Yay, thanks, Maggie!! I loved this meme. <3
1. if someone wanted to really understand you, what would they read, watch, and listen to?
Ooh, I think about this a lot. The short answer is my father. (Not my biological one.) I had a Catholic priest become a parent in my life almost immediately when we moved out of Wappingers, Fr. O’Connor. He was a brilliant man who lived his life quietly and did not call attention to his accomplishments or his excellence. This ties into The Story of a Soul, the autobiography of my favorite saint, Thérèse of Lisieux. I learned to be a person who requires very little attention and who has about zero capacity to tolerate ego in myself or others. I really seek plainness because of them.
11. describe your ideal day.
My ideal days tend to fall in May or June. It would take place when I own my own home and pottery studio and made my living either as a novelist, potter, or both. Bernie Sanders would be our President and I would occasionally overlook my reclusive ways to hold flapper parties. (The house would be very old, weathered whitewashed or painted brick with vines growing along the face and ferns along the foundation, white trim on the windows and doors, and a copper roof. It would have a fabulous garden with a dozen raised beds, brick pathways, and a great, wisteria-ridden trellis sheltering a brick terrace. I like brick.)
The day would start with my favorite (or my own) humane eggs and a bagel (Maggie, I don’t know if you inferred this from the 500+ breakfasts I later realized suffuse Smallest, but I am a big fan of breakfast). Actually, let’s rewind: I would have a cat named Artemis and roughly 6-18 hens of various breeds and colors (New Hampshire reds, Buff Orpingtons, Araucanas, Americaunas, black sex-links) so I would take care of their needs before I had breakfast.
I would then eat breakfast in my outrageously beautiful garden (my dream garden would make any Hufflepuff, including me, all hot and bothered) with whatever wonderful person was living with me, ideally my current lovely girlfriend Tara or my mom (both of them know how important breakfast is to me). Or I would have breakfast alone, which would also be delightful. By this ideal time, I would’ve actually practiced the cello I bought in March of 2015 and I’d maybe shred some sick Bach gavottes and my favorite Suite for Unaccompanied Cello right there in the garden. Artemis would kill something smaller than her. Everybody wins, except the thing that was smaller than Artemis.
I would then do any of my creative jobs for several hours, take lunch (maybe vegetarian Subway sandwiches with Tara!), and continue. Maybe I would have my pottery shop open for a few hours. Maybe I’d work on my next novel. Maybe I’d catch up on Etsy orders. I’d have some music going, some Cat Stevens or Celtic Woman, and I’d be set. I could also work on my family art history project, traveling to museum archives and consolidating the history of my great-great-uncle, the sculptor.
Alternatively, I could go to my favorite remote ocean peninsula and feel like the only person in the universe, and decide all over again that Adam’s loneliness is the sole factor which, to me, makes the book of Genesis more incredible than apocalyptic floods, talking snakes, making a woman from a rib, creating the universe in seven days, or any of those other silly suggestions.
Ideal Day always culminates in Chinese food. You gotta. Then, because it was spring or summer, I would paint or write until I passed out. (If it had been winter, I’d be up to my eyeballs in World of Warcraft. I can’t lie to you, Maggie. I’ve known you since I was two.)
Because it’s Ideal Day, I’d also really like to see my father one more time. The Resurrection Stone would really be the Hallow that snared me.
27. do you feel like your outside appearance is a fair representation of the “real you”?
Yeah, I actually do. When I was younger, I wanted darker, straighter hair and I wanted to be thin. Now I just want to make pottery. I love doing things that get me dirty, so usually there is paint or ink or earth on me, and that’s cool. I’m just thankful when it isn’t animal poop, you know? I realize that I have a slightly Mrs.-Weasley-ish aesthetic, plus glasses, plus sometimes the glaring obviousness that I am a raging dyke, but yeah, that’s who I am, son.
