Amelia Earhart is leaving on a jet plane . . .or la plus ca change

Yes a jet. The Eastern shuttle, shuttling down to New York City. The world has changed but not enough for Amelia. Apparently women are still relegated to service duties, plumping pillows, fetching drinks. Evidently I have a fond memory of what the service was like back when, when flying was glamorous. Or glamorous enough. Does it tick her off, most definitely. Will she want to do something about women still being second-class citizens? I would think yes.

I wonder how much things have changed, there are movements that give you reason to hope. Millions of Egyptians massing to topple a dictator and others in the Arab world trying to do the same, finally saying enough is enough. These an antidote to the sadly un-ironic rantings of Glenn Beck and his ilk, or the inability to enact reasonable gun control in this country, or the wider and wider divide here between rich and poor.
I think Amelia would find her new life curious. In 1980 women were liberated, but surely not the equals of their male counterparts. That still holds true, just look at income inequality. La plus ca change . . .still some things have changed and that would make her hopeful. I look forward to exploring this with her, just as I explored it once myself, growing up and knowing that rules were there to be broken and that I was someone who needed to break them.

Surviving Amelia: or as Elvis says 'Accidents Can Happen'

Some people believe that everything is fated. Some religions teach us that. I think this is human, the desire for order. We want to believe that we have control even though everything that happens around us proves otherwise. We also seem to believe that we do everything we do for a reason, I think this is because human beings are certain that change is possible. Yet now that I've matured a bit I wonder, does any of us really change all that much? Our vision of who we are is at odds with reality in this respect. Or so it appears to me. I look at the image of myself on this website and I hate to admit that I'm more like that little girl than not. And I look at my children and see personalities that were vivid the moment they were born. Yes, there are small changes, people can learn how to be less fearful, or more. They can learn how to take chances and find that taking chances makes them happy. They can learn to appreciate food, music, art, writing . . . they can enrich their lives. And they can fall in love and open themselves to someone else, or not. . .all these things have an effect. . . still.
The basic temperament, the basic person is there underneath it all. The question is what you do with that.

What was Amelia like when she was young. If you believe her sister's version, she was always the leader, always up for experimenting, always willing to take risks. She always empathized with the plight of those less fortunate. If you believe her sister she was always "Amelia." But of course this novel is about the versions of truth we tell ourselves. I don't buy Muriel's story. I think it too tidy and too convenient. What I do think is that Muriel protected her sister by writing such a neat version of their history together.

I think of this, the sisterly bond and I think of how best friends, best friends who are women share the same sort of bond. We protect each other, and we manage somehow not to see how the other person is clearly. Particularly that is, when we're young. There's something about being young that obscures the truth. It's a fortunate thing too because it gives us an opportunity to become close to people we might otherwise avoid as too risky, or too intimidating, or just too damaged. We see their potential when we're young. We see what they might become.

Muriel knows what her sister became, so her story is told in reverse. It's interesting to deconstruct it and imagine what really must have happened. Nothing is perfect. Nothing is simple. Nothing is tidy in life. It's the untidiness that fascinates us.
If I can get that right, then I have done my job.

Amelia Earhart Never Knew; or what it feels like now.

As I edit, I'm deep into Amelia. She gets a chance that most will never get. But one can dream, can't they? I'm writing how it feels to her when she's given an opportunity to be anonymous again. And I think about anonymity and how much of our lives we strain against it, in small ways and large. We begin with our parents. As babies we demand attention. The unluckier among us don't receive it. The rest do. How it's given matters. Good parenting, mediocre parenting, bad parenting . . .then our peers, our teachers, our mentors, our bosses, and for some of us public attention because we need more. We want more. We hope we deserve more. Amelia was a star. Her popularity was something she pursued relentlessly. It was the vehicle for everything. For freedom from financial strains and freedom from the life she'd led before, plus freedom from family because she could finally assuage whatever guilt she felt, having given her mother bad investment advice that ended up losing what was left of her inheritance. Freedom from her sister too who wanted more than she could give, or at least this is my version of Amelia.

My version because as in all things creative, it comes from me. From my own experience. I write about how she enjoys her anonymity. But of course, I write to become someone. To matter. I do it despite the mixed blessings attention brings. I craved approval and attention. I wanted my parents to be proud of me but they offered a decidedly mixed response. Now, being orphaned, I have no need for their approval. Or at least no chance in gaining it. Freeing, yet also sad. The truth is my parents were flawed as we all are. Each of us is imperfect. People can have huge holes inside of them, and no one else can be expected to give them the support or strength they so evidently crave.

My favorite line in Gatsby, "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." It's magnificent writing and the perfect ending, but it's not my ending, not for Amelia. She gets a second chance. We all deserve one.

The business of writing, or why Amelia Earhart picked the two hardest professions.

Now to the business of writing. I was five when the brainstorm struck me, I'd write a book. My first opus concerned a flying horse named Pegasus. It was short, sweet and to the point. My parents kept it forever and now I am in possession. Perhaps I should have learned something from it other than the love of putting words to paper. I didn't. I kept on writing, first poetry, then prose. I've been doing that for years and years and years. There's nothing as fine as when a sentence comes together. And nothing as remarkable as the moment when a character takes shape. At least not for me.

On to the novel, next week I will get yet another chance to hear how to refine it. I have worked on this novel for almost four years. Short by some standards, long by others. For me, a lifetime has passed while I've gone back and back and back to find Amelia. I've lost my mother. I've grieved for my father. I've watched my older child grow up and leave home. I've gotten older and perhaps a bit wiser. I've traveled a little, and published a little, and worked a whole lot. I've watched our country sink into recession, and crawl out. I've seen a black man elected president. Okay, I'll stop right there ...

Next week I get to hear another response, this time in conference. I get to sit down in a room and have notes given and take them and do my best. And once that's done, which will take a little while, the book will go out. I hope it will get published then, but who knows? I'm curious to find out what I need to do to make it better, and I'm relieved that I don't have to go through the gut wrenching end of the process when it's do or die with the shorter and shorter list of editors who buy fiction quite yet.
Still, back to reinventing the wheel one last time. This time I hope it's small changes not big. I think I've done a lot and I hope it's close to having done enough.
But who can really say?

Writing is something you can't do without, it's what shapes my day and shapes my life. As does Amelia. I think of how she likely died, waiting for rescue, trying to stay alive for as long as she could. And I think of how she lived, trying to do what was hardest. I admire her immensely. It was, by any one's standards, a life worth living.

Amelia via my mother-in-law; Amelia Earhart statue

what I miss most, on a different subject but with bows to Amelia

I miss my children playing in the backyard, the sun slanting, the heat almost oppressive. I miss watching them and thinking this is bliss. I miss the joy I felt then. The peace. I miss all of it. My son will leave. My mother will die. These things I know. My life will go on. I will manage. I miss my children young. I miss my own youth. I miss the things that I didn't know I had when I had them. I miss lying on a summer beach with Steven and Nancy and thinking that these people would be my best friends forever. I miss being best friends with anyone. I miss being that naive. I miss believing that I could do anything and do it well. I miss thinking "that was genius." I miss elation, a plane taking off, me riding anywhere at all. I miss the sense of possibility. I miss all that and more.

I see what I have; life is good but life is never what you expect. We strive and strain and discover that. What would I do if I had it to do over again. I'm faced with that question because I give it to Amelia to ponder. She has to think would she start over? Would she serve others before serving herself? She did, and I did it too. I loved doing it at first, but then I discovered that I was selfish, that I wanted more. I think she'd want more too. She had it once. Is it luck that makes you an Amelia Earhart? I think luck is only a small piece of it. I think there's courage, determination, ambition, and a stubborn sense of self.

I may have come to this party late, but I'm here now.

Eastern shuttle and Amelia Earhart

If you remember the Eastern shuttle, raise your hand. I do, and that does date me. I'm thinking about identity, if you come back and you know who you are and no one else does, including your own sister, what happens next? I'd say you'd decide to look elsewhere for confirmation of your own identity. And you might want to experience what this new world has to offer, in this case, flying on a jet plane. She would want to know about every improvement, and she'd surely enjoy the ease of flight.

She's on the Eastern shuttle bound for New York, yes I'm thinking of myself too here, because New York is where it began for me, and it also began there for her. Without that meeting with Putnam, she'd never have become a legend. She's somehow got to find her way, but how in a world where women pilot space shuttles? What could she really do to become the Amelia she was, or will she choose to give that up?

I ask myself these questions, as she settles in for the short hop, she'd dreamed of making flight affordable and desirable, but had she dreamed of what it's become?
Can anyone really see the future, I think it always surprises us. What if we woke up much like Robinson Crusoe did? What then?

I only hope that some things might surprise me, like you know, peace on earth, good will for all men and women, women actually having true equal rights, race not being an issue, class not mattering, poverty not existing, wait, this is humanity I'm writing about, how likely are any of those things? I'll end with this, one can dream, can't they?

Taking a break to rant, with a bow to Amelia Earhart

Perhaps it's the perpetual snow. Perhaps the realization that despite the endless snowdrifts accumulating outside my window, the tornadoes that we experience here on a
regular basis now, the torrential rains in the summer, the crawl that CNN provides while I row at the gym announcing Extreme Weather, despite all of this we still have idiots who tell us that global warming isn't coming, or isn't here, or doesn't exist, or isn't a problem. They are the same idiots who have decided to forgo any sort of meaningful regulation. No credit protection for consumers. No banking rules. They are the same morons who think our health insurance system is working out fine for us, perhaps they'd like to pay my ever increasing bills for an insurance that doesn't provide me coverage for much of anything.

I'm sick of them, I'm sick of all of it. I wanted to believe that we could change because despite all appearances to the contrary, I am an optimist. I wanted to believe that this government could provide something for its citizens besides hot air. Do I sound pissed off? Well I am.

What would Amelia Earhart think of this? I have some ideas, and since she's not here to speak, I'll offer them. She would wonder what was going on, she would ask that question, she believed in equal rights for women and worked hard to promote equality. She questioned war, in all its forms. Lady Lindbergh? Not as far as her politics went. She was friends with FDR. I have an old portrait that my father kept in my own office. Roosevelt was a great president, true I had quibbles, but boy are they quibbles now. I can live with quibbles, I can't live with cowardice. Yet that's what we get from our elected officials.

Amelia Earhart was the epitome of courage. Courage is standing up for whatever you believe in. Courage is having a belief, not trying to figure out what will be politically expedient for you.

Being Amelia Earhart . . . is it ever too late to learn?

She comes in for a landing, hard. I suppose I've picked a theory for my novel, though it's the bleakest of all. It has her overshooting Howland and living as a castaway. Certainly it was done before in a more romantic vein, see I Was Amelia Eahart for details on that one. My book is completely different. No romance on the island, or off for that matter. She's Amelia and as such, she will have two competing concerns. She wants to complete her flight, but she also wants to understand what she's been brought back for.

More on that later, anyhow now she's in her sister's living room, and assuming it's a fever dream. One that shows a whole lot of depth. She's got visions of a future that are uncannily accurate. Slowly but surely she learns the limits of this place, and this fantasy . . . for the moment she's stuck in Mudford. Would she stay put? I vote no. I think her whole life was an attempt to leave this behind. She would want to do it again. But with second chances, there's a learning curve. You won't make the same piloting mistakes. You won't let the sun blind you, or run out of fuel, or overshoot the mark.
And psychologically I hope that's also true. I want to believe that it's never too late to learn. . .