rituals | Valya Dudycz Lupescu

Lights and Dreaming

Posted on 1 December, 2013

It’s 2am, and I’m putting lights and garland on the tree.

Earlier this evening, it was a mostly joyful and noisy team effort of uncovering boxes and assembling, and tomorrow, after breakfast, we’ll put on the bulk of the ornaments.

But right now, it’s blissfully quiet.

Everyone else is in bed. Loreena McKennitt is softly playing, I’m drinking eggnog, and I’m reminded of decorating the tree in my first Chicago apartment on Janssen Street in 1995.

That was the year I started my tradition of putting up the tree the weekend after Thanksgiving. I usually did it alone, with a glass of wine and Loreena’s To Drive the Cold Winter Away. My parents had given me their old Christmas tree, and I bought white lights and a few ornaments (most of which I still have and will put on the tree tonight). I decorated with red apples and cherries, pine cones, and faux crystal snowflakes and icicles.

I loved that tree.

I loved the moment of sitting on the couch in the dark when it was done, the room transformed. I dreamed big by the light of that tree.

It’s hard to believe that was almost 20 years ago.

I still love the ritual of decorating the house for the holidays, of creating a space for celebration. Including the kids has its own delight, and I especially enjoy having the house full of family and friends on the holidays.

But I cherish moments like this one–quiet, solitary times that allow me to reflect and remember. It’s good to be reminded of the young woman I was back then, to be reconnected with that romantic dreamer.

In the morning, I’ll put on my other hats; but for now, it’s just me and Loreena and the tree, a meditation on nostalgia and dreams.

Talismans

Posted on 20 February, 2013

Writers have creative and quirky rituals when it comes to working on our books. I find the routines fascinating. One writer I know creates complex collages on poster-board with mounted photographs of her characters and settings; another assembles diagrams of his plots posted onto the walls of his office.

Hemingway would get up with the sun and write until he had “said what he had to say,” and then he was done.

Wordsworth read everything he wrote aloud to his dog.

Nabokov wrote Lolita on index cards while standing up.

Before editing, Joan Didion would have a drink to remove herself from the pages.

E.B. White would write in the living room, in the middle of everything going on around him. He once wrote, “A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word on paper.”

I have a related interest in the places where other writers write. It’s one of the reasons I love Kyle Cassidy’s project Where I Write: Science Fiction & Fantasy Authors in their Creative Spaces.

Like E.B. White, for me that place is often in the middle of everything, although I do cherish the silence in the house when everyone has gone to sleep.

I have found that wherever I’m working, I like to anchor my book with a few objects that capture the spirit of my work-in-progress. For The Silence of Trees, my most important talisman was a small black rock I had picked up on the shore of Lake Michigan and carried with me everywhere while I was writing.

I started thinking about this because it’s time to clear off the space atop my desk where I assemble these objects, in preparation for a new book. Here’s a peek from my collection for The Supper Club: