Anne Lamott and Barbara Lane on Dusk, Night, Dawn 4/28/21

so good evening and welcome to copperfield's books virtual event with annie lama in conversation with barbara lane my name is jamie madsen and i'm the marketing and events coordinator here at copper fields books and i'll also be your host for the evening for 40 years copperfield's books has been committed to literature education and creating community together because event proceeds allow us to continue hosting this free event program i'd like to take a moment here in the beginning to thank you all for your continued support so just a couple of items to note before we get started uh keep an eye on the chat box i will be using it to provide links to view upcoming copper fields events details about tonight's title and author and will also include my contact details for post event follow up additionally the q a box will be your go to with any questions or comments for the speakers tonight the format will feature between 30 to 40 minutes of speaking and will be followed by a lively q a at the end so if you look at the bottom of your zoom screen you'll see an icon that says q a please submit your questions and comments here rather than replying to my posts in the chat box thank you so without further ado i'm really excited to introduce tonight's author annie lamotte annie is the author of many new york times bestsellers including almost everything hallelujah away small victories stitches some assembly required in traveling mercies as well as as well as several other novels she is a progressive political activist public speaker and writing teacher a past recipient of a guggenheim fellowship in an inductee to the california hall of fame annie lives in northern california and in conversation with annie tonight is our own barbara lane barbara is the books columnist at the san francisco chronicle and the director of events here at copperfield's books so they're with us this evening to discuss annie's latest title dusk night dawn on revival and courage i know a lot of you have been really looking forward to tonight so why don't you take it away for us barbara thank you jamie and welcome everybody this is such a special night and i'm so so happy to have you all here i have been an annie lamont fan from way way back i remember reading rosie at one point and thinking how did she know about my relationship with my mother because she did um but that's not what we're here to talk about tonight as jamie said we're here to talk about annie's new book dusk night dawn and to get things oh by the way um i will be taking your questions before the end of the program because i know many of you will want to speak to annie and this is a great opportunity so um before we get started uh annie's to read from the very beginning of the book so take it away annie thank you barbara i don't know how many times we we've been together in literary events over the years but i always look forward to it and it's really fun and i love that you're so smart i love that in a girl okay this is from the prologue here we are older scared numb on some days enraged on others with even less trust than we had a year ago the devastating pandemic and the federal government's confused and deadly response was simply the final straw to a few years of crushing developments a un report on climate catastrophe was published months before my wedding in 2019 the report of the extinction of one million species three weeks after major buzz kill our poor country has been torn asunder i await the reign of frogs and i've gotten so much less young i got medicare three days before i got hitched which sounds like something an old person might do which does not describe adorably ageless me i mostly love being in the third third of my life as it is the easiest that life has ever been except for well the bodily aspects and the dither and fogginess and i wouldn't go back a year well maybe back two years before the two u.n reports which have changed everything at our wedding where all the people we love most in the world gathered in a redwood grove to celebrate the miracle that neil and i had found each other needles and haystacks and fallen in love and toughed out some conflicts we celebrated and over ate while outside the sacred circle our nation and the world seemed to have reached the point of no return so we danced that was glorious and i hate to be a downer but now what where on earth do we start to get our world and joy and hope and our faith in life itself back wow thank you so much so that was annie lamont reading from her new book dusk night dawn on revival and courage and um yeah it's been a hell of a year you mentioned some things we've also had that person who used to be president and of course the pandemic and george floyd etc etc etc um existential exhaustion and despair pretty much sums it up so i want to ask you um sort of personally how bad did it get for you like what were the depths that you went to over the past year oh boy um the most terrifying period i experienced was when the poll showed that the election was going to be tight as a tick and i felt like as an old lefty i i don't know and i'll go to my grave not knowing whether the country could have survived a second term and that was terrifying and um i had you know my best friend um her son was dying all she was only 23 and he died in january and so i was there with her really and him i adore him he was one of my sunday school kids all the time and she she wrote a book about staying faithful and um you know and semi okay um called the opposite of certainty based on a great line by the wonderful old theologian paul tillich that said the opposite of faith isn't doubt it's certainty which i like to remind our little tea party friends and um and so i was hurt with her a lot and that was kind of a different kind of um grinding um weight on my heart but she i wrote about her and the book in dustinite dawn because i called her one day and i said are you okay and she said i just have to keep changing the goal posts of what okay means you know and my son is making art with people who love him and um and so yeah i'm okay and and that really helped me a lot and that was something that would all the troubles and trials that came up helped me was that you changed the goal posts of okay um you know i was i've been married two years and one of them was in lockdown and i don't remember agreeing to that when i when i when we exchange vows and it's you know i love him you can read about my marriage in this book but i love so much about him but then when you're in lockdown you hear him chewing bacon and and i just felt like i would lose my mind and have a nervous breakdown and not be able to handle it and it would be like having a husband who had retired you know like a 75 year old who just wanted to be with you all the time but who golfed but not enough and he's very busy he um he has a book out soon and he's been he had a million things to do and he has clients and stuff but we were in the house together 24 7. you know and so that was a little challenging and um but i did what i've always done i mean all my books talk about where i find solace and comfort which is in in my face and in my recovery community and in nature um in the the acronym for god is great outdoors and in reading you know i said to neil when i met him five years ago i said all i want to do when i grow up is read that's really why i wanted to be a writer was that because you can just get away with reading all the time right and i got to just do that finally i um i tried to stay as active as i could with my causes even though i couldn't march for them i got very involved with as many food pantries as i could support and um and i did something every day that i thought might be um contributing to the greater good remember when you and i were coming up you heard the phrase the greater good all the time i haven't heard it in years i haven't heard it in the commonwealth what can i add to the commonwealth well a lot of days i would fill up a sack of canned foods and oreos at safeway and drive over to the canal district where a lot of people who are in the service industry work where the um you know the where covid was skyrocketing and i just dropped food off at the pantries and i just waved to people and i just said to old people i'm so glad to see you because no one else was telling them that that day so you know i did what i could i probably did a lot of the same things you did and i walked every single day for an hour no matter what this is the blessing of living here where we live in northern california because when you got going through this last year in an apartment that you had to go up in an elevator there's so many stairs in a big city i don't know we were very lucky and i want to tell all of you that this book is filled with joy there is an acknowledgement of what we've gone through and to a degree what we're still going through because it ain't over yet but there's so much joy in your book and i think the major the main question that you pose here annie is how do we get our joy back how do we get it back and you've mentioned some things um nature certainly but can you address that larger question you know that's funny because i um it was just my second anniversary and um and neil and i went up to yosemite we haven't left that we the farthest we've gone in 14 months is petaluma you know which is about 45 minutes away so we kind of scammed our way into a lodge the regular lodge which is really sweet like a motel and that was very joyful but while we were driving up there i said to neil i want to write a book about joy and he said well you kind of just did and but it's joy under these circumstances covet and uh cobit and the un reports and trump that um so that it was very specific but um i was funny i just started to think about that like the joy book and um one of my hugest source of joy is my closest friends you know you have four people right there's four people and you can tell them anything and you can say any horrible thing anything you thought that is just really beyond the pale and they get it they just grok you you know and they laugh with you and they said oh i thought that too i thought i was there last week and so um but a lot of my books have to do with joy because it's such a radical act you know and one thing i do with um with if i have a group of people which i don't in person anymore but i always have them read that amazing poem by wendell berry called the mad farm manifesto the mad farmer's almanac now the mad farmer so i can look it up and one of the lines in it is be joyful though you have considered all the facts and it's a great poem and i'd love everyone here it is really every single thing that is true that you need to remember and um and it just brings me so much joy it brings me so much joy to print it out to for um younger people you know to teenagers and people that i see in my recovery meetings that that online or that i see in person that i know are in recovery and i'll just voice this palmatum and i'll say this is every single thing you need to know for the rest of your life keep this with you and of course i think i'm just mad as a hatter but if you read it i love that one line i'm trying to find it so i can get it right but um i believe it says be joyful though you have considered all the facts the mad it's called manifesto the mad farmer liberation front and then let me just read you the very end of it um go with your love to the fields lie easy in the shade rest your head in her lap swear allegiance to what is niest your thoughts as soon as the generals and the politicos can predict the motions of your mind lose it leave it as a sign to mark the false trail the way you didn't go be like the fox who makes more tracks than necessary some in the wrong direction practice resurrection right so this book on renewal really was about resurrection but it's not christian it's ecumenical because the last book i wrote was on hope almost everything and when i was touring what you got to do two years ago three years ago whatever it was wherever i went to talk about hope people didn't feel any hope at all they just felt flattened you know and they felt like stunned by climate change stunned by greta tunberg in the u.n climate change the the number of papers and they felt stunned by what was happening at their dining room table you know in some really scary dark paths their kids or spouses were going down some really terrifying new things that their parents were experiencing and anyway and so i sort of set out i i deliberately um thought of the subhead before i thought of the title on revival and courage where do we start we start where we are we breathe you know we throw where we are where our butts are and we breathe and we tell people what's going on we call someone i call my friend jeanine who wrote this book um opposite of certainty and i'll say i hate all of life and i hate everyone and she'll go oh i'm so glad you called you want to go to target you know you uh this makes me think of something at the very beginning of your book where you're just pissed off and wigging out this is the san diego incident plate is delayed and you know these things can really turn a day bad quickly and you've mentioned neil your husband of two years now several times and i'm going to ask you to read this passage because anybody out there who's ever been in a relationship with anybody is going to relate to this and i just laughed out loud um butter and you'll see what i'm talking about but if you wouldn't mind reading from the top of page 18 and i don't know janine is the friend you called but you called a friend because you needed one now let's see the top about of 18 oh i see this oh no it's a different friend so i call a friend from the airport because i'm completely annoyed basically with all of life but especially neil and where do you want me to read too i blurted out my grievances all the way down to butter okay i blurted out my grievances all the secret ways i judge him all the ways i judge for me i judge me for judging him also that he acts very superior sometimes for such a spiritually evolved man also while we were at it that he locks the bathroom door when he does his morning toilette i listen to his electric brush and toothbrush and shaver in the shower wondering why would he look lock out his perfectly nice new wife maybe he was shooting heroin in there and this guy thing not specific to him but he never wipes his glasses when they are all smudged how can he go through how can he see through the lenses when they're like a motorcycle windscreen after a ride through the desert he doesn't wear sunscreen and he likes to get a tan even though my father died of melanoma so it is very triggering for me also when we have an argument and i am explaining my position he tilts his head in a domineering male way and if you read between the lines you can tell he's thinking that you can't possibly think that because it's so stupid that if you actually thought it people would have to kill you also he puts butter on absolutely everything although it is so fattening he cooks white rice with butter and then he serves it with butter yes that just was such a moment of levity for me in this book and again being 24 7 with anyone during the past year that's probably an abbreviated list but i would also think neil must be a very good sport yes yes very good sport well he finds it pretty pretty funny good um you talked about um the teenagers you work with at your church and in this book um as in many of your other books you write about your faith and you quote from scripture do you ever worry that that will turn people off who aren't religious or who don't relate to the formal church experience oh yes and yes and no i um i don't tell stories that are heavy doctrine you know i tell stories that um from this you know i go to this tiny failing church which are all welcome to come to saint andrew presbyterian and marin city zoom services at 11 but you know there's 35 people there and so sunday school class might be three or four people it might be a seven year old an 11 year old and a 17 year old one time i had three kids in my class and two of them have had brain tumors so it's a very life on life's terms kind of class and the kids share so deeply i think it's because i give them such great snacks and juice boxes but i've really learned so much by listening to them you know i've learned how afraid they are of turning into their parents who are racing around doing these stupid endless lists of things that just don't matter and the parents are always behind and they're slightly gray from from the stress of it all and and they're the kids the teenagers are scared to death of turning out like that you know and the kids are scared to death about climate change they're studying it from kindergarten on now you know earth day and the kids are very fearful in a way that i think all of us can just relate to so where do you start with that well there's a one story i like the most where i just take the kids to the to a very littered beach and we clean it up a little bit you know and um and so in at a beach you're you really are at an altar with like a it's a gigantic altar with a huge skirt of blue everywhere you look and it makes you realize how how big the whole world is and how what a really precious and important part of it you are and how can you make things a little bit better pick up the pick up the plastic and take it home and recycle it take it home we take it back to the church we put it under the cross we we decorate it or we recycle we do whatever is on our heart to do that day and and we get less afraid so yeah i think i mean i never tell heavy store i never tell my kids heavy stories i tell them they are loved and safe and that if they get to tell us whatever is going on and we we we welcome their trust and and no matter what is going on in the world or in school or in their families they can tell us and it won't go anywhere and we're safe and that we love them as is so much and that they have incredible if they read they have incredible lives ahead of them i always kind of make a pitch for and i make a pitch for independent bookstores but um so i i i don't come across i don't do doctrine i don't try to get them to understand the triune nature of the divinity or who shot the holy ghost i just asked him how the week has been going and and how things are at home and and uh and i talk about the the gift of service a lot we do a lot of service we did a lot of service to the homeless for a while of uh bottles and a bottle of water and a granola bar we had a mission a mission of a granola bar ministry we called it and and and just to look at old people and to flirt with old people to be a sign to flirt with old people at whole foods and to say i'm glad to see you because no one's telling them that so you know and to be patient with old people of whom i'm becoming one i always make them laugh because i'll say i think i'm 47 like my grandson jack said i said to him last year i said oh i thought you were like four he had just turned 11. he said i live here how can you think i'm four and i said i think i'm 47. but so i'm in line at good earth and i've gotten my 10 000 steps in and then there's really old people there and in the express line with coupons right and so i've taught my kids that the most magical spiritual thing you could do that day is to say to the person with their coupons fishing around for exact change uh like some beckett character um you say hi i'm glad to see you how's your day going so i keep it very very simple and we you know we go outside a lot too i'm very big on nature as you know and the um i i we we go outside and we look for evidence of the divine and we might see it in the daffodils with their yellow and orange clown frills on or you know we see it in every bird i don't i mean i've always said i think probably five times that if birdsong were the only proof that there's a greater reality than the pinball machine of my head it would be enough proof for me so we go and we listen for birds so um you mentioned jackson those of us who've been reading you for years know that you wrote about your son sam in operating instructions and you wrote about jack's your grandson and i believe it was some assembly required to hear that jax is now becoming a teenager is a little bit mind-blowing i know just is he does for me he still seems for and you and i bonded over the grandchildren thing but it's a source of wonderful joy isn't it it's a source of wonderful joy and i i just can't believe it it's shocking the last book the hope book really had a lot of that concentration on how painful it is in your heart that it all goes by so quickly and when you when you may have tons the original title of dust knight dawn was um the third third because i was writing so much about the grace of getting older and the grace of my myopia and not being able to see things so clear so precisely that you can judge them better or that you can remember everything bad that's ever happened to you that should still be avenged and um so um but i wrote in the last week just that it really is painful that that my i know you have a really little one but mine's gonna be 12. he's huge he wears a men's nine and a half shoes i mean they're like you know gorilla and um and but i just i know i know him as a as an infant i know him as a two-year-old i know him as a six-year-old i know the thing about it all with my son and i know with your son and the grandkids is that they really are every age they ever were and i can still feel jackson my arms just gazing at me and i can feel that with sam too i can remember nursing oh good somebody at copperfield just posted the um link to the wendell berry poem to the mad farmer's liberation front um and um so and and but it's mel you know it's kind of it's just all so bittersweet i love to watch my son become such a cool young man he has a website a podcast called um hello humans and he's interviewed unbelief unbelievably famous people on how to be fully human how to be how to awake and how to begin to forgive um yourself in the deepest most cellular ways you can get on with it all and i'm so so so proud of him and hello humans and um and at the same time he's 31 he's gonna be 32 soon and i just ache i ate because the world's so crappy and it's so unfair and jerks win and you know i wrote a whole piece in dust night dawn about about the those our sons age our kids son our sons ages the young men in the world we've left them and how grim it is and also why i think they should be nicer to us first of all we have all the money but second of all we've kind of single-handedly arranged for the greatest treasure trove of scientific data in history and we march all of us march and we know all the words um to all the great protest songs not to mention show tunes but that's something else entirely so we've talked about nature and we've talked about faith um the power of pets pets are a big deal to you and pets help your sanity and your joy quotient yeah yeah huge i really rely on my animals i have an old dog that makes me very sad but she's about 10 but she's huge she's almost 90 pounds um you can see her at neil allen's instagram today there's a photo of me and my dog lady bird she's like 90 pounds now her she gained a lot during kobe but who here didn't right but you can see her if you go to if you do instagram it's neil allen and there's a hilarious photo of her she's like she's like jesus in her fur coat i am not kidding she's the most perfect dog but neil somehow captured a picture of her looking like a a violent attack dog but um i you know i i'm her she's my best friend you know i can't wait to see her every when i leave this my office to go into the house to see her she'll act like i was in yugoslavia you know in a prison and that i got out somehow and then we have a cat there's a very there's some very funny stuff about the cat in the book if i say so myself because neil is allergic violently allergic to cats and when we first found each other on matt on match i thought i can't go out with this guy because he's so allergic to cats and cats i love love love i'm a cat person i need to have a cat for for my mental health and um and he said oh well i have lived with cats if you put a um if you put nutritional yeast on their kibble it after a week or so it neutralizes something in their saliva and i won't be and i thought well he's trying to get me in bed or or he's got a manuscript you know i was on match for a year and guys were bringing me manuscripts one guy brought me a plot treatment and and it turned out he didn't want either of those things he just we really had a amazing written report and then the first time i saw him which was august 27th or something of 2016. we've never been apart again um unless we've been out of town but so he had to learn we we had to try at this thing this protocol with the kibble and it worked and the cat sleeps with us and he is madly madly in love with the cat so i forgot about that well so my the cat and i take a nap every afternoon for about 45 minutes because i also you know i loved being single too i think that's why i got a good relationship but um it's because i love being alone and i love quiet and he would go to live music every single day and i don't like to leave the house i just like to be on the couch with the animals and um and so um i forgot what i was going to say but anyway um we had this great report and that all this stuff has come up but you know what somehow the grace of being older the grace of kind of growing up a little don't you experience that oh yeah you aren't as judge quite as judgmental that you just don't care as much i care so much less what my butt looks like i can't even tell you you know the third third has been really a blessing for me i want to get to that but i have to tell you that and then i'm gonna go to an audience question but the fact that you found neil on match i want to tell you how many women out there thought i've had a hundred dates that suck but she found someone on match and i'm going to give it another shot i know people who did that i'm telling you but i'm going to take this question now match loves you here we go this is from an audience person i am facing a major life decision right now and at the same time having a hard time finding the joy and lightheartedness in everyday life how do you touch the humor in life's most difficult moments that's a great question i could write a whole book about it um my spirit the spiritual side of me uses these little containers i'll find one i call them little god boxes they might be a little match box i have one right here somewhere but of course i can't i can't find it right now and i'll just write a little note that'll have one word or a situation on it that is vexing me and that i can't keep my sticky i cannot let go of you know we say in recovery that everything we've let go of has claw marks on it and when i get to that point of having made myself crazy i write it down i put in a little note and i say to god with enormous hostility here it's all yours and then i try to keep myself occupied i try to keep the patient comfortable until i hear back and the mail will come the email will come and the phone will ring and there'll be some kind of solution and um from the secular side of me i um i call my girlfriends and um and as soon as i pick up that 200 pound phone and just say how troubled or joyless i feel we always end up laughing you know because and i've always said you know laughter is carbonated holiness and once i'm laughing with a friend i'm halfway home and i um you know in the the recovery they talk about the deliberate manufacture of misery and i would say i have a phd in the deliberate manufacture of misery because of this brain you know it's like a it really is like a pinball machine and so i need to change channels and so i can do really simple meditations i can um i can go for a walk i can i can clean a drawer you know covered college taught me so much that you that you can't just sit around and um and think about how how stupid everybody is and how this sucks and and then feel guilty because you actually have it so much better than almost anybody else right and so you clean the really bad drawer you go you go uh you you you go for a walk with your mask on and a friend you go visit someone you you make a care package for somebody who you don't even like that much you may have a relative who's always been harsh to you and never really thought that you were um living up to your full potential and you take them a care package you know you with a book you love and a really cute pair of socks and a chocolate bar and a note i was just thinking of you i wish i could see you in person but i hope you enjoy these things so you take the action and the insight follows and the insight usually is that we have so little control over almost anything certainly people places and things and then all we can do is try to change channels from this terrible station in our mind of judgment and blame which are my strong suits usually my default place is to try to figure out whose fault it is that i'm uncomfortable and how to correct get them to correct their behavior so that i'll find everything less annoying and i can change channels though i'm i'm powerless over people places and things but i'm not helpless and usually the way i let go of any of it is to say it out loud to someone i can say it to neil or to my friend janine or to sam and as soon as i say it the trance is broken you mentioned before we're not as judgmental as we age and part of that is not holding on to things as much anymore and that brings me to a question about the power of forgiveness because that's at the heart of lot of a lot of this work it seems well you know i always write a lot about forgiveness no matter what the ostensible theme is it always to me comes back to forgiveness and that this place this life being um forgiveness school and that that's what we're here for and and it's really hard some days and i hate it sometimes and i think that there are people i will never forgive and maybe sometimes my heart gets a little tiny bit softer and i think okay that's good i'll take it right but but um we're the person harmed by not forgiving and you know i was actually talking to the great carolyn mace the writer why people don't heal and how they can a couple months ago on a podcast and i was telling her about these people who really trashed me when sam was really little three three and four two years in a row and we went to summer with them for a week or two on cape cod they had tons of money and i didn't have a red cent and it just kept coming up how fun how much fun they were having with all their money and um and then they really trashed me and there was a small crowd around and so i um i had behaved badly and i made amends to them and they had written me a snotty letter in return and so i told carolyn and this family had kind of re-entered in this roundabout way in my life and i told her about it and how i could keep feeling triggered by the memories of how they had behaved in my the hardness of my heart and she said you need to to retrieve your soul from that memory and i blew my mind and i said don't say anything else i'm going to write it down and i wrote down i need to retrieve my soul from that memory and i think tycoon is about the mosaic chips that we've left in unforgiven and harsh situations among other places and that we can retrieve them and that we are not drained and sapped and made toxic by our lack of forgiveness so i actually wrote down what carolyn said on the wall and i thought you know i can say to my soul you know what i've got cheetos and the new people magazine so you can make a choice whether you want to hang out with me or with those miserable people on cape cod i can wait so you know my soul would always come back like a little child you know it would come back and and we'd be together and i'd feel like i don't have so many swiss cheese holes in me most of my spiritual work has and in most of my writing i would say almost all the book every book i've written has been about forgiveness somehow because i i do think it's um why we're here you have written a lot in fact you and i have talked recently about getting old particularly physically getting old um you know there are some blessings about getting old there's some wisdom and there's some stupid stuff we don't have to do anymore but um physically for those of us who are boomers it can be kind of shocking because as you said we think we're 47 then we look in the mirror and think what is my mother doing here it's just really horrifying so so talk a little bit about your body you know being a woman in this country there's a certain built-in disconnect with our bodies a certain for many of us um judgment hatred whatever you will say about our bodies talk about that talk about your body your body aging and how you're doing with that i came up in the 50s tested you and in the 50s there were just so many weird harsh trips around food in the starving children in india and also the fact that you weren't allowed to actually have feelings like anger or sorrow or anything if you had him at the dinner table you got sent to your room without eating right did you yes we got central without eating my older brother might sneak me in orange and that would be all i had till breakfast and so coincidentally i developed a tiny uh lifelong eating disorder and first i was very very very very thin and for some reason when i was coming up 50s and 60s it was okay for grown-ups to comment to your parents that you were so skinny you know and um and so i got a little bit of a um i forgot what we call it a condition you know i got super self toxically self-conscious that i was so skinny and it was all big breasts and big blonde hair and i had this crazy frizzy hair and and little and little then at about 14 i gained a bunch of weight and then i was too heavy and then for the rest of my life i was either dieting or i've been anorexic a couple times i've been 20 pounds less than i am now i mean way more than 20. i'm about 140 now i'm five six and i've been down to 110 and when i'm 110 i just think i look so great and um and then then all of a sudden uh at about in my 40s this thing happened where i remember on the golden girls um who was ma who is who's her name the main the main goal arthur she said these aren't my hands these are my mother's hands and i grew up playing tennis all those years in the hot california sun and my art you won't be able to see i would show you but my forearms they're like jessica tandy i mean they are so loose and they just hang in strips and in the book in des moines dawn i write about trying to get neil to recoil from in the upper arms forget about it i try to get neil to recoil and i'll go look at this but he won't look close enough and so i'll get them even closer and he said this thing i thought it was infuriating he said some of us got more sun than others i thought what is that weird aggressive but you know he sees my arms as the arms of of the woman he loves who holds him in a way that no one ever held them before and then i see you know if if anyone's talking about cosmetic surgery that might do the arms you know that if they could i would do it i think i would do it they probably do that don't you think no i looked it up [Laughter] you can get rid of the situation the droopy hang but then you have a have to have a long scar a thin long scar running from your armpit to your elbow so um i mean i've thought about i think if like neil goes to visit his family or something and he has two brothers on the east coast and we go to the beach with them every summer and there i am in my swimsuit with my horrible cellulite condition and the arms and um and i but you know what i do i also at some point in the third third i realized i don't know how long i'm going to live but if i see ocean water and i don't get in it it starts to argue a wasted life yes if i don't get in it because his brothers might think that i forgot to go to the gym after i had my baby 31 years ago then they get to think that they get to see through their eyes whatever they and so it was has always been about this radical self-love for me where i put on i put lotion and sometimes a little temporary tattoo on my thighs and i but um i have thought about doing my arms it's it's just kind of shocking and the only thing that really works is the self-love you know and longer sleeves i wear a lot of three-quarter length sleeves people will give me these really adorable t-shirts that have great either slogans or sayings or elizabeth warren or tie-dye or something but they're up to here and i just make a profuse expression of my gratitude i'm not going to wear them are you kidding me so anyway i know that doesn't really jive with my my trying to be a seeker and trying to live from my soul and heart which i write about so much and this whole book is about from spirit and soul and heart but i'm a i have you know i have dual citizenship here i have a biography i have a body i have genetics i have my mother's arms and thighs and i'm also i believe because i'm a believer that i'm a child of god and so trying to balance those two identities sometimes is a little dicey let's say here's a great question from curtis i love this before shelter in place did you sometimes say or think it's too peopley outside it's so people outside oh my god i love that question and it's too lifey it's just way too lifey and too peopley and um um you know a lot of us i won't name names but me and neil kind of don't care if the quarantine ever ends because although i wanted to so that less people get sick and i don't want anyone to unnecessarily suffer as a result of it but i'm happy home i'm happy here i'm happy reading i'm happy taking a nap with the kitty you know and um i'm an introvert anyway i mean i can be very i can ham it up on stage but like i think you are i just i love the internal light the interior life i love philosophical stuff i love reading i love literature i i'm in i'm enlivened and i if something in me blooms in when i'm in my interior realms and i go outside and i you know i um kind of always anxious and and uh and i never ever eat with people i don't know i haven't we have no social life neil would eat with people five days a week and the other two nights he'd go to live concerts so i only eat with like four people and my son and grandson are here a lot but that's it so um it's very people-y i love that word i'm going to write it down in fact i'm going to steal it so i think curtis might be okay with that so um uh you talked about literature and what you love and it all sounded kind of very high brow but i suspect you might just have binge some junky tv on netflix during the pandemic did you and what was it well why don't you tell me first what you binged on well you know i've been on something well i guess call my agent i definitely binged which is a french show and it's not quite that junky and i also binge something called the bureau which is like a another it's a great show i think that's actually a terrific show i do too so it wasn't like the pringles of network television but i'm kind of wanting you to say like what i want you to say is the equivalent of a real housewives or something just no no even worse no even worse first oh this is just don't tell anyone first i watched every episode of selling sunset which is these mostly really vile real estate agents in southern california at this one real real estate office there it's two seasons it's excellent and i felt when it was coming to an end that i couldn't go on and and jesus and recovery and my political act nothing could help me and then i discovered below deck and i have watched every season not only of below deck but a below deck mediterranean what is it what what is it well i just want to add i'm about to embark on below deck sailing um so it's a show it it makes the real housewives look like masterpiece theater about these fantastically wealthy people who charter these yachts that are like 180 feet long like aristotle and nasa's type yachts you know they can sleep 10 and then it's about it's sort of upstairs downstairs it's about the stews and the um the crew up above and of course they're they're mostly beautiful and um and some there's a chef and it's just i mean it is so on beyond zebra but i think it's what really got me through and i'd like to see some comments from people that they have um they won't admit it but um that they weren't wait i can't wait so um from the ridiculous to the sublime because um and then i want to talk about books but um who are your heroes these days like who are the people who you just think hung the moon now that were coming out of such a difficult period well i still love elizabeth warren i still love hillary you know i love a lot of people who have gone on i still love the berrigan brothers you know i was raised on the berrigan brothers and um i am i always loved mary oliver because somebody would voice a mary oliver poem on me and i wouldn't have read it and it would be so perfect so forgiving and such an awakening such a blink awake awakening poem and then you get to voice that on everybody you love then they all love you more because you've given them this incredible poem so mary oliver does that for me i i love barbara king solver she's a literary hero of mine i mean i know if i have a barbara king solver book i mean of course poison would bible but um also shelter's brilliant but also the book i forgot it was called with frida kahlo and um diego rivera in mexico city with port um trotsky racing around trying to not get assassinated that is maybe maybe our case worker at uh copper fields can look it up it's barbara king's alberts about 10 years ago oh it was wonderful it was so cinematic and colorful and alive and bright and brilliant and political so um i love joe biden i'm good with joe biden he is just fine with me and um so um there's somebody here i just wanna read from what they say i'm a healthcare worker and so burnout by covid and the in-person care i've needed to can continue to provide i feel like i want that same break to binge on netflix or or read everyone else is coming out and i'd like some time to go in for a while you know valerie that is so profound the way that you've said that because it really says it all that to live the way i'm living is the ultimate luxury and all i can say is that for the first 50 years of my life i didn't have this you know i had i just had massive stress a massive financial and critical and um professional stress and then i had a kid who got into mess and alcohol and you know i spent like five or six years going down that very very dark path he's got nine and a half years clean and sober but this phase that i'm in is a luxury and a great blessing and and my prayer for you is that you get to experience this too unfortunately you know there's no magic wand and covet isn't going to end in the next couple of months and but i've been where you are of that absolute existential exhaustion and stress and and stuckness and all i can say is this two will pass and that there are ways to make sp some make life a little bit more spacious whatever's going on in your life and it might mean going without something else but if it's the priority um that you have some peace of mind and a little bit of breathing room i think that can be brought into existence and i'm just sorry i've been there and i know you've been there barbara and it's a drag and one of the great things about being old is that you're kind of retired i don't have to do anything you know i don't actually have to do anything and i do a lot but i don't have to so the lacunas um jamie just yeah so um i just wanna there have been several questions about getting a signed copy of anne's book and annie did sign some books for us and she lives very close to one of our bookstores and is happy to go in and sign more so if you want to get a signed copy of her book you can do that through copper fields i also want to say and here here it comes the pitch copperfields does put on these programs free and we spend time thinking about what to bring you and staff time and just please please please please please don't watch this wonderful program and buy a book on amazon i'm asking you that from the bottom of my heart and i know annie you have a lot of love for independent bookstores so do you want to add anything to that i just want to add that i i really think that if you buy your books at independent bookstores where possible that you will get a better seat in heaven i do i think you will be near nearer the desert table which is where i will be that's the best and i think um to close and i have more questions than i know everybody else does but you have this wonderful poem and by the way mary oliver writes great dog poems too yes you have this wonderful poem at the beginning of your book by ursula le guin would you mind reading that i just love that poem and i'm so happy you opened the book with it and thank you barbara before they come for us with hooks i have loved every interview we've ever done i tell people about the interview um we did at the jcc where i taught where i read my piece on whether jews camp or not from trampolines and um and i i've loved every one of them and and i'm at your service if you need me to show up for one of your causes i'm your go-to girl i got a lot of them okay so thank you and here is the ursula um le guin palm it's called hymn to time time says let there be every moment and instantly there is space and the radiance of each bright galaxy and eyes beholding radiance and the gnats flickering dance and the seas expands and death and chance time makes room for going and coming home and in times womb begins all ending time is being and being time it is all one thing the shining the seeing the dark abounding amen i love it annie lamont the new book is dusk night dawn on revival and courage thank you thank you thank you for being here tonight thank you for all you do you are so wonderful and thanks to all of you for joining us get a signed copy from copperfields and be well

Channel: Copperfield's Books Inc.

Views: 1,338

Rating: 4.8400002 out of 5

Keywords: Copperfields Books, Copperfield's Books, Anne Lamott, Virtual Author Event

Id: oRvcLC8ialE

Length: 55min 26sec (3326 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 29 2021