'Dreaming CIMA' with Autofiction Author René Urbanovich

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What makes a writer? For René Urbanovich, it's an undeniable drive—the recognition that there's something harder than writing: not writing. In this profound conversation, René takes us deep into the heart of her literary auto-fiction memoir "Dreaming Cima and the Abandoned Mind," revealing how becoming a grandmother sparked an urgent need to document her family's extraordinary legacy.

Against the backdrop of the Mojave Desert's shifting sands, René uncovers a century-spanning narrative about the Ray family—miners, homesteaders, and survivors whose dreams were both nurtured and challenged by the unforgiving landscape they called home. The Cima Cinder Mine, staked in 1948, becomes more than just a setting; it transforms into a powerful metaphor for mining memories and the meaning they hold for us, across generations.

What began as a simple mining operation became famous for something unexpected: the Mojave Phone Booth. This isolated connection to the outside world drew visitors from across the globe—and ultimately, unwanted government attention that led to the mine's seizure. "The one thing that brought them fame is the one thing that destroyed them," René reflects, highlighting the tragic irony that couldn't be scripted more perfectly.

Beyond the historical narrative lies a deeply personal exploration of caregiving across generations. René candidly shares her experience as a member of the "sandwich generation," simultaneously caring for her mother with dementia while helping raise grandchildren. She contrasts her struggles with her grandmother's seemingly effortless devotion to family, revealing how societal expectations have shifted while fundament

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Transcript

Speaker 1 0:45

Hi guys and welcome to Language of the Soul podcast. Thank you so much for tuning in. We have a very special episode today and I've said that many times, but I couldn't mean it more. Some of you may have heard Renee Urbanovich on previous episodes. She's one of our favorite guests, and only in part because she's my dear sister. So I'm going to start by reading her bio. It's probably the same one, at least in the last episode during which we feature her, but she can correct it. Talking about her in the third person until I bring her in from the green room, she can correct it if I get anything wrong.

Speaker 1 1:21

Okay, if I'm not mistaken, renee Urbanovich is a leading voice and creativity instructor in the Los Angeles area, having coached singers from television, film and the Broadway stage. Renee's vocal technique is now on her YouTube channel, Voice Teacher Reacts, where she's extended her audience to the tens of thousands. She's a humanities through the arts professor, a poet and an award-winning author. Renee is a TEDx speaker, has given workshops and spoken at venues such as SAG-AFTRA Arts Center, college of Design, osborne Head Neck at Pepperdine CTN, and many more. After a vocal injury left her voiceless, she went on to heal and earn a degree in creativity and search for the answers that would not only solve her personal dilemma but feed into the collective search for meaning. Welcome, renee Urbanovich.

Speaker 2 2:10

Hello. Thank you, yes, that was right on.

Speaker 1 2:14

Okay, yeah, I know there's always something new, I guess, straight out the gate. I have noticed you downplay, I don't know, you downplay the bulk, the body of work you've created in the literary realm. You tend to go I'm a new, new author, I'm kind of green. I only have one, one novel out there and I just want to say I mean, I have a list here somewhere, you know, between sex to let and was it Carolyn's story, yeah and silence broken and now dreaming seem, oh and solicited you are. You're a seasoned writer, renee, so that wasn't included in the bio. I just thought I'd throw it out there. Yeah, isn't that?

Speaker 2 2:55

funny. I don't put my writing in my bio yet. I don't know why, but I did write a book that did get an award from Writer's Digest. No small tiny you know?

Speaker 1 3:08

No, that's very well respected sorry for my memory which one won the writer's digest award? The creativity conundrum connection oh that, I see, I didn't even mention that. Yeah, well, that's non-fiction. Maybe that's why I didn't go there, yeah but there you go yeah, you've got the accolades.

Speaker 2 3:24

Man own it well, and when I get buried you can put all my little books in there on top of me, because it's weird how you can have four kids and all their partners and grandkids and, you know, be this mom and teacher to hundreds of students over there. But really and truly I mean I want to be buried with my literature.

What Makes Renee a Writer

Speaker 1 3:48

Well, thanks for telling me that Somehow I don't think I'm going to outlive you, but I will take a note and I feel the same way. You know, even my self-published works. I just want them in print for posterity, you know? I mean, we're going to talk a lot about legacy, right, this book is largely about legacy, but for me it's like I just want it in print. As I was telling you in the green room, all illustrators have lost hours of work and learned the hard lesson of backing up. You've got to back up. So I'm just kind of a freak for backing up. If that makes sense, and even if the pieces aren't that polished, I get them in print. So, yes, if I die, someone will find them in my apartment after finding my body.

Speaker 2 4:36

There's, will find them in my apartment after finding my body. There's something there, isn't it? And it's true. This whole book is about legacy. So, yeah, okay, the the. That being said, um, I'm glad you relate on that level, because you can't it's hard to you know strip everybody down, to you know the, the, the essential part that makes them nick or that makes them renee but you know the. The writing is um. There's just something about your own writing that it just is like um your soul.

Speaker 1 4:55

I don't know I agree, you know, I think people, yeah everybody, experiences a different version of you, right, and it's through their lens. But I think your writing is the only expression of your soul and, and you know, one time you told me about letter forms, like when you were little you would picture letters. Do you remember that?

Speaker 2 5:14

That they had personalities.

Speaker 1 5:16

Right, like who the hell? I would never have guessed. My sister you know what I mean had that kind of, that particular kind of imagination. That's something we shared, that there's like this metaphysical realm you tap into, like that's something that's so uniquely you do. You know what I mean, that I could only know in that case cause you told me. But I think sometimes our writings reveal things others couldn't possibly know through their lenses.

Speaker 2 5:40

Exactly, and and that's why to have your own friends be your beta readers. Sometimes it's kind of productive, and sometimes you, and sometimes it works great.

Speaker 1 5:51

In that spirit when we discuss your book, which I can't wait to get to. Yes, that's the danger is I know you so well. We have a lot of shared territory when it comes to the literal content of the book the same affinity for the characters, the same love of the desert. So, for our readers, I don't want to fall into the trap of, you know, getting too into. You had to be their stories or, um, what do you call it, like inside jokes.

Speaker 1 6:17

I want to make sure to provide the context for literally everything we're going to discuss. So, straight out the gate, I'm going to ask you to read a synopsis of the book. So there is context. But before that I want to ask you the rote question as, as you know, in the new season we started asking our guests every one of them what is the role of storytelling and culture. I think you already answered that on your last appearance, so I'm going to throw you a little bit of a curveball, monkey wrench, something like that. No, it's okay, and I think you'll have plenty to say on it. The simple question is what makes you?

Speaker 2 6:55

Renee Urbanovich. What makes you a writer? Well, that is interesting because we kind of started off isn't that funny? We started off talking about I want to be buried with my writing. What makes me a writer? I wish I could answer that.

Speaker 1 7:09

Oh no.

Speaker 2 7:10

You know, it just is At the end of Creativity Conundrum, when I wrote about the theories of creativity and the methodology, I gave the creative process and all of the you know heady stuff at the very end. It kind of concludes with.

Speaker 2 7:31

there's an is-ness to creativity, which I stole from this artist gal named Carrie Ng. So there's an is-ness to me being a writer, and I have quit a thousand times. I never want to write again. The relationship I have with writing has been tumultuous and and you know cause? I have so many other things in my life, but I they all take me away from my writing. Everything comes back down to my writing and um, so the thing that makes me a writer is, um, you write because you are, I have to.

Speaker 2 8:07

I what is it? I, I, how do I know what I think if I don't see it in my writing, if I don't write it down that's somebody famous said that, but also something I read during nano rimo, uh in 2022, and I printed it up and glued it on the wall was there's only one thing harder than writing, not writing?

Speaker 1 8:31

yeah, you've said, actually, maybe on this podcast you've yeah, we did, we joked about, like you think you're done, you think you've said everything you've got to say. Or you're so fed up with the world you're like, why would I put anything out there? I don't care to? And then, but you just can't not do it. I think that's what you said. You just can't not do it.

Speaker 2 8:48

I think that's what you said. You just can't not, can't not. So I often get second winds. So since I'm a writer, I guess, so I started out writing just poetry and stories. In sixth grade I would write little stories and poetry and then I started taking my writing very seriously and became a songwriter and saved and scrounged and scraped up money to record things put on shows, and so the songwriting thing was super easy because I had kids right and I was busy working and so songs are little right and you can work on them in the car like da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da, and at the grocery store. So it worked out great to be a songwriter. And then I gave myself permission to be a real writer after I went and got my master's degree in literature. Now I'm a voice teacher by trade and I should have probably gotten my bachelor's and my master's in voice dysfunction, because this is how I make my money.

Speaker 2 9:47

And I wanted creativity because I was obsessed with creativity and write in literature. So I was able to do that and that made me into it, gave me permission to be the writer that I am today, and being in college as a 40 year old taught me the thing we call follow through that I didn't have. That's why songwriting fit me fine, because you have a. You can have 100 unfinished songs. As long as you have 100 finished songs, it doesn't matter. But you know, putting 100 pages of writing together on a false start novel doesn't feel so whimsical, right? So that's. And so, as far as writing goes goes, what makes me a writer is this, this urge, this need, this compelling thing in me. I absolutely have to write, and when I don't, I'm dysregulated well, I would say you know, creatively, express yourself.

Speaker 1 10:45

You'll languish if you don't express yourself. But yeah, if it's specific to writing, I think you evolved into that. I mean, would you have said back when you were a songwriter? I do remember once you said you know what Writing a commercial song is way harder than writing, yeah, something more experimental.

Speaker 2 11:03

Exactly yeah. Try and appeal to the masses with your heart.

Speaker 1 11:08

But I wondered if you equated it with storytelling or if the literary realm, if you equated songwriting with storytelling.

Speaker 2 11:18

You know I do now and at the time it was true self-expression, but I did. I did have story songs that had points and messages.

Speaker 2 11:27

I wouldn't say that they were, you know, prescriptive, because I wrote a lot of Christian songs and I kind of grew out of wanting to prescribe stuff to people and I wanted to be more of the artist that sees beauty in the world. Once I studied creativity and Schopenhauer and you know John Keats as a poet and I I I really immersed myself in in more art rather than like religion, and that really helped me find my voice as a writer.

Speaker 1 11:55

Oh, that was a big pivotal point for you yeah it was interesting that you would compartmentalize it that way in the first place, if that makes sense, the two being at odds with one another. But it does make perfect sense.

Speaker 2 12:05

On another episode, right Like, but I remember that was hugely pivotal for you yeah, well, I mean, one of the things I said when I was um very uh new at christianity and um very steeped in it was shakespeare's gonna burn I used to hear that, like I was obsessed with shakespeare, I was obsessed with the arts look at our mom right. And then, when I got saved, I thought you couldn't ever sing a secular song again. I was. I was confused by fundamentalism, not understanding yeah, I do wonder.

Speaker 1 12:38

I guess it's the messaging, it's the dogma of the church, without throwing anyone under the bus. But I, we do have a family member like I was raised. Yes, I went to art school. You know, when you talk about learning, I'm not going to put words in your mouth, but executive function, follow through, juggling projects, seeing them through to the finish line. I'm sorry, art center taught me to juggle things. You remember I used to stay up till three in the morning because I had to finish the painting. So our center actually taught me nope, leave it on the back burner, juggle them all and you'll get back to it. And it taught me a lot of discipline, right, and to to draw on my craft, instead of it being having to have all my ducks in a row to be able to draw on my creativity. Anyway, school is is awesome, but it also really puts you in touch with who you are. So, I'm sorry, call it progressive, call it liberal. I was call it brainwashing, you know. But art schools at the time were teaching conceptual thinking. There was a lot of indicators of what does artistic merit look like versus commerciality. All those, all those tropes were very much, I guess, ingrained in me. So flash forward 30 years. A family member, I'm so tempted to say it, but I'm a family member.

Speaker 1 13:52

I just said something about the renaissance. I said, yeah, well, that was when we re-embraced our humanity. You know, and everyone in my world understands that, yeah, maybe during we don't even call it the dark ages anymore. Right, but in medieval times we were taught we're faulted creatures, we're grotesque, we're in need of redemption and it's called fire and brimstone. Doesn't everybody know this? And that the renaissance was where, oh, we are not faulted creatures, we have immense potential and capacity. Let's embrace our divinity. And you saw it in every aspect of life, not just the artwork. Yeah, right, the complete like through saying no, shakespeare will burn. It was literally like what this person had never heard. That and they thought the enlightenment do you know what I mean was like when we were on the right track, completely flopped yeah, yeah, they were.

Speaker 2 14:43

You know, I mean, I don't, I'm not a history buff, but, um, you know, the plague and the, the plague and the, the middle, well, the dark ages. I just, you know, I used to teach humanities and the arts and I made my students stand up and read a list of every single friend that they've ever had, and they all stood up and we turned the lights off and then they had to realize they were all killed in the plague, like it was dark. It was dark and and there was a lot of, you know, lot of war and feudalism and just terrible it was dark.

Speaker 2 15:24

And so, for certain people, to want to come out of that and come out of the religious oppression. That is when Mother Mary was born. Mother Mary was born during them because we needed her during the dark ages. The Mary was born during them because we needed her during the dark ages we needed a loving you know a loving goddess to be there for us, and you know that's Dr Leonard Schlein. I didn't make that up.

Speaker 1 15:40

Well, no, I was going to say that's the perfect transition to the book actually is you know? I would say what we're talking about here is the stories we tell ourselves, right as humans, like we told ourselves, we were in, faulted and in need of redemption. And now we're telling ourselves, you know what we have divinity within, and I love that. It maybe was the beginning of a shift away from patriarchy. I don't know, but I do think, because there's such a strong theme.

Speaker 1 16:06

I mean, I'm really understating the matter of that through line, you know, of not just womanhood but mothering yeah so, so yeah, without uh going too far down that road, let's read the synopsis to your latest work, which is can shall I say it, or do you want to say it?

Speaker 2 16:27

do you want me to read it or do you want to read it? No?

Speaker 1 16:28

Dreaming Sima is the point. Your latest work, Dreaming Sima and the Abandoned Mind.

Speaker 2 16:36

And the Abandoned Mind.

Auto-Fiction and Truth in Writing

Speaker 1 16:39

Okay, and so we won't exactly analyze that double entendre yet. But yeah, go ahead. I can read it if you like. It's up to you.

Speaker 2 16:46

You choose.

Speaker 1 16:47

Okay, here I go. Okay, Dreaming. Sema and the Abandoned Mind is a literary auto-fiction memoir that traces the legacy of the Ray family miners, homesteaders and quiet survivors I love that through the Mojave Desert's shifting sands and the female line that held the family together. The story begins in the courtroom in 2023, where Renee Urbanovich and her family fight for a mining patent that has been stalled for 30 years. The legal language is cold and clinical, a stark contrast to the desert that raised her. Overwhelmed, she hums under her breath the same way her grandmother, faye, once did. From this moment, the book unfolds in alternating vignettes. Faye is grounded and lyrical, showing a woman who never stopped adjusting, and René is increasingly fragmented and introspective, revealing a woman who can no longer keep pace without unraveling.

Speaker 1 17:41

The Seamus Intermine was staked in 1948, but it was the Mojave phone booth, installed by Emerson for mining logistics, that changed everything. The booth became a phenomenon, drawing strangers from across the world and, in turn, drawing the government's attention. The mine was eventually seized under the California Desert Protection Act, its fate sealed not by abandonment, but by policy, politics and the shifting power of preservation. Yet this is not just a story of the land, but of what has passed from grandmother to granddaughter, not just the mind but the instinct to serve, the weight of memory and the quiet expectation that women will carry the family forward, whether in the desert or in a Tehachapi kitchen. Renee sees herself in Faye and in her mother, sharon, and in her own daughter, rosie. The cycle continues, not of wealth or gold or land, but of resilience, of service, of a family that shows up even when the world looks away. I love that. Wow. I've never really thought of it in these terms, but I'm liking this.

Speaker 1 18:47

As Renee begins to experience her own cognitive decline, hiding her hearing loss, her stutter, her lapses, the book becomes a meditation on what it means to lose your mind and still keep going. Her TEDx talk, meant to showcase her professional voice, becomes the platform where she finally speaks as a caregiver, not a lecturer. The words don't flow as they used to, but they still carry weight. The memoir closes with the younger generation, renee's cousin Adam and cousins Robin and Michelle taking over the legal fight for SEMA. Renee, now a witness rather than a warrior, writes it all down. Thank you for that. She understands that legacy is not just what you own, but what you endure and what you hand forward without knowing, dreaming sema in the abandoned mind is for readers who recognize that the heart of a family is not in what it claims but in who it remembers, especially the grandmothers. I love the way you use the word claims there, right yeah, a little.

Speaker 2 19:48

Yeah, mining claims. Yeah, there's so many double entendres.

Speaker 1 19:51

I like that. Yeah, I'm not saying it's very much in keeping with what I got out of the book, it's just it's fascinating to hear it worded right In a slightly different way than I did.

Speaker 2 20:03

Yeah, I'm not sure that this is the real one, yet it's one of many, yeah it's one of many. You know it takes time to get the summary to really hit, but because it's so complex, I felt like I had to lay it out just a little bit and introduce what the whole book was about without giving any spoilers away.

Speaker 2 20:24

But it's just so complex and I just learned what autof was um, maybe two years ago in terms of the creative license that is available yeah in contrast to strict memoir or narrative non-fiction, that sort of thing yeah, I always just thought creative narrative non-fiction was one thing, creative non-fiction or narrative non-fiction and then memoir. I didn't ever hear of autofiction.

Speaker 1 20:50

It might. What year did it become coined that term?

Speaker 2 20:54

Well, I don't know, but the first okay. So in my journey with this book here, I had two editors early on, nev March and Jay Langley, and we did a lot of talking and discussing what it should be and sometimes they said, well, just, I said they said something like well, you need a scene here that tells that. And I'm like, well, I wasn't there. And they said, well, you just make it up. And I'm like, no, I I story, it's a memoir and I want it to come from my grandpa's diary or something called. You know what's it called Like? When my grandma passes a story onto me, I wanted everything to be straight from my mom's mouth grandma's mouth Was hearsay the word.

Speaker 1 21:42

Hearsay yeah, or folklore.

Speaker 2 21:44

Oh, I see, right right, you know, we've been hearing the story about Grandpa's tooth in the burrow our whole lives, right right. So I wanted it to be the stories that I knew, and then my memories, and then whatever didn't happen, I would just fill it in with a sentence or two, but I wouldn't draw the whole scene up if I wasn't there.

Speaker 1 22:03

Right right.

Speaker 2 22:04

And so I didn't buy that. And then when I took a class on structure from Madeline Dyer, who's published like 20 books and she's a great teacher, and so she introduced us me, whoever's in the class but me especially to autofiction, so we did some research on it and basically, if it's like Ocean, ocean vuong, one of my favorite writers on earth, you're we're, briefly, gorgeous, and that was probably I don't know eight years ago you know he's been doing the rounds.

Speaker 1 22:38

Have you seen him late? You probably don't watch too much tv, but he's doing. I don't know what he's promoting, but he's in the media big time right now he wrote one more book and so he's probably promoting that.

Speaker 2 22:49

But his book was the closest thing to what I was trying to do. He told, but he called it a novel because eight years ago there was no such thing as auto fiction. So it was clearly a memoir about his mother and his grandmother. Clearly it told their exact life stories both of them, and one scene was his mom's life story and one scene was his grandma's life story and one scene was his story. And it was all jumbled together in this big poetic, amazing, experimental mess. But God, it was just such a good read and I know you read it.

Speaker 1 23:25

Yeah.

Speaker 2 23:26

So that was as close as I could find. But they didn't call it auto fiction. But I didn't want to call this um, I didn't want to call it oh, this is a novel based on a true story, because I I still held true that everything I put in there I wanted to have happened well, that's what I want to explore a little bit here, if you don't mind me interjecting.

Speaker 1 23:44

The reason I asked like what your auto fiction was coined is because I believe do you remember the guy that went on, oprah, and he made more of his battles with drug addiction than really existed? He made some shit up. Put it that way wally something yeah yeah, yeah, and she would.

Speaker 1 24:00

She was called to the carpet for promoting him and he was a liar. Well, that's maybe when narrative nonfiction came right. We began to carve out that niche creative nonfiction you get to embellish right and it excuses you legally and otherwise and ethically, from speaking the truth. So I have heard you say everything in here is true. I love that Because you're a Sorry.

Speaker 2 24:26

I'm sorry. I had to make a conversation happen from letters that were written to the family in the emails. You know the legal stuff, so I just created a conversation about what they put in the email so that it would be literature beautiful and that's why you chose the collage format right, so you could incorporate all those elements together.

Speaker 1 24:47

It's really beautiful. We're going to get into all of that. I was kind of going to just press the issue and say you have said it's all true and I see that I've read it, I've lived it, I've read it and it is all true. I mean, I can't know exactly if you were sitting in that you know upholstered chair at that precise moment, you know, with that butterscotch candy in the dish on the table. I can't know that, but I do know it's all true. When you took creative liberties because auto-fiction allows you to do that wasn't it just primarily the chronology? If you wanted something to be more impactful through juxtaposition, you might've played with chronology. That's kind of the only license you took. Is that right?

Speaker 2 25:26

yes, and then everywhere that I changed a date by one year or by something, I underlined it, so I would remember this is made up.

Speaker 1 25:38

This is made up yeah, I did notice like one or two of those and I was like wait a minute. But yeah, that anyway. But I, I, renee, and you're so earnest and sincere and ethical in your writing, to the point. I've said it, sorry if you've already heard it on this podcast. Many times I've said well, my sister might have been exposed to certain mindsets in college and I won't name names, but I think you really romanticized truth-telling in writing and that you can sense a grain of untruth a mile away, especially in memoir. So that seems to be a value of yours.

Speaker 2 26:16

Well, that's what I learned when I finally started taking classes on memoir, and it was, you know, dr Floyd Moose at College of Memoirs.

Speaker 1 26:22

You said it, not me.

Speaker 2 26:23

Yeah, and we would sit there and we would read other people's memoirs and then, instead of him, you know, just shoving knowledge down our throats or, you know, pouring it into our brains he said why did this speak to you? And ultimately, every time, as we analyzed memoirs, it was because you could taste the truth. It was true.

Speaker 2 26:42

So, that was drummed into me, that you know not to embellish too much because, like even David Sed sedaris, I know as a memoirist he's gotten in trouble a couple of times. Right, because he does tell the truth and um with family members. Yeah, yeah, he really tells the truth, and he does write everything down when he gets home, and as do I. I write everything down the day it happens, because I can't remember it, and then he turns it into a memoir later, and so he's a true memoirist. He really is Well.

Speaker 1 27:13

I would add to that, if you don't mind, though I would add to that because, as you know, he was an influence of mine and, like, reading Me Talk Pretty one day is pretty much what motivated me to start writing narrative nonfiction. And I would say these are long conversations, right, but everything's subjective. We all would say these are long conversations, right, but everything's subjective. We all have our lenses, so you and I could tell the story of a given moment, like I don't know being in a windstorm and trying to put gas in a in a tank, and we did both try our hand at that one. But you know, my worldview and value system is going to make certain things jump out to me, and actually one of my favorite films is Hillary and Jackie. Did you ever see that?

Speaker 2 27:51

No.

Speaker 1 27:52

It pretty much tells a story, then midway through it's kind of a no-no, but midway through backs up and retells the story through the other sister's point of view. A fascinating experiment. And so I would say, david, if he embellishes, it's called, he has an active imagination, he's a kook, so he's going to. So I did that in my writing just for humor. I would characterize things a certain way and I would choose the words carefully, and of course that creates a whole new subjective reality that might not align with somebody else's. Just the humor alone. You know, right, right, right, yeah.

Speaker 1 28:31

And even you you read one about the trip back to, uh, new york with mom and dad and seeing veronica it was the pocahontas opening and you were surprised, you. You said, did that really happen? And I had to say, well, I'm not throwing anyone under the bus. But yes, but of course I made up the dialogue. I mean, certain things stick, but you just have to fabricate the exact conversation because who the fuck remembers? But the sentiment was right on the money and the things that shocked you were the truest.

Speaker 2 28:57

Right, yeah, and you know, in this book I put in a couple of things that somebody else wrote and the editors wanted me to correct their writing and I was like, no, that's the whole point.

Speaker 1 29:08

Voice you mean?

Speaker 2 29:09

Well, like the well, like the mistakes to make it easier to read, and I had a hard time with them. Like no, I don't want, I don't want to correct anybody's writing, but ultimately we may. We just cut out whatever wasn't clear. So the editing, cutting out things that weren't clear, instead of just rewriting, I don't think that's fair. If I'm putting in a letter by somebody else, I I see what you're saying, right, right, right.

Speaker 1 29:29

Yeah, I loved, I mean as a transition. I really loved how, like grandpa's writing complemented the more stark is my word kind of minimal writing that is more contemporary, of Renee's scenes, and so just all the writing styles really complemented one another. And there's so much to talk about here, renee. So there's been about 12 transitions that I didn't jump on. But one thing you said in there is you almost defined great writing and the word beauty came up. So I know you said one of your goals was to just write something beautiful. So, without giving you my full review of your book here and now, because this is not the time or place for that, I think you did exactly that and the poetic is one way of putting it.

Speaker 1 30:16

The poetic voice just transported me personally to this non-linear space and it touches you. Sometimes I say my favorite stories are the ones that touch you and you don't know why it's unexamined. But I say they touch you for your sheer humanity. But that can be like the ones that touch you and you don't know why it's unexamined, but I say they touch you for your sheer humanity. But that can be like the affinity that you develop for a character, without even realizing it, just by virtue of spending time with them. You're invested and so, despite yourself, you're surprised that under the surface, you've developed this affinity and you're feeling things and you don't know why this was more than just affinity for the characters, the sheer poetry of the desert imagery, for example.

Speaker 1 30:53

It's called aesthetics. And when I say I was moved because I'm human, it's because I have eyeballs and ears and other senses, right, and this gift of life that now I'm getting real abstract here. But we have this gift of life and we have all these right sensory impressions, that is, I'm not about to define beauty, but there's a whole field called aesthetics for that reason. So I feel like your non-linear chronology, even this um, what do you call it? Uh, collage format, in which, yeah, you're getting an impression here and an impression there and slowly just in my experience reading slowly the puzzle pieces kind of lock together and you get a more vivid picture. But I think, because it's presented in that non-linear way, you kind of access parts of us that you wouldn't if it was extremely linear. Does that make sense?

Speaker 1 31:45

You're kind of feeling between the lines.

Structure, Poetry, and Artistic Merit

Speaker 2 31:48

Yeah, and you know it's not like I'm a published author. You know who's published 20 books. You know, like my editor writing teacher coach, who held my hand for 18 months. I'm not that, but I didn't want to do what the original editors wanted me to do Just tell the story and leave out the poetry, because you know, grandma and grandpa story needs to be told. It's an amazing story and I didn't want to do it.

Speaker 2 32:14

I started it when I was 30. You know it's something that's been nagging at me, but I had to do it because I wanted to share the things that made me feel, feel, the things that made me who I am. So I couldn so I couldn't figure out how to combine their story with how I felt about being raised in the desert and how I felt towards my grandparents, you know, and it all started when I became a grandma- and.

Speaker 2 32:40

I heard the kid you know everybody saying grandma. I'm like I'm grandma. It was an overwhelming period and I just had to, and I just started talking to grandma and writing to grandma. And that's when I started the book, like right when I became a grandma, because I felt such a responsibility. And actually it started out with a letter to my grandson, who his name is Kike, and it was just you. You'll never know what you're from and I'm going to tell you by the time you're 18, I'm going to be 70.

Speaker 1 33:13

Or whatever.

Speaker 2 33:13

You know, I did the math, and so it started out like that. And then I thought I have to do a grandmother book, but I still had to do grandma and grandpa's story. You know what I'm saying. So I didn't know how I was going to combine it and I wanted to quit a thousand times, as I said, and I cried a lot. I mean, I cried one day for five hours when I was told to take out the poetry and I just felt like Clint Eastwood. You know, Jim Urbanovich, my practical husband was just like. Well, Clint Eastwood makes movies for commercial benefit and he does what the studios want him to do, and then he'll do something for fun, for his own soul and his own artistry Another time. Just take this one and let it be that. Okay, I'm going to do it. I couldn't do it. My life force wasn't big enough at that period, and so I don't know now. I forgot what I was going to say.

Speaker 1 34:05

Well, you kind of answered one of the one of my questions. I of course you know, because there's so much nuance and I am so familiar with the content. As I said, I was just going to play 99% of interviewers who haven't read the fucking material and I was just going to say here are some cookie cutter rote questions that you know what I mean. I can ask an author about their process and I think that's a great way of bringing listeners up to speed who might not know the backstory. But you did get. You spoke to one of those rote questions, which is what inspired your novel. But there's more to it, because I do think before you wrote that letter to Kike, can I not say Achilles.

Speaker 1 34:43

Yeah, we say Kike. All right, later you can tell me if I need to cut that out, but anyway, the letter to Kike was certainly a milestone or a turning point, maybe the impetus for writing this incarnation of the novel. But tell me, I know dating years back, there was a desire to tell grandpa's stories through his letters. Wasn't there something about the legal battle years ago? Maybe an essay about grandpa? So I feel like all these projects that were maybe in your arsenal but never saw the finish line came together, is that fair to say?

Speaker 2 35:20

That's exactly right. I took the book that I wrote when you read it, when I was 30. I took the whole book that I wrote. I pulled from there. Now I'm 60. Do you think I would have remembered any of that had I not written it when I was 30? Right, you know there were. There were um little vignettes I call them uh, from when I was five and four that I remembered when I was 30. I would never have remembered.

Speaker 1 35:44

Right. Isn't that amazing.

Speaker 2 35:51

Amazing. And then, um, I did. I wrote an essay about grandpa and I got to read it on a documentary that got in there to tell me the name of that.

Speaker 1 35:54

If you desert diamonds or something about diamonds in the desert. Right on, okay, yeah yeah, thank god, I feel like we are archivists, renee, even though we it's a subjective version of events. Thank god for us.

Speaker 2 36:06

I'm kidding, we are archivists of history, oral histories, in some cases, you know you know, if I felt like I had to then for the family and now I had to do it for me, um, but this whole structure thing and so that's what inspired me becoming a grandma got my ass back in the chair because after creativity conundrum I said I'll never write another book. So then I started writing this during nanoriMo and I was just writing vignettes of how I felt about SEMA and I thought, after reading this book on structure it was called Meander Spiral Explode by Alison something, and it was all about the kind of books that don't have the Aristotelian structure where you know climaxes and denouements, there's no rising action, it's just little vignettes. And then the writer, the reader, puts it all together and has an experience and everybody's will be different. And then I read a bunch.

Speaker 2 37:04

Like there's this lady, allie Smith, and if you get through one of her books you want to give yourself a prize. I mean it's dense and crazy, weird, and some of her books this last one that she published that I never got through she let the printer print in any way, like every chapter could be in any. So they have like 10 different books, let's say 10, maybe there's five. They all have chapters in different orders, and who knows which one you're going to pick up interesting.

Speaker 2 37:36

Yeah, that's a fascinating experiment it was yeah, I never got through it. To be honest, I didn't want to go that crazy but, I knew that I didn't want to do um, I didn't want to write a book, I wanted to write vignettes. But then, once I got into grandpa and grandma's story again, I had to, and so we did the structure over and over and over. Literally the last 18 months is when I wrote the book and I've been working on it for over five and a half years.

Speaker 2 38:02

So the first, however many years, that is, or months, was structure.

Speaker 1 38:06

I kid you not well, and you've said that's what made you cry regularly. So I just want to pursue this a little bit, because what you're describing is exists in all formats and genres, all art forms. You have linear and you have non-linear, and sometimes that equates with a commercial approach versus an artistic approach, right? So what is artistic merit? Well, it's completely personal and it doesn't have any fucking rules. So we call that in film. That's an experimental, that's an art film. That's an experimental film very, you know, in the line. It's in the eye of the beholder sometimes, but it's a gamut from commercial and that could incorporate the traditional Western storytelling structure and all the you know, the want and the need and the plot points and the conflict and the escalation and all those terms we learned in elementary right. It exists in all art forms. I've used tori amos as the example of you don't know what the fuck she's talking about, and yet it resonates, and yet it resonates. So thank god she's got record labels that believe in her and her strong loyal following. They know it's never going to be a top 10 hit or a number one hit, but it's called art for art's sake.

Speaker 1 39:14

So my question to you is this like I think writing should be joyful. I mean mean I think you can access darkness, of course. You can tell the good, the bad and the ugly. It can be cathartic, you embrace the shadow in your process. But for me I really value that. It's joyful that I'm not beating my head against a wall for structure or format or commercial concerns. Fuck that shit. Life is way too short.

Speaker 1 39:41

So I do wonder if you ever took an editor's advice that was more commercial. Did you end up liking it more, did you see? Ooh, now it's going to impact readers emotionally and that's called growth for me as a writer. I'm asking leading questions here, but sometimes when uh, if it's not at the risk of my voice, if an editor makes a decision and I'm fighting it tooth and nail and then I do it, I'm like, oh my god, I'm so glad I did it. I just grew as a writer. When you get out of your comfort zone, even if your comfort zone is lofty, do you know what I mean? Like artistic merit or literary value or whatever? It's always growth when you get into uncomfortable territory. So, after you beat your head against the wall about structure, were you glad you did it?

Speaker 2 40:23

Well, it's exactly what you said. I agreed because I didn't want to. I didn't want to, I didn't want to, and then I went okay, I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it exactly the commercial way, because these people can help me get published and these people know what they're talking about. These people make their living writing. I can do this, I can do this. I can do this. Couldn't do it.

Speaker 1 40:41

Oh, so you never did take the advice.

Speaker 2 40:44

Well, I tried, I wrote 180 pages and fucking threw it away.

Speaker 1 40:48

Well, are they genre writers or do they consider themselves literary authors?

Speaker 2 40:54

They were more commercial and they wanted to see the whole world know the story. It is a great commercial and they wanted to see the whole world know the story. It is a great story and they wanted the most people to read it as possible right.

Speaker 1 41:03

But that's why I'm asking, because it's a very clear division. It's called commercial fiction or literary fiction and I I think there's a melding for sure. You know there's matters of degrees, but traditionally right, it's kind of one or the other well and that, and that's why there was a lot of.

Speaker 2 41:21

I wouldn't have the book in my hand right now 360 pages. I wouldn't have it in my hand right now if it wasn't for Jay Langley, who believed in it, and Nev March. I wouldn't have it because we spent tons of time on Zoom and they made me believe in the story and they really tried to help me get it in the kind of shape that would make it commercial.

Speaker 1 41:41

And.

Speaker 2 41:42

I said I was going to do it and I tried, and I tried and I finished the book and I just I had moments where it was joyful, but I was fulfilling an assignment and trying to be a good growing. I was trying to grow but in the end I thought, if I look at this book that got published and it's on the shelf somewhere and I meet, what if I even make money from this? This is not me.

Speaker 1 42:06

I love it, I'm 60 years old.

Speaker 2 42:08

I need to be me, so it's.

Speaker 1 42:10

The word I should have said earlier was authentic. You can't not be authentic. You don't have an inauthentic bone in your body. So don't have an inauthentic bone in your body. So I love that and maybe that what I'm saying is there's value in your challenges as an artist, right, and there's growth to be had. And so maybe your learning curve was yeah, I need to be true to myself, whether it's voice or intention. Always need to be true to myself because, yeah, I don't want to have regrets later. I want to be able to live with myself if it gets out there, all of that.

Speaker 2 42:38

Yeah Well, and the truth is, obviously I've been working on something like this, even though it was like germinating inside the dark where we didn't know if it was going to be a baby. I didn't know what it would be, but I've been working on it since I was a young woman and something this sacred to me. I had to make it more poetic for myself. I'm a poet. I couldn't throw the poetry out. I couldn't do it so. But you know my new editor also, as brilliant as she is and smart as she is, she liked everything. I'd go what if I do it this way? And she'd go, yeah, I like it, and then I go, that's not working. What if I do it this way? And she'd go, yeah, I like it, and then I go, that's not working. What if I do it this way? She liked it all, and then she finally stopped me and said you've got to land on a structure so we can, you know, get you going here. And so we finally landed on one and I think I made it work.

Speaker 2 43:32

And then Jim Urbanovich read it and he was like uh-uh. So I took all of his advice and I rearranged the vignettes and I tried to put some transitions in and I took out the full articles, because I had full articles from the 1940s and 50s. I had the full article, and that's not literature. That's what I was told. Okay, you're right, I guess I was lazy, but I find it interesting to sit and read the whole article. My god, did we really think this way is? Are we kidding here? But so I had. I had to then edit those, which was not unjoyful. So once I finally got the structure, it was joyful, um, but I ran out of gas so many times and thought I don't need to finish it. I've had my fun, it's been fun.

Speaker 1 44:19

well, I do think maybe you can't put everything and the kitchen sink in there, right? So they call it killing your babies. So I do feel like maybe realizing oh, maybe that article belongs in the appendix and not the body of the story, because it takes you out or it slows down the escalation of the plot or one of those silly things. You know, there's some wisdom to that and that's why we get feedback. You can't please all the people all the time and that might not be your goal.

Speaker 1 44:50

I regularly say you could have an elitist goal of speaking to a few people that are cultured and educated and sophisticated. Or you can say I want to speak to the masses. It sounds very elitist, but you do have readership in mind. I don't know that there's any way around that, and so sometimes you get feedback so that you know if your intention is going to land with five people. Or you know what I mean everybody. Yeah, I don't think it was a bad thing that you left out, because it could really slow down the plot to include every single article. Or we talked about the mojave phone booth letters that came in.

Speaker 2 45:18

Yeah, yeah, the 2,300 words of just letters.

Speaker 1 45:21

Yeah, those are going to go in the appendix.

Speaker 2 45:23

But, like Jim even said, um, cause you know he's a professor and he corrects people's speeches and wants to know what's your intention, what's your thesis, how are you going to support that? What's your transition? He likes really clear cut stuff and, um, and he really likes the story too. But he really needed more from me and there was a point where I was like, no, I'm, I'm not doing that. I have to do the way I see it. You're not my audience. And so he says who is your audience? He always asks me like, do you want? Is this just for your family? And I'm like hell to the no, my family knows the story. They don't need me to retell the same story that we've all been living. This is, this is I want.

Speaker 2 46:00

I wanted to write something beautiful and it's my. I didn't want it to be my life's work, but you know it, it's coming, not to use the metaphor of the mind, but I'm mining the deepest jewels in my dna, in my soul. It's, it's so rich. So I had to enjoy it and and I know that because I read Ocean Vuong and Ali Smith and whatever her name is, who wrote the Chronology of Water, I mean, I read a lot of experimental stuff. I know that there's a very small niche audience that will like this. That happens to be a grandma or a mom or just somebody like you know my first writing teacher, floyd, who enjoys, you know, women's literature, um, because of the art.

Speaker 1 46:44

So I know it's a boutique. Is that still a thing, a boutique book?

Speaker 2 46:50

um, you know, maternally yours, my first book maternally ours was a boutique book that's where I got the term from.

Speaker 1 46:56

Yeah, anyway, a niche, right, maybe more niche and it could be a literary niche. So I'm glad you were true to yourself and the result is fucking amazing. So, whoever it reaches and I don't know that, you know they say in art you shouldn't concern yourself with outcome, meaning you shouldn't write for your listenership or your readership or whatever the art form is. But in a way there's no way around it, right? You do think about who might be reading this later and I think it's a huge concern. Is it to archive for the family? Is it meant to resonate with family? And even a David Sedaris, I've been burned by writing about real people, you know, and you just always have to concern yourself with that. But I think you hit a balance on all of those fronts, just personally. So, yeah, it's, it's really beautiful. That's a great word, it's achingly beautiful and for me it's transformative. It was heavy. I mean, it was a very heavy reading experience, but I needed that, I needed a good cry and it was very cathartic. So, anyway, we're all kind of all over the place, maybe not, but in the interest of again catering to listeners who might not know as much as we do.

Speaker 1 48:04

One of my rote questions is not just how did you approach these years of research, because we've kind of covered that, but were there any surprises in doing the research? We had an author called Tong Ge on, and you've talked a little bit about this too. Like one family member said, hey, you should include this. You didn't say anything about this anecdote or this folklore, this family folklore, and you can't include everybody's stories or, please, everybody all the time. But she did say you know she struggled a little bit with telling the truth, her truth, with everybody else having opinions about how history went down. Yeah, so anyway, any surprises in your research and any anything you, I guess, any surprises along the way as your story evolved, because I know it did evolve well, in the early days it's.

Speaker 2 48:52

you know, in the early days when I was going through everything that grandpa had um where I still in the same house from 30 years ago and the entire living room was full of cardboard boxes and so I chose to go through each cardboard box and buy an archival, safe plastic box to put paper inside to keep the rat shit out. And when I was going through all of his writing and all of his journals I did find some surprising stuff about him not talking to his brother and I was completely devastated and crushed that someone in my family didn't speak to his brother and that his brother-.

Speaker 1 49:34

For how long?

Speaker 2 49:35

Oh God, 30 years, I don't know, forever. Until one of them died, obviously, yeah yeah, and so that kind of a personal surprise for me I I had to fight not to lose respect, for, I mean, we worshiped grandpa well, the gypsy I.

Speaker 1 49:55

I think of him as um wuthering heights, heathcliff, yeah.

Speaker 2 50:13

Nick, your microphone cut out. Wait, how about now? I hear something. Hello, there, I hear you.

Speaker 1 50:22

I hear you. Okay, I'm gonna have to edit that.

Speaker 1 50:24

Unfortunately, it is my mic, my back yeah, it's your back okay, well, I'm not sure what cut out, but I know, I know a lot of grandpa's brothers and sisters, but there was one that wasn't talked about. Right, there's always the one that's not talked about. And I did learn there was one that wasn't talked about. Right, there's always the one that's not talked about. And I did learn he was filthy rich. Mom actually asked him for a loan for her first car when her and dad first got married and he had ties with that seal beach beach club. Do you know that story?

Speaker 2 50:54

No, oh, mom had a postcard of this amazing beach club that's not there anymore.

Speaker 1 50:56

Put it this way there was a lot of money there. This amazing beach club that's not there anymore. Put it this way there was a lot of money there. That's the one that's not talked about, and I call him Heathcliff because he's darker than the others and he looks like he wandered into the family photo. Is that the one you're talking about?

The Caregiver's Burden and Legacy

Speaker 2 51:12

I'm pretty sure it was him and basically you know now that I'm a grown adult and he and I see grandpa, he was such a character, he was a dreamer and he had all these ideas and you know, all these entrepreneurial things, but he didn't have the money to do it, so he borrowed from his brother, and then he borrowed from his brother again, and then, and of course, his brother finally just was like dude, we're done lending you dreamer money.

Speaker 2 51:35

So I can see that now, but when I was 30, I was horrified and I felt like my world came crashing down because we did worship grandpa. And then to see some of the letters that were not kind to my grandpa and to see him as a person who might have had struggles and problems. You know, you spend your 20s learning that your parents are real humans and then you learn that your grandpa was a real human, so that was one of the surprises they're dimensional, they're right yeah, they're people, they're just you know, they're just not.

Speaker 2 52:06

yeah, so then the other surprise would just be when I um was researching like the atom bomb, and I was reading, you know, old articles and stuff, um, because I'm not smart in the history department but it was fun to go into the history of, of everything that's in that book there's. It's not just about mining, you know, the mining is probably the least interesting to me, to be honest.

Speaker 1 52:30

It's a great metaphor, though it's such a metaphor. Anyway, go on.

Speaker 2 52:34

It is no. Anyway, those were my surprises, just like how we as a collective viewed certain things, Like even I didn't understand the difference between Republicans and Democrats up until you know, three years ago, and I'm just learning now and you helped me understand that it's called a bait and switch.

Speaker 1 53:01

So I was learning.

Speaker 2 53:01

Yeah, the government was there for you in the beginning and then the government turned on them.

Speaker 1 53:04

Yeah, well, I would say the platforms have completely flopped right. Grandma and grandpa were democrats, right, and actually everything is bass backwards now. So let's not get too into that. But you know, the platforms changed and so, yes, the changed. It was a bait and switch in that homesteading was encouraged right, and, by the letter of the law, if you went and staked those claims and you kept them current, they encouraged the westward movement, right, and they had something to gain from it. The moment, like right, the conspiracy theorists in our family would say that the moment they wanted to hoard the resources for themselves. Oops, we didn't mean that Swipe of a pen.

Speaker 2 53:42

Yeah.

Speaker 1 53:42

Is that what you mean by the bait and switch?

Speaker 2 53:43

Yes, that's exactly what I mean. And you're right, everyone was a Democrat. Now they're not all Democrats anymore, they're like Republican. And so for me I had to say, how can I tell a story that is not political? Because I don't want certain ecologists coming after me saying, well, of course you shouldn't rape the earth, right? I don't want that. My girlfriend, andrea her daughter is um a lawyer in in that era, the ecology, you know, and in the earth and in resources, and I don't, I didn't want to touch that so well there on this podcast we see there are human issues that transcend politics.

Speaker 1 54:22

period Humanistic values that transcend politics. Does that sound right?

Speaker 2 54:26

Yeah, and I was thinking, you know, if this was written by a journalist who was into journalism and wanted to do all the secret interviewing and all the research, they'd have a field day with. You know the politicians that stalled you know Barbara Boxer and her husband and Mary Martin, a real journalist, would have a field day with this. But I told myself my audience is going to be moms and grandmas like me that are going to skip over anything that gets too over their head, because I skip over that shit too.

Speaker 1 54:58

So there is a strong sorry to interrupt you, but I do think there's. You know the David and Goliath image in court there's a. For me there was a strong theme of injustice and then I realized, oh, but it's kind of metaphorical for just being robbed of your legacy. You know everything. Life takes things from you. What do you, what do you do with that?

Speaker 2 55:21

you know but if I had gone too journalistic with it and made it like a kind of like a murder mystery?

Speaker 2 55:28

you know, a whodunit you know different readership entirely I could have done that because it's, and I could have taken a side. You know, like the like, whatever, who cares? But there there's so much about the mojave phone booth and about the mine for someone to go crazy with and that's why the story is so interesting. And there's something called um in aristotelian. In aristotle's tragedies it starts with a p, like peripetis or something, where the it's tragic irony, where the one thing that brought them fame is the one thing that destroyed them. It is. It's just amazing that this really happened. You can't make, you can't make that shit up. It really happens. And so I wanted to do the literary thing with that and then have the hero to do the literary thing with that and then have the hero, you know, and then the tragedy, and I wanted all of it. But I didn't want to get too into the like, you know, like the journalist would.

Speaker 1 56:28

No, I got you and I think you have a great balance because it is intriguing. You can't make that shit up and I think the reader, whether they're immersed in politics or not, whether they know, do you know what I mean? A precious metal from tin or aluminum, you know? They know nothing about mining. You tell us just enough to intrigue and kind of. You know, my feathers kind of ruffled a little bit and so that is intrigue.

Speaker 1 56:55

But more importantly, I life is amazing and it's inherently symbolic. That's why I'm a storyteller. There's so much symbolism around us all day, every day. So you read it and you're like, oh my God, I never really made the connection that Bobby and mom and probably at least one other sibling did end up with cancer. Did she have cancer? Okay? And you're like, oh my God, and it's right there, that's a historical, cautionary tale right there, so many things. When you juxtapose it with history, whether it's typhoid right or polio, which two of the characters went through, you really align it with history in a way where you go life is amazing and our micro reflects our macro thematically always. I don't know if that makes sense.

Speaker 2 57:43

No, it does, and in fact you had asked me what my surprises were.

Speaker 2 57:55

I think that that's what just made it all so crazy and surprising is all the metaphors and how you can't make this up. I'd be up like at midnight just sitting there crying Like what did I just find here? Like when you were reading, and that's what I wanted to get there, because I wanted to get it in the book that this is 100 years we're talking about, from 1920 to 2023. It's 103 years. And look how the culture has changed and how we view things. So I'm glad you got it. You hit everything that I was insecure about. You spoke to everything. Each time that you would send me your feedback.

Speaker 2 58:34

I was so relieved because I knew that everything had a function and a reason, but I didn't know if somebody was going to get that or go. Why the hell is this in there?

Speaker 1 58:43

No, I think I mean without. I think it's really, um, what do you call it? Like, uh, reductive to say, oh, it's life affirming. But that's kind of what we're talking about, right? I think great literature puts you in touch with the inherent meaning in life and I feel like it did speak to me. I can't you know, it's going to be projection. I'm just like everybody else. I've got my own worldviews and opinions and I probably projected all over it, but I'm glad that I seem to be in line with your intention a little bit, you know, and you, you, you totally validated all my doubts.

Speaker 2 59:24

And, um, I mean first of all, the first beta reader, my friend Floyd. He got through it in four days because I just felt like nobody can read this, it's too much. I was just in a panic that it was too much. And no, it's not too much, but in four days it was not a heavy journey, it was a great read, don't worry. And then you read it and you got every single thing that I put in there that I was hoping would land, every single thing. You didn't miss one thing and um, so I feel like all that hard work in structuring right and in choosing the function of each scene. So, as a writer, who you know how lonely writing is and how hard it is, I felt, okay, all of that work was worth it, I you know, and and so it did all come together.

Speaker 1 1:00:03

I'm very proud of it and you should be, and I and I do think the hard work we don't see it. That's the beauty. So, again, the non-linear presentation, I did go back. Okay, you and I know each other so well, we try to put on another hat and go. I'm going to try to read this objectively, like a viewer who doesn't know Renee, like the back of my hand, right, we both are pretty good at that, and so I did that on first read and I again don't even want to be analytical, I just want to experience the story. Later I'm going to, as you said, you reread the secret and you're like, oh, now I see, you know that was happening in his life and that's why he wrote that. It wasn't so much the case for me.

Speaker 1 1:00:43

But I did go back and really appreciate your strategic structure because I experienced it in such a non-linear, impressionistic way that, like I said, accessed parts of me that were unexamined. But then you're like she's a fucking genius because it's all by design and, yes, with some coaching, but I do think a little bit of information there. And then the next scene, whether it's a letter or I loved the imagined conversations with the matriarch, your grandmother. I loved those imagined conversations. But even. As you know, I sent you my breakdown of the structure for the first chapter. I couldn't do that for the whole book, but I was pretty sure I have that my hunches were correct and whether it was examined or unexamined on your part, even I was like, oh, she dropped this bit of information here. Then, wow, magically or strategically, who the hell knows she then dropped this and we're subconsciously connecting the dots and the groundwork is being laid for a huge emotional payoff. Now it sounds so commercial when I say this no, no, in fact that's what I wanted.

Speaker 2 1:01:48

I wanted a huge emotional payoff and I didn't want everybody to have to muddle through confusion. Um, like I, like you know it is hard. It's. If you're not a literature person, of course it's going to be like what's going on here. But when you just, it is hard If you're not a literature person, of course it's going to be like what's going on here. But when you just read it and you let it all fall into place and then, like you said earlier, the puzzle pieces kind of come together, and so for structure alone, it would be worth reading. And you know, the first book I wrote, I wanted it to be for college courses, for women's studies, because I've I collaged the hell out of that.

Speaker 1 1:02:20

Silence broken right.

Speaker 2 1:02:21

Yeah, Silence broken. It's all about, um you know, women's rights and abortion and forced motherhood, voluntary motherhood.

Speaker 1 1:02:30

Very relevant right now, by the way, very relevant.

Speaker 2 1:02:33

Yep, and so I wanted it to be studied. And so I feel like, as a literature person, if, if someone can get through it and feel emotionally, um, connected to their own legacy and their own humanity, there's my, it's good, but for structure, it it can be studied. Um, you gave me confidence in that because we worked hard on this. We did, I'm just but the beauty?

Speaker 1 1:02:57

the beauty is you.

Speaker 2 1:02:57

you don't see all the hard work behind the scenes, and that's what I learned too that the there's a saying that says hard writing makes easy reading.

Speaker 1 1:03:06

I love that. I love it.

Speaker 2 1:03:08

Is it Hemingway Some?

Speaker 1 1:03:09

I don't know, but I will say it's very different than silence broken, the voice, the, you know what I mean. The technique, the voice, the format, all of it is very different, super different yeah.

Speaker 2 1:03:19

Yeah. So, and as I was going to say earlier, I don't know an hour ago, long time ago, I said I it's not like I've published 20 books, and my point in that is you're allowed to break the rules after you've followed them a good long time. Like, if I had eight novels you know, fiction, literary novels under my belt, then I would, I would absolutely go let's just do whatever the hell you want with this, but I don't, and so I've. I've only really written, um, one big short like a novelette, novelette and and one novel, and the other book is a nonfiction and the other book is memoir and the other book is poetry and the other book is short story collection. So I've never really really um, earned the right to break all the rules and so, but I felt like I had to put grandpa's writing in there.

Speaker 1 1:04:08

I had I want to.

Speaker 1 1:04:10

You know, a lot of our listeners are writers, or we imagine they are, or creatives certainly creatives, and, as we know, there's so many parallels in all the different genre, genres and formats of expression, and so I'm glad we're getting into this writer's perspective a little bit.

Speaker 1 1:04:26

You know, I think it'll be of value to some people. But for me what I hear is like you know, there's garage bands that hardly know how to play the instrument that they pick up and, um, they make it big and it's so raw, right, that it doesn't even the rules don't apply, because they were meant to express themselves for the benefit of everybody else and you can't even have a conversation about technique. Yeah. And then there's people that, yeah, school fucks them up, you know, like maybe they had a real direct talent for one thing and maybe a real desire to express themselves and an innate understanding of what it serves the collective. But then you get confused in school when all these rules are imposed on you. Yeah, then one hopes the rules become second nature and you just tap back into that desire to express yourself that you had initially right somewhere in there, so like an ocean vuong.

Speaker 2 1:05:22

He was pretty young, right, when he wrote that novel yeah, I want to say 20, some 21, I don't know so I just say thank god for all of it.

Speaker 1 1:05:30

There's people that get completely stifled by technique or academics, you know, and then they finally find their voice. After all that mileage you're talking about, right, you only get to break the rules once you've applied them or observed them, maybe not, maybe right. There's people that just come straight out the gate with a rawness and it's a gift to everybody else and they probably shouldn't go to school.

Speaker 2 1:05:56

It's funny because now Ocean Vuong teaches at the top colleges school.

Speaker 1 1:06:01

Yeah, it's funny because now Ocean Vuong teaches at the top colleges and he articulates his process very much.

Speaker 2 1:06:04

You know it may not be commercial, but it's he can articulate it, yeah, and I bet he's a really good teacher because he he could only be true to himself. So that that's what I learned to do on. This is just to be true to my own vision. If nobody else wants to read it, I I'm pleased with it.

Speaker 1 1:06:17

Well, that's what I was hearing, though. Like you are prolific, you write a lot, you've done the work, but you're precious about what you put out there. Does that make sense? Like the work is all there, you get to break the rules, but you haven't squandered anything. You've been authentic all the way along, and so the work is behind the scenes, in my opinion. And so the work is behind the scenes in my opinion.

Speaker 2 1:06:38

Well, it would be fun to be a writer that could write commercially and make money. That would be nice. But that's not me. I can't do it.

Speaker 1 1:06:48

Well, I'm just saying the mileage is there. You're prolific, there's a lot of mileage, but you don't squander it by writing pulp. You know you're very precious about what you feel represents you.

Speaker 2 1:07:00

I don't know maybe I'm completely off base. Well, I think it's because I have no, you're not, you're absolutely right. And when I finally am inspired and I have that calling I hate to be geeky about it, but I have a calling, I have to do it and I would not give this up. I have to finish it. I have to finish it and, to be honest, um, you know, I had back surgery in 2016 from compressed bulging discs and so the last three weeks I would not get up, I just kept writing and I my back is out again because I sat for three weeks to finish, finish, finish, finish, finish, and now my back is mad at me but going to be fine. But that's how.

Speaker 2 1:07:41

And I don't have ADHD and I don't have ADD and I don't have OCD, but I just had to finish it because I wanted to move on. And now I'm looking back and you read it and I just feel like I've done that whole creative circle. I got some feedback, I followed the inspiration and then I just used my skill for execution and I didn't squander anything. As you said, because I'm so limited, the hours that I spend writing are limited most of the time. Obviously, the three weeks I spent writing. I had some time, but um most of the time I don't.

Speaker 1 1:08:18

Well, which leads me to if you feel like you've completed that circuit, what are your plans for it? You said it's not necessarily for family that there's some value to the collective. Not putting words in your mouth. Do you have distinct plans for it or just going to let it land as it lands?

Speaker 2 1:08:35

Well, I have hopes for it. I feel like I didn't go into the full caregiver mode, but I feel like it's a, the book is a nod to caregivers and they're the unsung heroes of everybody's end of life. So I looked it up and there's a few books already a memoir as well as um, non-fiction as well as um. Just, you know stories and ali smith had one um where the guy was, uh, in the rehab and the, the young woman, came to visit him all the time and you got from his perspective. He was dement, he had dementia and she would write entire chapters of his dementia and where he was going and what he was doing. And he was on an island and it was crazy. So there are books out there, but I felt like this gave it some feet, some legs. So I would like for it to be published with a small publisher and you know they could make a Netflix series out of it.

Speaker 1 1:09:34

Oh yeah.

Speaker 2 1:09:36

Great story. I didn't make it up. I did not make it up, but if it ever got any eyeballs on it and somebody felt like this could be a great series for netflix, they could do it. And who's more interesting than fay and emerson?

Speaker 1 1:09:50

yeah, there's a lot of characters in this book that you can't make up. Right, the desert rats, a lot of the desert rats, and right. Anyway, you kind of answered two questions there, because my other question was um, without issuing any spoilers, what is the main takeaway? So I love that it's an ode to caretakers because you know, as you know, we've talked about the salt of the earth, like, yeah, it is a gift and I've had my own experience and I've said regularly doctors treat, nurses, heal. It's such a gift. But I will say that was the heaviest part of the reading, was really getting the nitty gritty, the daily grind of what you were put through. Do you want to talk a little bit about the caregiving? I don't know if we, in the interest of keeping everybody up to speed, we might have to do another episode on this because we didn't really get into many specifics. Can you talk about your experience of caregiving and maybe how it puts you in touch with legacy and a desire to document that legacy?

Speaker 2 1:10:49

Sure. So basically, I'm telling the story that my grandma never told because she wasn't the type a story that my grandma never told because she wasn't the type. So I'm telling her story and it's because she slipped away already. And now my mom has dementia and she's in bed, she's literally bedridden. And now I want to tell, tell her story because I should have done it when she was alive and I didn't. And I'm slipping away. I have, you know, I'm getting older and I'm, you know, I got some issues, so I feel this need to tell it. And so you get my literal diary entries of me taking care of my mom, which includes, you know, diapers and stuff.

Speaker 1 1:11:32

Really hard to read, renee. That I mean I knew it in theory and I wondered what it was, if it was taking its toll on you, if you were finding the gift or the spiritual riches and such a grueling experience. But when I read it I'm like oh my God. And then you add dad's quirks into it. I'm like, oh my God, I can't believe she didn't jump out the window.

Speaker 2 1:11:50

Yeah, it's really hard to read. Yeah, had I not had the babies who were, I was also caregiving for them. My baby sat like three days a week, so I was just in that sandwich as you called it, the sandwich generation and I would come home and I had a ton of support. I mean, everyone supported me in this house. Jim was so good to me, everybody supported me and I had the luxury of having two subcontractors cover my studio for me and they did the work of paying for the caregivers. So it's not like I had to work extra hours to pay for the other caregivers. My subcontractors paid for them. So it was. It was beautifully like that. But you're getting my literal journal entries, um, and my poems about my mom and letting go, and so that goes through the whole story. And then my I'm struggling with I never wanted to be a caregiver. This, this is not me, this is not me.

Speaker 2 1:12:45

I don't want to do this, but I know as an artist and as a deeply spiritual person, there's gotta be beauty in it, and I tell you, I couldn't find it until. I finished the book that I found.

Speaker 1 1:12:56

It took me a long time and finish the book that I found it took me a long time. Well, that's the beauty, right? That's the catharsis we talk about when we say writing you find a policy for your life, right? You find it by digging in the dirt and sifting through it. So I love that for you. You know, I mean life will continue to have challenges, but I feel like maybe you're closing a chapter, but I do want to go into that a little more the sandwich generation thing, because we do have to bring this to a close at some point. But that's maybe one area we can dive into a little bit. When I read it, I you can tell me if I'm right or wrong, but I think you know, in the notes that I provided you, we discussed it enough. I think I'm right.

Speaker 1 1:13:38

You know you didn't want to be a caregiver and you addressed that in your TEDx talk. Like this is my new shameful identity. There was some shame around it, actually. But more to the point, I feel like you. I call it future regret mitigation. You did your duty as a good daughter, right? And sadly, women tend it tends to fall on women. Eleni became the caretaker for her aging parents.

Speaker 2 1:14:00

Hands down. That's right, no option. There's no conversation. Eleni had to care for her, right yeah.

Speaker 1 1:14:07

Tends, especially in certain ethnic cultures. It falls on the women, but anyway. So there's a huge theme of female socialization and that being a thread that's passed down. But more than that, I think here you know the sandwich generation idea. I think your goal, you want it to be as graceful about it as grandma, right? We all know she cared for her literally invalid mother I am using outdated terms, but her probably quadriplegic mother and then literally, you know, raised four or five kids, I think five, one that died I mean a lot of hardship, right one that died and then changed grandpa's diapers when it came his time. So her whole life was devoted to caregiving.

Speaker 1 1:14:49

Seemed like you wanted to honor that legacy and be just as graceful. She never complained, our mom, never, never. And so you found yourself ooh, I've got regrets and resentments and complaints and it's messy, right, and so I'm letting you off the hook going. It's called the challenges of being all things to all people. Being a woman in the world is very different than it was back then. You got to balance the career and the family. So to me that was the major conflict, like what it is to be, you know, be the matriarch, and I loved the parallel between caring for a child and caring for an aging parent. Yeah, that was throughout Life is amazing. But anyway, do you want to talk to that theme a little bit about how the modern context makes maybe makes the caregiving a little more complicated?

Speaker 2 1:15:35

Yeah, and that's why you did give it such a good read, because I could. You know JJ could read it and she knows me really well and she's also a woman and you know she knows the life of you know making, doing dishes and making dinner and it's, it's. But you really got it. You gave it a really good read Cause I only mentioned I probably only have six mentions in in the in you know know, 360 pages of what you just said the regrets, in other words the shame of of being pissed off and bawling my eyes out on the way home and being disgusted by what I had to do and not having grace for my poor dad.

Speaker 2 1:16:13

And what is the matter with me? Am I just elitist, white, privileged woman?

Speaker 1 1:16:18

why woman why?

Speaker 2 1:16:18

can't I? And then, as I pieced it all together, I said wait a minute, Wait a minute here. Mom was retired when she took Grandpa in. She wasn't running a studio and nor did she have grandchildren staying with her.

Speaker 1 1:16:31

Oh, wait a minute.

Speaker 2 1:16:33

You know times were different when Grandma was raising kids. Wait just a minute so you can see that I have those epiphanies, so I do let myself off the hook a little bit. But yeah, I grappled with shame nonstop that I couldn't handle it.

Legacy of Love Through Loss

Speaker 1 1:16:51

Yeah, it's not everywhere, but I think throughout. Juxtaposition implies that theme, right, but then it also fits into the theme of the entire world has changed, right. So the bait and switch idea, and now the rules are flopped, you know. And so I just think it keys into that idea that, yeah, society's always evolving, culture's evolving, humanity's evolving, and we just adapt, you know right, and that's the lichen Lichen adaptive, and that that actually came from a letter grandpa wrote to whoever.

Speaker 2 1:17:26

He said oh, I found lichen and I found out lichen can be asleep for 50 years or 5,000 years. We got to look at this. We could, we could sell these things and we could make money. And then when my um you know, my editor is from London. She lives in like the wet, you know, green, fertile fields of the countryside in London. She knows nothing about the desert, about the Mojave, about any of this. She doesn't even know the history, because she wouldn't.

Speaker 1 1:17:53

She wouldn't know, lichen, if it bit her in the ass.

Speaker 2 1:17:55

Right, well, this is weird. She, um, she's 30, 30, maybe between 30 and 35. She's young, so she also, you know, she'd ask me things like well, what did she ask the doctor when she went to the doctor? Nothing, she was. What do you mean? She didn't I go? What are you? You, you think that in the 30s and 40s, what people talk to their doctor and had a list of questions? No, you, just right ever. The doctor told you and you went home.

Speaker 1 1:18:20

Well, there was no internet to let you say you can't go to chat. Gpt and self-diagnose yeah no, no, so you're.

Speaker 2 1:18:26

If your doctor said, go have a glass of wine when you're pregnant, you went home and had a glass of wine so the the. The interesting thing is she's really, really literarily genius, but she hasn't lived in california, let alone the, let alone in the 30s and 40s and 50s and 60s and 70s. I mean, she's 30 something. So when she saw the lichen, she said oh, I went to a workshop on lichen, I go what?

Speaker 1 1:18:51

What.

Speaker 2 1:18:53

Yeah, that could be a theme I go really.

Speaker 1 1:18:55

Wow, oh, that's amazing that she pointed that out to you.

Speaker 2 1:18:58

I did not know that and so of course it it just was. It was already in the book, like four places, so I developed a theme out of it because but that's the magic when I say the organicness of the creative process.

Speaker 1 1:19:09

Like the universe hands you what's needed right at the precise moment if you're organic about your creative process, but you just have. I want to pursue this a little bit. I don't know if there's time, but, um, just the idea that the world changes and we can't not look through our contemporary, modern lens and project, like you know, why didn't she mistrust authority or ask the right questions of her doctor in a milieu where you just did what they told you. Like I will say, though, you made grandma more dimensional and she did consider I mean, this is a weird tangent, but she did consider, like, oh my God, should they really be looking at those mushroom clouds? That it was felt contemporary Like, oh my God, grandma did. I'm going to give her a little more credit now. Yeah, felt contemporary like, oh my god, grandma did. I'm gonna give her a little more credit now. Yeah, and you know, when I learned again a lenny, since I've already thrown her under the bus and I'm kidding- since I've always used her as an example.

Speaker 1 1:20:06

She wouldn't mind me saying this. You know, her parents were always seemingly very conservative greek orthodox from the old country. You marry greek orthodox and she found out in her 40s like they actually weren't married. And yeah, you know, they had a shotgun wedding. They had their first child out of wedlock, then had a shotgun wedding and just, they're more dimensional. Yeah, when I learned, I always thought mom was just kind of spiritually lazy. She would joke like if I ever went, took you guys to church for easter, it probably would get struck by lightning. So I just thought mom and dad were kind of just spiritually lazy. Well, I found out she went head to head with our Italian grandmother and said I will not baptize our first child Catholic. It was all by design, it was all calculated. I gave her so much more credit after that.

Speaker 1 1:20:53

So when yeah, sorry to repeat, no listeners haven't heard it but when I was reading this I did think well, grandma of course was a young lady at one time. Of course she had thoughts and opinions that she wasn't allowed to voice, but it doesn't mean she didn't question things or think about them. So the nuclear context is just one example of that. Of course she knew it wasn't right. So, again, sorry for the tangent, but I read 12 Years a Slave.

Speaker 1 1:21:20

But we tend to be apologists. I think all of us tend to be apologists in that we go well, you know they didn't know any better back then, or you know she was a product of her generation. How can we judge her through a modern lens If she was complacent and maybe looked the other way at cheating in her marriage? How do we her? Because you know that's, uh, it was a different time. Yeah, but after reading 12 years a slave again sorry for the tangent, but I walked away going nope, everybody knew better than slavery. They were betraying themselves by looking the other way. Because, for the almighty dollar, right? Yeah, and of course that's the case, because eventually you had people do the right thing and you had abolition right but you walked.

Speaker 1 1:22:04

It was so vivid and it was written by somebody that was sold into slavery for 12 years but already had writing skills and came out and wrote it. And it's so vivid and it's not in archaic language. It's felt like it was written yesterday. Wow, so that's why I walked away, going oh my god, it's not in archaic language, it's felt like it was written yesterday. Wow, so that's why I walked away, going oh my God, it's you. Should you walk away going? Nope, every, everybody knew better and everybody was betraying themselves. Yeah, so I don't know what that means, other than I liked that you humanized grandma, especially in the context of history and all the societal norms that would never fly today. Because you rethink everything, you and all the societal norms that would never fly today, because you rethink everything.

Speaker 2 1:22:42

You rethink all those stories. Yep, well, there was this thing that always happened between Madeline and I. Well, what was Faye thinking? I need more interiority from Faye as a character. I'm like, no, she didn't have any. You have to give her more interiority. I'm like she didn't have any.

Speaker 1 1:22:58

Well, yeah, she hummed, so she didn't have to give her more interiority. I'm like she didn't have any. Well, yeah, she hummed, so she didn't have to formulate her thoughts, right.

Speaker 2 1:23:03

But that's what caused me to go. Okay, be a woman in the desert alone, be lonely and be thinking like a 30-year-old or 25-year-old woman with three kids. Think about what grandma would say and I did steal some things from you like it's best not to talk about it you know, so a lot of those. What are they called aphorisms?

Speaker 1 1:23:25

affectations?

Speaker 2 1:23:26

oh, I don't know a dodge, a dadgy, a dage, adages, what is it called? Adages I'm so french.

Speaker 1 1:23:36

Yeah, a lot of those like can't be helped, can't be helped, oh, like colloquial, yeah, colloquial wisdom, yeah, she had a lot of those, yeah, but, but I mean yeah and but. I think that's testament to the fact that I was able to dismiss her as less than deep right, me too, through my lens, through my lens, yeah, but of course she's a thinker, we all, you know. I don't know it was easy for us to dismiss it through a modern lens, right, and I do think both, since we're talking about it they were so gracious and never complained because that's how they were socialized. And mom really valued the way she was raised. They all do to the point of having the stockholm syndrome, like even marnay being a little younger and growing up in the hippie generation sometimes, and she's more progressive and more liberal than most of our family, but she so loves and adores her parents and they're on such a pedestal that she'll hardly acknowledge alcoholism, for example. You know, and I think mom so revered the way she was raised that, in a very beautiful way, mom and grandma both wanted to make their children feel safe. Yeah, they couldn't live with themselves if they were anything less than the ideal mother saying all the things at all the right times.

Speaker 1 1:24:47

I baked you a Bundt cake. Do you know what I mean? Mom did it all right and I wanted more dimension, I wanted more humanism. I want I didn't want her to be my best friend. I knew that parents were parents, but I always kind of thought, ooh, she's why she's putting on the rose colored glasses and baking the bundt cake and saying the right thing is there's not much dimension to that. Does that make sense?

Speaker 2 1:25:07

Yeah. And yet then you know, after you suffer through this era where you think your mom might be superficial, then you find out that it was a spiritual practice that she had every day to wake up and say I have to do today better than I did yesterday. And she just really believed in the power of positive thinking. And she read you know the Zen of seeing. And she read you know, the alchemist and she, she. But she didn't brag about it, she didn't talk about it, she just lived it.

Speaker 2 1:25:33

Sorry, go ahead no just and that's part of the regret that I had too is judging her in her old age. And then you realize I judged her back when she couldn't sing and I judged her when she. You know, you just judge your mom.

Speaker 1 1:25:49

That's the hubris of youth, right, the hubris of youth. And in that I don't want to throw anyone under the bus, but I remember at a family get togethertogether, somebody asked it wasn't even a, an official game, it was just a conversation and somebody says well, do you feel like you're christ-like, or something like that, do you feel like you walk the walk, do you embody christ?

Final Thoughts on Family Memories

Speaker 1 1:26:11

and everyone was trying to know their limits, right, and mom was the only one that raised their hand yeah and a couple people scoffed like literally, like again, the church would collapse if you went in there and you smoke and all these things you know. But in the end it's like, yeah, she walks the walk. She's the most christ-like person I know, but it takes time to really see that. Anyway, I think your book does create some dimension in a good way. You might have had a little resistance, like no, that's not grandma's essence. She was more likely to hum and not think too deeply. But by humanizing her you kind of put us in touch with our hubris that we've got our lens. Every generation judges the former right.

Speaker 2 1:26:54

Yes, that's exactly right, you hit it, and if it weren't for Madeline, I probably wouldn't have gotten to show it. I would have to tell it. You know she was always saying show, don't tell, and so by giving her more interiority than I wanted to, then the reader can walk away with exactly what you're saying. Boy, have times changed?

Speaker 1 1:27:15

Beautiful. Do you want to talk about lichen before we bring this to a close? Is there anything more to say? Maybe here's one we could end on. You know, the mayan is such a beautiful image and you describe it as being epic, like the first time we're introduced to sima cinder, mine, which is the title. You talk about it as being epic. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but kind of looming, a looming presence, and you say, but especially on my soul, something like that. So it's a huge element in the book when we talk about this theme of legacy. And sometimes grandpa's dream seemed to be materialistic. Right, it's the reward, it's the big reward at the end of the road.

Speaker 1 1:27:55

I think, if you go to SEMA Dome, just just for our listeners, the whole horizon is huge. That's the most surreal thing about it to me is the dome is so immense and it's not going to blow. There's been some myths that it's due to blow. Yeah, not really, because, as you know, the sima cones are separate from sima dome itself, but it's a trip. Even the joshuas are sideways. So your whole equilibrium, in my experience your equilibrium is skewed. So there's just this feeling of eminence, right, eminence.

Speaker 2 1:28:23

Eminence, amen. I don't think I used that word. I'm going to put that in.

Speaker 1 1:28:27

You're welcome to it, but anyway. So do you want to talk about the theme of legacy, cause to me the whole takeaway was like legacy isn't always what you think, but maybe his really he did value. That very first poem from him makes it clear he values sticking to the pursuit of the dream at all costs, even if it doesn't pan out. Do you want to speak to that a little bit, cause it parallels Renee, the protagonist, the narrator's desire to leave a legacy as well.

Speaker 2 1:28:58

Yes, well, and that's the whole metaphor too, is I'm mining my memories and my soul and my heart for some kind of a jewel to help me, you know, go on in my life and to say what is legacy, what am I leaving to my grandkids, you know? And so the metaphor of mining people and grandpa being surrounded when he's in he's in bed for three years being surrounded by all his people, uh, the metaphor just never breaks down. It's from the end.

Speaker 1 1:29:31

Yeah, it's, there's a lot there, because loss plays into it too. Right, the more we lose and the more we see, not just like I mean. You and I. We lost our childhood home. The pine tree is still there with a scar. Right, yeah, we, we lost all the strongholds of our childhood. You know um, the nine mile canyon house is just a foundation now. Yeah, the hotel burned down again. Life is crazy.

Speaker 2 1:29:55

You can't make this shit up and that's why I had to tell it all, because I could have cut it all out and just made it about one thing. But Little Lake Hotel burned down, dunlivan burned down, the Joshua Forest burned down, the house we grew up in was torn down and the house that we spent the most time, kennedy Meadows, was torn down.

Speaker 2 1:30:14

So it is a memoir or a book about loss and how we can do that loss and what legacy is still there when everything disintegrates. What is still there? That's what it's about.

Speaker 1 1:30:25

It's haunting, yeah, because then you go to Alzheimer's when you're stripped of your personality and everything that identifies you, that distinguishes you from the rest of the not to get too metaphysical, but the quantum plane. Field, yeah, field, yeah, yeah, I mean it's haunting, anyway. So it is about legacy in the face of loss, what remains. That was in my little review. It's about what remains when everything's taken away.

Speaker 2 1:30:53

Yes, yes, yes, yes, and so I guess that's my takeaway is just that things are going to come, things are going to go. There's a lot of loss. Grandma had a lot of loss, we've had a lot of loss, but how do we come through it? And what remains is that legacy of love.

Speaker 1 1:31:11

Thank you, yes, yes yes, completely cliche.

Speaker 2 1:31:15

It's a legacy of love and I didn't repeat that once or twice.

Speaker 1 1:31:21

It is probably 50 times. Well, that was my main takeaway, without reducing it. I thought well, the legacy didn't pan out, but in the pursuit of it, therein lay the riches, and thank god, you know, and we didn't talk about this, but I saw dreamers and then really practical people that allowed the dreamers their luxury of dreaming, but thank God, they stuck to right. People like grandpa stuck to their guns because the family legacy created along the way and the love that exists I mean a lot of pieces are about. The only thing that is lasting is love. Right, your memories, your affinity, your fondness for all of this, you know.

Speaker 2 1:31:56

Oh, it's so sad. I mean just that one scene where I asked grandpa, you don't know who I am. Remember that scene. He goes, but I still feel so much love and I don't know where, who you are.

Speaker 1 1:32:06

But is that? And it's true? Yeah, and that one was a surprise to me. I was like whoa, that's powerful and I was young.

Speaker 2 1:32:14

That was before I became the menopausal, pushy Italian grandmother that I am today yeah, I look, thank you.

Speaker 1 1:32:22

I mean I love being privy to some of the things I didn't know and some of the private moments I couldn't have known about. And I will say, with mom, you know, we all tried to put on a good face and I even. You know. You know, fran, I have a friend that became paraplegic 20 years into our friendship and now she's been paraplegic for about 20 years and I always said I'm just going to treat her the same, that's what she would want and um. But so anyway, with mom, I felt like I don't like to speak, speaking to even grandpa like a child, like Connie's very good at treating him like a child and I was never going to do that. So with mom, I felt like I'm taking my cues from her, just like her breast cancer ordeal 40 years ago or whatever, 35 years ago, I'm going to take my cues from her.

Speaker 1 1:33:05

With the breast cancer I thought, hmm, this doesn't feel like the afterschool specials. Where are those moments where we all feel our feelings? She had such a positive attitude. It wasn't for me to turn into a weeping mess and say, but mom, you're going to die, like right. I think we all had the strength that she had. So there, those opportunities just never come.

Speaker 1 1:33:25

So with mom, I loved. She loved when I'd bring Bowie and every time, even if she probably didn't know who I was, she'd say where's the beastie? And then he would jump in the bed with her. She always remembered the beastie. So we're not the type of family to go. But, mom, do you remember me? What's my name? Mom? We weren't going to do that on video like people do, so I don't know if that makes sense. So I never felt my feelings because I was putting on a good face for her and talking to her like an adult. Even if she told a wacky story, I wouldn't blink, do you know? And you, you got a much more up close and personal experience with it all.

Speaker 1 1:34:00

But I will say this all of that fell completely apart when it was the week that we all made our peace with her right, and dad was, of course, when he gave her permission. That's when she finally went right. But I don't know if you have the same memory as I do. It seemed like all of us siblings on our own schedules. It wasn't the big kumbaya moment like it was with grandpa, but we all made our peace privately. Yeah, that was the moment where I just couldn't hide my tears and I just fell apart and I let her see it and I said things like don't worry, you're free to go. You know, don't worry about us, we'll be fine, you're free to go. And I gave her permission. But you may remember, it was in my tribute, not my eulogy, but my tribute. She said something almost like as lucid as what grandpa said to you, you know, but I feel the love and I go ahead.

Speaker 1 1:34:50

Do you remember what she said? I'll find you oh my god, I swear to god it's from a movie is so surreal, I can't believe. I said something like um, but we'll see each other again, or something, or I don't remember. I have to read the tribute. But I said how will you know? How will you? She said I'll find you and I go. How will you know? And she goes I know you like our souls.

Speaker 2 1:35:13

No one I love that so much, and the last thing she said to me. Her last words to you were I'll find you, and her last words to me were don't throw that away.

Speaker 1 1:35:26

That's in the book, right.

Speaker 2 1:35:27

Yes, it is.

Speaker 1 1:35:28

That is awesome, Like it should be a tribute to a hoarder. Well, and you didn't throw it away. You made a book out of it. How about?

Speaker 2 1:35:39

that, and if there there I did not, yes and if there are any listeners that want to become readers, then, um you know, maybe they'll find the same thing um their own humanity and how to get through loss and that little nod to caregiving and the legacy of love that is within every family, regardless of what the circumstances are or what era it is.

Speaker 1 1:36:02

Beautiful.

Speaker 2 1:36:03

Lasting.

Speaker 1 1:36:04

Yes, I hope. I mean thank you. It's a real gift to the rest of us. So thank you and I, everybody should be inspired to pick it up when it comes out.

Speaker 2 1:36:12

Thank, you for listening to my very intense process and thank you for reading it and thank you for having me on to just dialogue about it, because you know how you live it. It's just you live it, it's been very.

Speaker 1 1:36:24

You gotta enjoy it. Now that you you know it's not, I wouldn't say you need to. It doesn't have a bow on it yet, but I feel like you get to enjoy the moment.

Speaker 2 1:36:33

It's a huge undertaking and a huge accomplishment, so enjoy the moment and thank you for all your great feedback and for this little podcast where we could just you know go on forever. Yeah, thank you, nick.

Speaker 1 1:36:44

Okay, well, there could be a part two if there's themes we didn't get into although you don't want to analyze it and we didn't want to issue any spoilers, so, um, but I feel like if there is more to talk about, we can do a part two.

Speaker 2 1:36:56

I'm always down. This is so great. I love you so much. Thank you, Love you.

Speaker 1 1:36:59

Renee, thank you so much. Okay, bye-bye, okay, bye. And to our listeners, remember life is story and we can get our hands in the clay, individually and collectively. We can write a new story. See you next time.