Beaks and Antlers

June 19, 2022 By elieaxelroth 4 Comments

Long-billed curlew

The Long-billed curlew is a beautiful shore bird, mottled reddish brown with an absurdly long, curved beak. If you live along the coast, you’ve probably seen them skittering up and down the tide line, poking their highly sensitive beaks into the sand, searching for crustaceans. Carrying that beak around seems like a farcical burden.

Only the curlews don’t know that.

My wife and I recently came back from a trip to Yellowstone National Park with Road Scholar. We were among the lucky ones who got to soak up the exquisite beauty of the park—before the devastating floods this past week. We saw wolves frolicking with their pups, herds of bison holding up traffic for an hour or more, and golden eagles swooping in to feed their young. We also saw assorted horns and antlers: moose and bighorn sheep and mountain goats. Of course, weighty antlers—and beaks—serve a purpose. Males are attracting mates as well as protecting themselves from competitors. Still, forty-pound antlers is a high price to pay.

Yellowstone Lake

It got me thinking about what burdens we humans carry around—that like the curlews and bighorn sheep and moose—we aren’t aware of. Burdens that others see, but are hidden from us. Blind spots. Old wounds triggered by a childhood smell or the mere mention of an incident long ago. These reactions, largely unconscious, were helpful coping mechanisms, but now only weigh us down. Like forty-pound antlers. Or over-sized beaks that stab our loved ones when least expected.

The characters in my second novel, Cross Body Lead, are also burdened. With hubris and trauma, distractions, apathy. Billie Ochoa teaches Cold War politics at a small liberal arts college; she is driven by her passion for justice, so driven she alienates those around her. Eddie Pike, who is stalking another student on campus, is a veteran suffering from PTSD. Is he too wounded to ever see beyond his own needs?

Perhaps our own metaphorical antlers and beaks are the very reason we’re drawn to literature. Through the lens of story we understand ourselves better. We are shaken up, infuriated, moved to tears by these fictional characters. In that struggle, we see the world more broadly. With compassion, pity, concern, anger, sadness. From Joyce Carol Oates in The Atlantic (How Reading Makes Us More Human): “Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another’s skin, another’s voice, another’s soul.”

Invite Me To Your Book Group!

I love being invited to book groups who’ve read Cross Body Lead. The discussions are rich and freewheeling and personal. Sometimes I hear new insights I hadn’t even intended! Many of my readers have had experiences with stalking. Or with a bureaucracy that seems incapable of acting with compassion. Or with veterans so terribly broken by their experiences they find it difficult, if not impossible, to move on. In these discussions, we grapple with what each of these characters brings to the page. What we as readers bring to the page. And ultimately, how we can better understand each other.

I hope you will read Cross Body Lead and let me know your thoughts about the book. Or better yet, invite me to your book group. You can contact me through the comment section. And please, if you liked the book, write a review on Goodreads or Amazon. It’s a great way to support authors and help readers find their books.

Happy reading and I look forward to hearing from you!

My Visit to Cuba

February 29, 2016 By elieaxelroth 24 Comments

It’s easy to be taken with Cuba. The vintage American cars. Cuban jazz on every street corner. Art fashioned from repurposed detritus—hubcaps, scrap metal, broken glass. Beautiful colonial, art deco, and baroque architecture graces the cities, along cobblestone streets, tiled floors, walls painted in pastel shades of green and pink and baby blue. Elegant ceiba trees and stately royal palms. Aquamarine water and white sand. Visitors sip coffee at sidewalk cafés. We stayed in lovely renovated hotels. Every meal came with a mojito or Cuba libre “welcome” drink.

Cuba is a country of near one hundred percent literacy. Free health care and education. The ubiquitous image of Che Guevara on t-shirts and hats and murals as if every one of us has a revolution bubbling up inside.

Against all odds—including a fifty year US embargo—Cuba is the little engine that could.

It’s easy to be captivated by the spirit of a people who have suffered extreme poverty, tyranny, fear, the wrenching apart of families. One million Cubans—nearly a tenth of the population—fled the country in the years immediately following the revolution in 1959. Everyone has an anti-Castro relative living in Miami. But every Cuban has a roof over their head. We saw almost no begging on the streets. No homeless men sleeping on park benches. The streets of Havana are clean but for the rubble of renovations and repair.

Cubans are master mechanics, cobbling together a stove or a washing machine from recycled or welded parts. We saw a TV jerry-rigged using a Russian CRT computer monitor; it took five minutes to warm up, but the picture was clear enough to watch Cuba’s national sport—baseball.

While the government sets salaries, those Cubans able to capitalize on the tourist trade are faring much better. A fisherman we met makes more than his daughter who’s a doctor. Engineers drive taxis after hours. Women working in a state-run cooperative weave baskets eight hours a day. At night, they go home and continue their work, weaving for the tourist trade.

Every Cuban is provided with a ration booklet to buy their allotted five eggs a month, four ounces of coffee, sugar, oil, rice. When the food runs out, maybe they have a chicken in the yard or a small garden. And yet, the paladares—privately owned restaurants for the tourists—serve overflowing plates of shrimp and lobster and steak on delicately flowered china, with hand-woven tablecloths and napkins, and crystal stemware. The privilege of being a tourist is striking.

Back in my comfortable home in the US, I’m inspired by the Cubans—a proud people determined to overcome adversity. This is Cuba on the verge of success and I wish them well. But I’m troubled by the inequities and the tyranny of a not-so-distant past. There’s a tendency to overlook the years of torture, a reign of terror presided over by Fidel Castro. The same Castro who promised days after the revolution, “Cuban mothers let me assure you that I will solve all Cuba’s problems without spilling a drop of blood.”

A tyrant is keenly aware of what the people want to hear, and he’ll offer it to them, no matter the truth–something we should take to heart back home.

Be bold. Be daring. Be yourself.

February 3, 2016 By elieaxelroth 15 Comments

Montana de Oro State Park

I recently moved from one side of town to the other. The students had invaded with their enthusiasm and red cups. Lounge chairs on the roof. The week before I sold my house, I heard sawing and hammering coming from the other side of the fence. Entrepreneurial, visionary, resourceful—my next door neighbors were building a beer pong table in their backyard.

Whew. I made it out of there in the nick of time.

For months, I’d anticipated missing my house with all the remodeling I’d done. I’d tiled the bathroom myself, put in wood flooring, a gas fireplace, raised beds in the garden, new windows. Twice I painted the outside of the house. It was a labor of love, but still, there’s a reason it’s called sweat equity.

Change is inevitable and what we can’t imagine at one point in our lives gradually becomes the new norm. Yes, I miss that house, but it was time to move on.

At a recent book group discussing my novel Thin Places, one woman asked: “Do you identify as a writer?”

“I have a hard time thinking about myself as an adult,” I said. It’s an amusing rejoinder I’ve used on numerous occasions, but entirely sidesteps the question.

It reminded me of years ago as a fledging psychology intern musing with my classmates about our new role as therapists. My clients, with little prompting, readily revealed the most intimate details about their lives—childhood trauma, family secrets, their kinky–and pedestrian–sex lives.

“You take off your clothes in the doctor’s office, don’t you?” This from one of my fellow classmates.

“It’s not the same,” I said. But it is.

We step into roles: A new job. A marriage. A spouse dies and we’re suddenly a widow. The first time I uttered the phrase, my son, I stumbled over the words and looked behind me. As if those words belonged to someone else.

I used to be a psychologist. Now I’m a writer.

Am I a writer because I’ve published a book? Does it have to be a best-seller before I think of myself as a writer? Do I have to write a second book before I’m really a writer?

Obviously, the performing of the role plays only a small part in our identity as adults or parents or doctors. Or writers.

Time helps us feel more comfortable in a new role. If I was initially surprised as a psychology intern that my clients were eager to reveal their deepest darkest secrets, in time, I became accustomed to their desire to be vulnerable with someone who was listening with deep intention.

Gentoo Penguin in Antarctica

Practice helps even more. Early on, I lacked anything but the most basic of skills—and confidence. My questions were awkward, poorly timed, sometimes insensitive. In clinical work—and writing—there’s a steep learning curve and then continual improvements along the way. I still remember my first client, a single parent struggling with children, a job, not enough money. Even Picasso had a first painting, but still, I wish I could tell her I’m sorry.

Time and practice, however, are not enough. Change can be tricky. Don’t delay taking on that new passion as your own. I say: Be bold. Be daring. Be yourself.

Do I feel entitled to claim I’m a writer?

Sure. I guess. Absolutely.

Life Imitating Fiction

December 6, 2015 By elieaxelroth 8 Comments

I’m running errands downtown, standing on the corner waiting for the light to change. You know how long it takes for the light to change when you’re a pedestrian in a hurry. I’d parked in a thirty-minute meter hoping I wouldn’t spend all thirty minutes standing on the corner. That’s when a guy, fiftyish-looking, gray hair, clean-cut comes up to me.

“I can’t find my car,” he says.

I’m immediately pulled in.

“It’s in the historic district, next to a one-story red brick building,” he says, with a hint of panic in his voice. “Not the kind of red brick over there.” He’s wearing a local bike shop t-shirt, pointing to a new three-story parking structure. Not what you’d call historic.

It’s a lot of blocks to wander if you’re lost, so I point him in the direction of the Mission. That’s about as old as you get in California where historic is anytime before the 1950’s.

For some unknown reason, he’s not walking toward the Mission, and now we’re part of a burgeoning crowd huddled at the corner, anxious for the light to change. He asks if I work at the college. Before I can answer, he starts in about his daughter. “She graduated summa cum laude. That’s number one. She’s a really good student. Isn’t that what summa cum laude means? I’m not sure where she got her smarts—not from me anyway. She’s overweight, but I don’t care about that. Do you know there’s three times the saturated fat in French fries than bacon?”

That’s when it clicks. Life imitating fiction. I’ve started my second novel. The working title is Alone in a Crowd, and I’m writing about a character who’s struggling with mental illness. Or he’s a stalker, I’m not sure yet.

The light still hasn’t changed–which is suddenly a fortuitous turn of events because now I’m focused on the character I’m trying to write. This guy’s not a stalker, but I have the same creepy feeling. Please don’t follow me. Please. Please. We cross the street en masse and I slip inside the surf shop trying to evade him, but I watch as he starts a conversation with a couple of guys standing near the curb. “I can’t find my car,” he says. His new friends seem eager to help, and I can see how quickly it’s possible to get hooked.

In my previous life, I was a psychologist, so I feel for this guy and I hope he finds his way to a psychiatrist. But as a writer, I’m more interested in the twitch above his right eye, the way he rolls his hand back and forth as he points down the street. How his words flow in a steady stream of consciousness.

There’s a tightness in my chest as I finesse my getaway. That’s worth noticing too.

Thin Places: Book Launch and Reading

July 6, 2015 By elieaxelroth 8 Comments

Thin Places Book Launch and Reading

Sunday, July 19th at 4 pm

St. Benedict’s Episcopal Church

Los Osos, CA

For map and directions

Light refreshments will be served.

With my debut novel, Thin Places, recently released, here are 8 way you can support me–or other local indie authors who might be too shy to ask.

Beware! This is a totally self-serving blog post:

1. Come to my book launch and invite your friends. I’ll be doing a short reading, answer questions, and then sign books and schmooze.

2. Buy my book. Yes, I’m stating the obvious. Here’s a short synopsis of the book and links to purchase Thin Places in paperback or your favorite e-reader. If you’re going to my book launch, I’ll have plenty of paperback copies available.

3. Invite me to your book group to do a reading and discussion. I’m intrigued by the creative process—from writing to art to gardening, dancing, Tai chi, cooking, playing golf. It’s all creative and I’ve been struck over the years by the similarity of the process no matter the medium.

4. If you like my book, write a review on Amazon or Goodreads or Barnes & Noble. Reviews help others to see a book, and also give me–the author–feedback.

5. It’s great when you hit the “like” button on Facebook, and even better when you “share” or “retweet.” That way your friends see my post. (Did I say totally self-serving?) If you’re feeling bold, post a picture on Facebook, holding my book.

6. At the top of the page, you can subscribe to my website. I post something new about once a month—rarely longer than 500 words. I try to be thoughtful, thought-provoking, and creative. Post a comment; I almost always respond.

7. Mention my book to your friends. Word of mouth sells books, especially books by independent authors.

8. After you’ve read my book, please tell me. Send me an e-mail, tweet about it, post it on Facebook. I’d love to hear from you.

Happy reading!

On Lost Sunglasses and the Meaning of Life

December 1, 2014 By elieaxelroth 4 Comments

I lost my sunglasses somewhere between the Emerald Buddha and a trinket shop outside the grounds of the Grand Palace in Bangkok, Thailand. When I tell Gertrude, she immediately scowls. Is that the only thing you’ve lost? I can’t tell if she’s being philosophical. Or if she’s literally asking me for an inventory of lost items.

In a place like Thailand, it’s natural to assume that losing a pair of sunglasses has something to do with karma. All those times I’d misplaced my sunglasses, it was good karma when they’d shown up. And bad karma when they were permanently lost. My traveling companion, Cynthia, had a lens cap with a similar trajectory. Except her lens cap rolled away. I’m pretty sure my sunglasses suffered a more ignoble fate. Crushed under the wheels of a speeding tuk-tuk. Sucked down a sewer drain.

It’s been two years since that trip. What’s etched on my brain is the very moment that I popped open the eyeglass case to find the case empty. I have no recollection of what else we did that day, although I’m pretty sure it was amazing. When I pull out my photos and a skimpy diary, I’m reminded that we visited Ayutthaya, the ancient capital of Thailand. We saw the 42-meter long reclining Buddha, draped in orange cloth. Took a scenic ferry ride down the Chao Phraya River. The diesel fumes were enough to coax me toward the front of the boat.

What difference does it make, if I can’t remember all those trips? Or the last movie I saw? If I recall the fresh tomato bruschetta I ate at that nouveau cuisine restaurant downtown, but not what I had for dessert? Have I ever played bocce ball? Maybe I should just stay home. In reality, the consequences would be far worse if I were to forget my mother’s maiden name. Or where I parked the car.

My mother, who was a brilliant woman, started to lose her memory toward the end of her life. It amused her that she could read the same newspaper over and over and not recall the stories. There was something very thrifty about it that appealed to her. Why buy the paper, if you could just read yesterday’s news? At some point, she stopped caring about what was happening on the other side of her front door. It occurs to me that perhaps life was more meaningful to her, once she no longer felt the need to remember.

I ask Siri: what’s the meaning of life? She says it’s to try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, and read a good book every now and then.

My wife, Maxine, tells me the meaning of life is love. That would be good to remember.

Savannah Landscape

November 2, 2014 By elieaxelroth 4 Comments

Gertrude’s right when she says the color of the swamp just ain’t natural. I hear the hint of a Southern drawl, slow and easy, as if she has all the time in the world. Her voice goes up at the end of the sentence, at first glance, making it seem like a question. Except with Gertrude you know she’s never asking.

The soupy muck is an eerie neon green, something akin to the florescent glow of LED lights. It’s not the green of any grass I’ve ever seen—Bermuda or Kentucky bluegrass or tall Fescue—no matter how much it’s been watered. And it’s not the green of trees. Or leafy vegetables. If anything, the color of a swamp approaches the skin-tone of Kermit the Frog who may be best known for his soulful lament: “It’s not easy being green.”

Especially when it’s the spectral shade of a swamp.

The trees grow right out of the muck, with long strands of Spanish moss tangled in the branches. Sometimes the moss is heavy enough to sever limbs. Just to see what would happen, I dropped a flimsy piece of bark into the soupy mix. Thinking the thick layer of muck was solid, I was surprised when the bark immediately dropped into the darkness below.

Lurking underneath are alligators, with only their eyes above the water and a hint of their flat-nosed jaws, ready to unhinge at a moment’s notice. You know they’re watching your every step, languishing, unassuming, sluggish. Poised to snap off a few fingers or a foot. If you get too close.

In a landscape where the flora grows and grows, but doesn’t change, history has got to linger…

Marsh birds abound. And tortoises. And snakes. This is the stuff of pulp fiction and murder mysteries, creepy tales of horror and mayhem and revenge. Deliverance and Interview With The Vampire. William Faulkner. Eudora Welty. Flannery O’Connor. Southern writing is complex and lush, dense with description. The characters are often creepy and flawed, yanked between inescapable forces of good and evil.

It makes you wonder how much the physical landscape of childhood molds our psyches. Sculpting the possibilities, limiting our vision. The simmering, relentless heat of the South. Ghosts and vampires and sorcery. Dank, claustrophobic spaces. Standing on the edge of a marsh in the Savannah Wildlife Refuge, I swear the reeds and the lily pads ached for a breath of wind, just enough to cause a ripple in the water.

In a landscape where the flora grows and grows, but doesn’t change, history has got to linger. It is a terrain that holds age-old secrets. Only once in our travels to Charleston and Savannah did any of our tour guides mention the Civil War, opting to call it the arguably more accurate: War Between the States. Not one of them uttered the word slavery. I don’t know what to make of the omission, just that it was strikingly noticeable. Was it out of politeness? Or shame? Or a past that seems too far away?

There’s something about the power of place. I grew up in New York where the landscape vibrates from the frenetic screeching of car horns and the rumbling of subways. Most of what is green has been over-taken by concrete and glass. There are too many people in too little space, and you have to crane your neck to see the sky.

It’s a different landscape. And a different kind of writing.

Weeds, Words, and a Hole-in-One

October 6, 2014 By elieaxelroth 4 Comments

Gertrude’s lounging out in the backyard, plucking cherry tomatoes off the vine. She eats more than she brings inside. Any attempt to cajole her is pointless. Couldn’t you at least help with the weeding? Or pull out the lettuce plants that have gone to seed? She squints from behind her designer sunglasses only long enough to pop another tomato into her mouth.

It’s a jungle out there: all overgrown vines and dried sunflower stalks and basil needing to be pinched off.

My favorite time in the garden is early spring. Just after I’ve cleared and raked, added compost to the beds. The seedlings are neat and tidy and the weeds haven’t yet had time to emerge. There’s nothing to eat, but the air is lush in anticipation. And the certainty that this year the tomatoes will taste like ambrosia. The cantaloupe will be plentiful and sweet. The neighborhood stray cat will cease to use the raised beds as a litter box. And I’ll manage to stay a step ahead, picking the zucchini before it approximates a baseball bat.

I have the same feeling out on the golf course when I’m ready to tee off at the first hole. Despite the fact I know so little about taking a swing, still, I have no trouble maintaining the pretense that the club will make contact in that sweet spot, and the ball will fly off in a high arc that lands inches from the hole. This will be the game when I score three birdies and a par on more holes than not. By the end of the game, my scorecard is filled with one par and a string of double bogies.

Call me an optimist. Or call me delusional.

It’s October now. Summer is winding down; the garden has imposed its reality upon me. This year the tomatoes were plentiful, but mediocre. The broccoli had an infestation of tiny grayish sludge, making them inedible. I understand this is on account of those pesky white moths, fluttering innocently. Sleek and graceful, like stealth bombers.

There were also the welcome surprises: The cantaloupe was plentiful and watery sweet. I feasted on pesto for a solid three weeks, and harvested baskets full of lettuce and carrots and beets, enough to keep me in salad for most of the summer. There’s nothing like the joy of pulling a long, dirt-clad carrot out of the ground. And the cherry tomatoes. Not even Gertrude could eat her way through such abundance.

And just when the pineapple guava were ripening, I bagged a hole-in-one out on the golf course.

I’m trying to embrace the messiness of life. The cowlick. The car dent. Those white moths that wreak havoc on my broccoli. The noisy neighbors. The barking dog. It’s the only way to write. Dig up the weeds and see what grows.

Fairbanks, Alaska

April 2, 2014 By elieaxelroth 14 Comments

The sled driver is a stocky, high-octane woman in her twenties, already missing a few teeth. She’s untangling the webbed harnesses and judiciously selecting ten dogs to pull a sled for the tourists on a circuit around Beaver Pond. All one hundred dogs are barking feverishly, yanking on their chains, their back muscles taut, tongues hanging loose and slimy. The clamor is maddening. “Once we get going,” she tells us, “they’re surprisingly quiet.” For now, the dogs are strangling themselves, yelping, “Me. Me. Me,” as if their lives depend on being chosen, vying for the few spots to pull the sled twice around the measly three-mile circuit.

We’re content to stroll the same loop through the woods, wary of the sled that will inevitably overtake us. For now, the only sound is the crunch of our footsteps on the snow. Without notice, from behind a tall stand of evergreen, there’s a swish of the sled runners, and the faint whisper of panting. The dogs are on top of us before we have a chance to sidestep the sleds, their paws nearly trampling our feet as we hurl our bodies off the trail.

It’s obvious the dogs have no idea how to pace themselves.

We’ve traveled from the central coast of California to Chena Hot Springs, some 60 miles northeast of Fairbanks, to chase down the aurora borealis. The air is crisp, the snow a dry powder, and the sky a stunning blue. It’s March. Even though daylight lasts a full 14 hours, we’re so far north, the sun arcs only a few scant inches above the horizon, threatening to set at any moment. Only it doesn’t set until well past nine o’clock, which means all day long, the light is exquisite through the bent branches of evergreen and aspen and birch, and the bluish-white snow. There’s a faint smell of sulfur from the hot springs.

That night, we pile into a tank-like van with caterpillar treads, and a driver from the lodge takes us to the top of the mountain for an unobstructed view. It’s 9:30 and the sky is only beginning to blacken. The brightest object is Jupiter and then Mars. In another hour, we’ll be able to see the milky way, but for now we stay warm in a heated yurt, hoping the aurora—with all the miles we’ve traveled to get here—will make an appearance. We drink hot chocolate and periodically dash outside to see the flood of awakening stars and the Big Dipper and Polaris circling directly overhead. At one in the morning, we detect a foggy layer, low in the sky, and then a hazy band of light begins to flutter like a curtain undulating in the wind. We crane our necks and squint our eyes. Not much, but it’s a start. Bundled in down jackets and hats and gloves and ski pants and still the cold has infiltrated our bones. This time we don’t retreat to the yurt.

An hour later, the drivers are preparing to leave, our departure pre-determined—regardless of the light show overhead. The band is growing wider with hints of green and blue, but we’re hungry for more—just like our canine friends earlier in the day. Except we’re praying not to the sled driver, but to Aurora, the Roman goddess of dawn. “Me. Me. Me,” we chant. “Show yourself to me. Pretty please.” As if in answer to our prayers, streams of light leap and shimmer overhead, like thick fingers playing on an icy xylophone. It’s not the brilliant green spectacle in photographs, but more muted. In that moment, standing under the glittering milky way, we are witnessing the immensity of a universe that literally goes on forever. A universe made up of the same carbon molecules as our own fragile, frozen bodies. Is this what I came here for? Have I seen enough? Has it been worth the effort?

The poet Paul Valéry wrote, “a poem is never finished, only abandoned.” Just as it takes great courage to write, it also takes courage to perceive the sacred moment approaching perfection. To determine that a poem, or a novel, or a painting, or a piano concerto is the best it can be. In the next several months, I will likely be completing the final editing of a novel that has consumed much of the last three years of my life. I don’t dare ask if it’s been worth the effort, except to say whatever struggles I have with the writing life, I’m certain it’s why I’m here. The outcome will have to be enough.

The next morning we’re jolted awake by the yelping of dogs in an unrestrained frenzy. I wonder if they lay sleepless last night, anxiously awaiting the shimmering green and blue and red lights that periodically stream across the starlit sky.

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