever anyone suggests that guns shouldn’t be available to every man, woman and child in the country. But not everyone should be allowed to carry a gun.

At this point the idea of gun control in this country almost seems like a lost cause. There are sooooo many weapons in this country. In addition to the millions of firearms owned by the military, at last count there were an estimated 200 million privately-owned guns in the US. Yet if we can’t stop the spread of the weapons, wouldn’t it be a good idea to at least do what we can to keep an eye on the mentally ill people wandering unsupervised in our midst?

The issue of mental health rarely gets the attention it deserves. Those who lose the ability to control their minds become at the mercy of others. Ever since the well-intentioned but ill-considered massive deinstitutionalization movement of the early 60s states have been releasing supposedly harmless mental patients from facilities, sparking an increase in homelessness. If we as a nation abandon those who cannot think clearly as a result of chemical imbalances in the brain or war-related trauma,  we must share the blame when those patients run amok.

I just recently finished reading an extremely depressing book by a writer I admire, Joshua Ferris. His novel “The Unnamed” explores uncharted territory as the protagonist, a respected attorney, happily married, successful, finds his grip on his sanity slipping when an undiagnosable illness derails his life. While he battles unsuccessfully to hold onto his comfortable life, his beautiful wife, his self-respect, he is forced to experience the shadow-life of those solitary souls who sleep on the ground, eat whatever they can find, and suffer the disdain of  passersby. In spite of all the efforts of doctors and his loving family, the illness which has no name robs him of everything but his intelligence. And this makes it even more horrible. Like a drowning man being swept out to sea, he can see the shore, the lifeguards, but he is powerless to overcome the enemy within.

Driven to desperation, the protagonist considers killing himself with a gun, but his love for his family remains strong enough to make him pause.

In real life, when desperate people consider desperate acts, sometimes maybe nothing can help. But if we want to consider ourselves a decent nation we need to do a better job of caring for those suffering with mental illnesses. There are times when a human needs a tether to reality.  Without an emotional anchor, even the most rational person can go off half-cocked.

We are all in the line of fire.

My Go-To Sci-Fi Guy

In a word, John Scalzi.

Red to be read.

Okay, that’s two words. Whatever.

That, btw, is the name of his profoundly engaging and continually amusing blog. Not being a strictly sci-fi fan, I was unaware of Scalzi until I came across a short piece about him in Writers Digest in which he described how, when he was first trying to get started, collecting rejection letters the way most aspiring authors do, he eventually decided to put out his first novel in serial form on his blog site.

That novel, Agent to the Stars, is an outrageous satire of movie fame and human nature, so outlandish that you can easily imagine why timid agents and editors might have hesitated about trying to get it published in the traditional way.

But on the internet, where a lively fandom exists hungry for fresh and funny writing, Agent to the Stars took off, became a phenomenon, and eventually was picked up by a conventional publisher.

Since then everything Scalzi has written has been hailed by critics and readers. In 2005 his first “official” book, Old Man’s War dealt with aging, love, gender issues, and aliens. I  just finished reading the follow-up in the series, Ghost Brigades, and it was a thrill ride from start to finish, with some genuine emotional backspin. I am sooo hooked.

But I have to admit, the first Scalzi book I read was The Android’s Dream, which I nearly stopped reading after the first chapter because the raunchy inciting incident was so…how can I put this?…so ‘not something we talk about at the dinner table’, as my father would have said. Yet there was no denying it was hilarious. I kept reading, and boy am I glad I did. The plot kept thickening, the humor turned more subtle, and the payoff at the end was brilliant.

I’ve since become a regular reader of Scalzi’s blog, whatever.scalzi.com, one feature of which is “The Big Idea,” a recurring forum for authors to discuss the “big ideas” behind their books. For an established author to use his own blog to provide support for others is something special.

So, there you have have it. John Scalzi. Someone special.

His new book Redshirts will be coming out in just a couple of weeks. Early reviewers have called it a dark satire with echoes of StarTrek. I can’t wait.

Hawthorn Morn

Mauve Madness

’Tis the season to be mauve at Seattle’s Green Lake.

Tree nuts flock  to Green Lake all year round to marvel at the towering Sequoias, noble Elms and whispering Cottonwoods. In spring the cherry trees gnarled with age billow with blooms of palest pink and white. In autumn golden Plane trees shower the paths with luminous leaves.

Books and poems laud the arboreal splendor of the plantings, which are fastidiously maintained by the city’s parks department.  Cherished by locals and visitors alike, many of the trees were planted to honor significant events or citizens, although not all were planted out of love. For instance,  the city’s publication “Outstanding Trees of Green Lake” notes: “The six Cedars of Lebanon by the tennis courts are the largest in Seattle and have a fascinating history. They were planted in 1934 to placate an irate lawyer.”

Yet while the mighty Redwoods and and soothing Cedars get top billing on the star tree program, even the lesser trees have their moments.

Pinked to perfection.

Right now, it’s showtime for the Red Hawthorns. Normally, they don’t excite much interest, being either too small to catch the eye, or too shapeless to ignite passion. And they’re not even red, really. More a kind of pinky mauve.

Pretty in Pink

But in their own quiet way the masses of tiny mauve blooms sweeten the mix.

Yes, she said, yes, only pinker.

The artist James Whistler once said “Mauve is just pink trying to be purple.”

Maybe so, but I give it points for trying.

A walk on the pink side.

Where The Wild Things Went

Every parent is a lifeguard.

Maurice Sendak just died, at the age of 83.

Though I never knew him, the loss feels personal to me. Some of my happiest hours as a parent were spent reading books with my kids. For a time there I knew “In the Midnight Kitchen” by heart.

Sendak was a marvelous illustrator, but what set his work apart from most childrens’ books of his day was the way he confronted the terror, the vulnerability, the monstrous unfairness of childhood. Sendak infused his stories with humor and the courage of little people forced to survive in a world ruled by giants.

As this spring’s graduation season commences, attention will be focused on the bright young scholars heading out into the world while their once-giant parents are left behind with framed photos and video tapes. The story continues, the readers change.

In honor of Mr. Sendak, and all the writers and artists whose works give encouragement to parents and children alike, I offer here a column I wrote in the year 2000, when my oldest child graduated from college.

This column originally appeared in The Fauquier Citizen,  a weekly newspaper in Warrenton, VA.


Make Way for Graduates

In the thickening dusk I could just make out the shape of something standing in the road ahead as I drove my younger daughter home from soccer practice recently.

Slowing to a crawl, I edged the car closer until the shape gained definition, feathers, wings — lots of wings. A pair of Canada geese was attempting to escort four baby geese across the perilous winding road to the pond on the other side.

I stopped the car. The geese gave us a measured look and carefully shepherded their goslings back to the grass while my daughter and I watched spellbound.

“It’s like “Make Way for Ducklings,” I said to my 13-year-old. She smiled, recalling one of the favorite books from our family’s read-aloud years.

In Robert McCloskey’s Caldecott Award-winning book, a pair of mallards go through the full cycle of the parenting process. They find a safe place to nest, hatch their eggs, teach their children how to swim, find food and avoid danger, and then, in the book’s climax, the proud parents lead their children to the park pond and launch them into their new lives.

Although written in 1941, the simple story still resonates with parents everywhere, because it deals with issues every parent experiences — the desire to keep children safe, to prepare them to live on their own and the excitement of watching them try those wings for the first time.

I couldn’t help thinking about Mr. and Mrs. Mallard last weekend as my husband and I watched our oldest daughter graduate from college.

To me, it seems like just last week she got her acceptance letter, a moment of high celebration. Now suddenly four years have disappeared, and it’s time to watch our daughter fly yet farther on her journey.

I promised myself I wouldn’t be too soppy about the whole thing. After all, we had a lot of practical work to do between the various graduation events. In addition to attending the celebratory garden party, brunches and dinners, we had agreed to help our daughter buy furniture and move into her new apartment during the weekend.

In one sense, this was good. We were so busy it didn’t leave time to get too mushy. But finally, after the popping of champagne corks dies down and the rustle of graduation gowns stills the murmur of the crowd, the moment of passage appears, clear and  solemn despite all the euphoria.

There she goes, walking across the stage, smiling so wide, shaking the Dean’s hand, holding her diploma.

I’m reaching for my tissues, blowing my nose, fumbling for my camera. Even with 20 years of preparation for this moment, I still wasn’t ready.

During the long commencement ceremony more than 400 students received degrees of one kind or another. My husband and I, along with hundreds of other parents and well-wishers, sat on folding chairs outside the peaked white tent which looked like a meringue whipped to perfection under the clear blue skies. On the dappled lawn beyond the rows of chairs free spirits gamboled in the sun, unable to sit still for the long haul.

Most eye-catching were the toddlers and infants sporting fetching sunbonnets and straw hats. Doting parents and grandparents hovered around the small fry, applauding every new trick, every bright smile.

That’s what we do, parents. That’s our job. We watch the children grow, we teach them all we know, we applaud their efforts and  their courage and try to help them pick up the pieces when things fall apart.

That’s why graduation is such a big deal for parents. Yes, we’re proud of our children. Yes, we’re happy for them. Yes, we’re grateful for them. But it’s more than that.

We’re also a little proud of ourselves, for somehow getting through all the obstacles, for enduring the years between 12 and 18, and for somehow managing not to fall apart in the process.

To be honest, a part of me envies the graduates who have their whole lives ahead of them. I envy their energy, their optimism, their can-do attitude. I remember how it felt to think that my generation would change the world, and in a good way. Now, of course, I think the world changed my generation as much as we changed it, and not necessarily all to the good.

But the battle goes on. We need fresh troops. And I’m encouraged by what I see in these graduates.

So cut them some slack, world. They’ve worked hard and they’ve learned a lot and they have some new ideas. They may not be able to fix all the problems we’ve left for them. But they’ll give it a good effort.

Make way for graduates.

Echoes of an Infinite Scream

It's a big planet; someone has to pollinate it.

Too long for a science fiction title, you think?

Yeah. In these attention-challenged times it would need to be shorter, sharper.

But I have to say when I read that Edvard Munch’s beloved work “The Scream” sold for $119.9 million at an auction on Wednesday, I felt a kind of primal rage.

I understand the appeal of the work. Surely we’ve all been there, felt that. And Munch’s depiction of a soul in torment is subtle in a florid sort of way. Unlike the works of other more literal artists (Hieronymous Bosch springs to mind with a pitchfork), Munch didn’t illustrate actual nightmarish scenarios. “The Scream” instead reflects the existential horror which lurks just below the conscious level of thought. You never see the monster under the bed, after all. The imagination has no limits.

I love art. I think life would be immeasurably diminished without it. But there’s something obscene about that amount of money being spent on a small pastel. If we had already solved all the world’s problems, eliminated famine, war and pestilence, then, maybe, we could earmark a bit more for decoration. But I realize that’s not how the world works. It’s supply and demand everywhere you go. And as my husband commented when I began ranting about the price of the painting, “They’re not making any more of them.”

Yeah. Well. I get that. But I feel that way about Earth, and the sense of urgency doesn’t seem to be universally shared.

One reason this particular “Scream” is said to be worth more than the average poster is that it has a few lines by the artist describing his inspiration for the work hand-written within the frame:

I was walking along a path with two friends — the sun was setting — suddenly the sky turned blood red — I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence — there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city. My friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety — and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature.

Now it makes sense. Munch, it appears, was an environmentalist, waaay ahead of his time.

In 1962, back when the word ecology was something new and many people thought recycling was a kooky fad, Rachel Carson wrote “The Silent Spring,” a prescient warning on the unchecked use of pesticides and chemicals. Many people thought she was a kook too.

But now, when bee colonies are disappearing around the world because of exposure to the toxins spread by corporate farming, when frog species are vanishing as pollutants poison once pristine habitats, and the toxic clouds forming above cattle feedlots can be seen from space, it’s time to wake up and smell the methane.

Yes, I am a tree-hugger, haunted by the silent screams of disappearing nature.

Earth is the Big Tree and we’re killing it. If it falls, we all go down with it. Probably screaming our heads off.

Where is Munch when we need him?

Sofas in Space

In the 1990’s I was fortunate to spend a number of years working as a columnist for The Fauquier Citizen, a small weekly newspaper in Warrenton, VA. My editor, Lou Emerson, pretty much let me write about anything and everything. It was a great learning experience for me.

The artist as a young know-it-all.

Here’s a random sample from that era: 

Some women like to rearrange furniture.

Some men do too. But they usually get paid for doing it.

Only women move furniture as a form of recreation, a kind of spatial yoga. Naturally, men don’t understand this. Most men consider a house well arranged as long as the couch is in front of the television and not too far from the refrigerator.

In the expanding universe where Men Are From Mars and Women Wish They’d Stay There, only women get satisfaction from adjusting the furniture arrangement. In general, men like to let sleeping couches lie, preferably while they are draped upon them.

Thus, it came as no surprise to me to read about the unfortunate case of Mrs. Pauline Turner of Middlesborough, England. Mrs. Turner’s husband John filed for divorce last year after 38 years of marriage, citing his wife’s constant furniture rearranging as “unreasonable.” The judge apparently sympathized with Mr. Turner, and granted the divorce when Mrs. Turner testified that she expected to continue moving furniture.

Well, before you let that cautionary tale inhibit you from shifting the coffee table to a sunnier position by the window, let’s consider the bigger picture, shall we?

Granted that some women may be guilty of spending too much time fretting about the furniture layout. However, perhaps because on the planet as a whole women control only one percent of the world’s wealth, women seldom get to have much influence on the movers and shakers who rearrange the global picture. Maybe we move furniture as an expression of our frustration. At least we have a sense of our limitations. Unlike some people.

According to a recent article by BBC News Online science editor Dr. David Whitehouse, a group of American astronomers including researchers at NASA have proposed a daring moving scheme which could, they say, prolong Earth’s capacity to support life. The theory was developed as a response to the commonly accepted scientific prediction that the Sun will increase in brightness in the next billion years. This increase is expected to eventually raise temperatures on Earth to such an extent that all life will be eliminated.

Well, rather than wait till the last minute to come up with some dramatic Hollywood style solution, three of our brilliant astronomers, all of them men, have proposed an “alarmingly simple” plan to move Earth farther from the Sun.

Not being a brilliant astronomer myself, I can’t claim to understand the fine points of the program, but from what I could gather the general concept involves the “gravitational slingshot technique.” Apparently this method has been used successfully to send space probes to far-flung planets. According to Dr. Whitehouse, the plan would require getting “a large asteroid, about 100 km (62 miles) across, to fly past the Earth transferring some of its orbital energy to our planet.”

I guess if moving 62-mile-wide asteroids is “alarmingly simple” then you can color me alarmed, all right.

If all goes according to plan, the effect of the asteroid whizzing past Earth once every 6,000 years would cause Earth’s orbit to expand, putting us a little farther from the Sun’s increasing heat. However, the scientists admitted that if they move Earth it would likely have an effect on our galactic neighbors Venus and Mercury.

Not a problem, say the moving men. After all, once they get the hang of this planet moving thing anything could happen, including the possibility, says Dr. Whitehouse, that “many moons and planets could be moved into more favorable positions in the Solar System where their climate might support life.”

Sounds pretty exciting doesn’t it? Imagine a future where space engineers can rearrange the very constellations to suit your tastes. But, as anyone who’s ever tried to carry a couch up three flights of stairs can tell you, never underestimate the power of gravity. And even the astronomers admit that the business of moving asteroids and planets involves a certain element of risk, such as for example, if the 100 km asteroid happened to veer off course and crash into Earth. Dr. Whitehouse quotes the researchers as saying: “This danger cannot be overemphasized.”

I’ll say.

It’s nice to know that better minds than mine are working to solve problems looming a billion years ahead. In the meantime though, maybe they should practice their moving chops on a smaller scale.

How about we start with that sofa?

A Small Bangs Theory

Bangs for the memories.

In spring a woman’s fancy turns to haircuts.

For those of us lucky enough to live in the First World, hair is something we can afford to obsess about, since most of us have safe drinking water, enough to eat, and somewhere out of the rain to sleep. So, when we get weary of trying to bring about world peace, our thoughts sometimes turn to our hair.

Hair styles have baffled me all my life, and at this point I’m not about to start spending the time I have left trying to make my hair bounce, roll over or be fetching. However, I do sympathize with the urge to do something with one’s hair. And lately it has seemed to me that there’s been a noticeable resurgence of a style usually more common among the preschool set. Call it the Zooey Deschanel Effect if you like. I call the Small Bangs Theory.

You see them everywhere these days, although mostly on Zooey Deschanel, of whom, I will admit, I am a big fan. I loved her in Elf. Enjoyed her deadpan snarkiness in Big Trouble. Even gave her a pass on the too quirky 500 Days of Summer, in which her hair should have received second billing.

But now that she’s “The New Girl” and her trademark locks and big blue eyes are getting over-exposed in advertisements, I find my enthusiasm for the quirky factor waning.

Sure, she’s still adorkable. But after a while one longs for something a bit more sour. Or maybe that’s just me.

I always wanted to be cute when I was younger. I envied the girls with the curls, the sunny smiles, the turned up noses. Try as I might, I couldn’t come close to approximating their look. Although I was a true blonde all through high school, inside my heart was dark, my view skewed toward cynicism. And although I eventually learned how to wear the mask, to play the carefree blonde, I drew the line at bangs.

Bangs are a curse. The instant you decide to try them, you have to schedule your next haircut. Bangs are always either too short or too long. Too crooked or too limp. When I was in first grade I had bangs. That was the closest I ever got to achieving cuteness. Then of course, in second grade my teeth started to fall out, and that’s not a good look on anyone.

Bangs are the hallmark of the frivolous. That’s why most men avoid them. The Beatles got away with them because they could get away with anything back then. Picture the Mona Lisa with bangs. Suffice it to say she wouldn’t be in the Louvre.

However, the urge to try bangs never dies. It can go dormant for years and suddenly reappear as you enter the later stages of life, when foreheads take on a corrugated aspect and mere cosmetics won’t help. Women of a certain age can be tempted into thinking that bangs disguise wrinkles. But bangs will only get you so far in that lost cause.

So, no bangs for me. I’ll leave them to the New Girls, who don’t need them. Especially Zooey Deschanel.