Author Archives: dinafried

Grabbing the Stage

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A big part of who I am stems from the blessing and curse of coming from a musical family.

On my mother’s side, my grandfather, Pop-Pop, was a symphony violinist. He lived next door to us when I was a child and I spent many hours watching him frown at the full length mirror as he practiced, carefully positioning the bow and playing each note over and over until he got it exactly how he wanted it. From him, I learned the importance of striving for perfection, even though reaching for it might seem impossible.

My father’s mother’s family, the Glicksteins, were just as passionate in their love of music and equally accomplished in their ability to play from the heart. My great-grandfather Abe Glickstein, a clarinet player, was known for giving Sunday afternoon living room concerts featuring his seven talented children for his immigrant neighbors at the turn of the 20th century, and for offering the services of a three-man klezmer combo (him and his two sons) to the community if music was needed for a wedding or other simcha. These great uncles, Max and Dave, went on to have notable musical careers, while their sister, my Grandma Jeanne, made her living teaching piano and recorder, and running summer music programs to spread the joy that fueled her life.

The curse of this story, as I wrote about extensively in my yet-to-be published memoir, Imperfect Pitch, was feeling that I had some sort of impossible musical bar to live up to, and I didn’t have either the patience or or the desire that Pop-Pop had to spend agonizing hour after hour at my instrument to achieve it.

But the blessing, which I think comes at least in part from my family constellation, is a love of the stage. Not so much for musical performance, since I’m still not as confident as I might want to be in that area. But give me a podium, and I’m in my happy place, whether I’m reading my poems or stories, talking on a panel about some aspect of writing craft, recounting my witness trips to the border and the Homestead Detention Center, standing up impromptu in front of a group of protesters on the street, or teaching the basics of classical argument theory to a room of bored college students.

There is something so magical about being listened to.

So, I get how disappointed my three-year-old grandson Manu felt when his parents told him they were going to take him to see the Tokyo Paradise Ska Band, which he has been totally obsessed with for a year, but, no, he was going to be on the stage with them, as he enacts when he listens to the videos, donning his sunglasses and strutting around his stage set of stacked mats, toy saxophone in one hand, mic in the other.

Because even though a seat in the audience can be a safe place, a time to relax, reset, and feel comfortably anonymous, there is something about getting out there on stage that can add a bit of technicolor to our often muted sense of self. Even if the journey there might feel like you’re standing on a balance beam above a pot of boiling oil, as I know it does for many who experience very real stage fright.

If that’s your story, I recommend, as my co-facilitator and I taught for many years in a course we developed called Public Speaking for the Terrified, to start small: read your work, share your art, play a song, or speak your heart to a trusted group of friends in your living room, making them promise that they will give you only praise for what they liked and what resonated. At some point you may be ready for a combo of both praise–never forget the praise–and critical feedback, but make sure to have a notetaker to write both of these things down. Otherwise, all you’ll remember is the criticism.

Whether it’s genetic or environmental or some of both, I’m grateful to my forbears for modeling not only their love of their art, but their passion for sharing it. And grateful that, for the most part, stage fright is not an issue for me. Perhaps some day I’ll take a more terrifying step and sign up at some large, anonymous karaoke bar. Or not.

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Confessions of a Closet Sports Fan

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True confessions! I’ve been addictively following the NBA playoffs.

This doesn’t fit in with image I project to most who know me, or the words I might use to describe myself: writer, activist, gardener, nature-lover. And like most, I abhor the money that casts its dark shadow over this and other big sports events. $10,000 for a ticket to Madison Square Garden is obscene. Even $1,000 that Mayor Mamdani spent for standing room at the top of the arena is obscene. And unnecessary. Sports should be for the people. All the people. Not a commodity that can be manipulated to squeeze as much money out of hopeful hearts as possible.

Yet, every night of the playoffs, I’ve tuned in on my free-trial Youtube TV subscription (which I will cancel at the end of its 21 days) my heart with the hordes and multitudes at the watch parties in Central Park. I have not lived in New York for 46 years, yet, this doesn’t make many any less of a New Yorker. There’s a certain “Only in New York” way we have about how we relate that transcends our diverse backgrounds and brings us together. I still remember being on the subway in 1969 when the Mets were in the World Series. Everyone who had one had their transistor radios glued to their ears. When Tommie Agee homered in Game 3, the entire subway car erupted in cheers.

Photo by Mark Dixon from Pittsburgh, PA, CC BY 2.0

This is the kind of comeraderie I often long for, a swelling excitement and connection among strangers for a common goal. I hate to say that I’ve felt this more often at sports events than at peace demonstrations, but unfortunately that’s true. There have been occasional exceptions–The Women’s March in DC in 2017; March for Nuclear Disarmament in New York 44 years ago today on June 12, 1982. But I can often feel a more compelling swell of excitement huddled around a television with people rooting for a similar outcome, even if that outcome is random and doesn’t really matter in the wider world. Or maybe because the stakes are lower, it’s easier not to feel the thick of fear and disappointment one might feel in the wake of a devastating Supreme Court decision or a harmful act committed by our government or another country.

To put this all in a little more context, I grew up in a sports-dominated household. No one played, but the TV was always on: baseball, football, basketball, hockey…I don’t know if I would have survived my teenage years without the Mets and the Knicks to divert my attention from my own angst to something random that was totally outside of my control, yet–at the time–mattered deeply. Finding friends who shared that passion made it easier to stay away from experimenting with the wilder world of drugs and alcohol and sex. We could ground ourselves in the safer land of fandom. I guess we could have also been as passionate about other things that I might consider more in my bailiwick now, like music or art. But sports was what was offered in my house–and in my city–as a balm of connection.

There’s a lot more to my sports story, but even now, I’m self-conscious about nerding out on too many extraneous details people are unlikely to want to hear. In fact, due to some hard-to-shed embarrassment, I’ve been procrastinating about writing this since Wednesday (the day I usually blog). But I guess that’s a good thing, because then I wouldn’t have been able to end with the Knicks’ amazing comeback in Game 4.

playitusa.com

(And yes, I totally believe T jinxed Game 3. If only instead, he’d donated some of his billions to buy everyday New Yorkers some tickets–what a PR coup that would have been!)

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Taming “the Shoulds”

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Now that I’ve been prescribed 40 minutes of physical therapy exercises every night on top of everything else I try to do daily (or, if not daily, several times weekly) for my physical, mental or creative health–not to mention my incessant compunction to at least try to do what I can to make the world a better place–I feel like I’m collapsing under the final straw of “shoulds” that broke the (clichéd) camel’s back.”

A differently wired person might approach this conundrum with a higher degree of rationality. Pick the 3–or 4, or 5–most important things. Focus on them and forget the rest.

But it’s all important! I argue. I might enjoy some activities more than others, but when I think about the overall benefits of the things I choose to do with my life: whether it’s writing or music; spending time with friends, family, or my grandson; walking in the woods; gardening or food prep; activism; or all my meditation/exercise protocols; there’s not a single thing I want to cut down on. And while I don’t like most other household maintenance tasks, there’s just so much I can afford to let my anxiety rise at the worry of leaving them undone.

So, instead, I’ve been experimenting with how I’m looking at the totality of my life and the activities and tasks that comprise it–a circle, that if anything, keeps widening rather than shrinking. For the last few days, I’ve set the intention to focus well on one thing at a time, rather than getting distracted by all the other “shoulds” that constantly ping like little cat bites on my ankles reminding me that they’re still here and need my attention. This has been somewhat successful–at least more successful than dealing with my cat, who really does bite my ankles all the time when he wants attention.

Photo: Shel Horowitz

It’s true that at the end of the day, the list of things I didn’t get to is still much longer than what I got to, but the “consolation prize” of feeling more happy and content, and ensconced in the minute-to-minute experience of whatever I’m doing, has definitely been a mood booster. And, as consolation to my perfectionist overachiever self, I can absolutely sense how allowing everything else to blur into the background while keeping my attention on whatever I’ve chosen to do has enabled me to do whatever I am doing much better and with much more satisfaction.

What’s also important to acknowledge is the immense privilege and gratitude I have in being able to lead the life I want, even if I might consistently want to do more than I’m able to achieve. This isn’t a consolation prize. It’s a huge way of shifting how I look at the whole Issue.

I don’t think I’m ever going to cure my “ADHD of the Soul,” nor am I willing to take any real or metaphorical drugs to taper my plethora of interests and desires. There’s just too much out there that begs to be engaged with. But any interventions I can employ to stop making myself feel bad because I “should” be doing more of it–if not all of it–are certainly worth trying. I’d love to from others about how you’ve addressed this all-too-common problem among those of us trying to live satisfying, meaningful and creative lives in a creatively challenged universe.

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A Glorious Cascade

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One of my favorite days on our recent trip to Croatia was the day we went to Plitvice Lakes National Park, on an incredible three-hour meander with more waterfalls than I could possibly count. Some were the gigantic gawker spray-in-your face variety, while others were trickles of various intensity sheltered by rocks and shaded by trees that stretched out over the lake, often merging into a more significant outpour. Whatever their size or relative ferocity, all of them pressed the happy button. So much beauty in the sound of the spill and the patterns it creates: a glorious cascade. A day of glorious cascades.

At the same time I was reading a book, I didn’t want to finish because it was so good: Apeirogon by Colum McCann, a novel, about Combatants for Peace, a group of Israelis and Palestinians who have lost close relatives in the conflict and yet have been moved to embrace trust and mutual respect for each other, rather than fear and revenge. Based on real life characters, that was enough of a reason to read it. But what made the book SO exceptional was the way it was written, in small and larger bursts of intensely poetic but also clear and accessible prose, with some sections going on for a few pages and others compressed into just a paragraph or two, sometimes a single sentence. In every section, a cascade of images, emotions, history, context, and open ambiguity circled around and around in itself like the whirlpool of a fall once it hits the water.

In his poetic cascades, McCann weaves through many topics that seem to be unrelated to the plot and theme of the book, but he brings them back beautifully again and again, showing how everything reverberates on everything else and nothing can be viewed without looking at it from an infinite number of angles. In fact, the book’s title, Apeirogon, refers to a mathematical shape with an infinite number of sides and vertices. And that’s how I felt when reading this book. Whether I was reading about birds, or a 19th century failed expedition across the Dead Sea, or the tragic stories of one man’s daughter killed by a rubber bullet shot by Israeli border guards and another man’s daughter dead from a suicide bomb in Jerusalem, I wasn’t asked to park myself in any given spot. I was just asked to sit and observe what felt like a beam of light bouncing off a room full of angled mirrors.

https://www.abebooks.co.uk/ servlet/BookDetailsPL? bi=30665233510, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org /w/index.php?curid=67793592

In my MFA program as well as in previous fiction writing workshops, lectures, and books, there’s a strong emphasis on the notion of scene. In very basic terms, a novel or a story should consist of a set of scenes where action happens based on what the characters do within these scenes. And these actions are motivated by what the characters need or want. There is certainly room for exposition, description, and (if one wanted, but it wasn’t required) poetic prose, but the basic questions asked at workshops were things like What’s at stake? Who are these characters? What do they want? We were warned, strongly, not to let our love of the written word go wandering off into nowhere.

I’m not dissing these questions and this approach. It’s definitely important to understand these basic fictional elements. And I also know that once someone becomes skilled in a convention, they can more easily and successfully break it. This book’s strength was in its exposition and description; yet, all of it masterfully flowed back to the main theme. It stood out from other so-called “experimental” books I’ve read that broke from heavy scene/character mold because each “cascade” was a mini-story that landed somewhere and I could be on its journey as it sheeted over rocks, or pooled in a corner, or joined another tributary and kept on swirling.

I’m tempted and inspired to see if I can write a selection of prose poems that works as story. Or a story in the shape of a heartbreakingly beautiful series of cascades. Perhaps some of you may be as well, but whether or not that idea calls, and no matter where you might stand on issues regarding Israel and Palestine, I highly recommend this novel. It will open your heart and your sense of what’s possible–on the page, and perhaps even in the world.

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Fan Bases, Humility, and Publication Success

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Up until about a week ago, 2026 felt like an off-year for writing. I’d done my homework: 40 poetry and 8 Fiction/Essay submissions so far. However, nearly all of it, except for a very small smattering, was coming back with a no.

This is not a complaint or a boo-hoo moment, and, as I’ve counseled others, I didn’t take it personally. But I’d been used to a slightly higher (10-12%) batting average than what I’d been getting. True, I might have been skewing my submission strategy to a higher number of “reach journals” from which I’d be more likely to get rejected, but I still always made sure to include many others that seemed in my ballpark.

Until this past week, where three journals accepted seven poems.

It’s important to recognize that what happened this week didn’t start this week. Two of the journals that accepted my work were places I’d published before, and though I don’t know either of these editors personally, I was touched that they each went out of their way to personally solicit a submission from me. There’s little more gratifying to get an email out of the blue that says, Hey Dina, we haven’t heard from you in a while. Our next theme is __________ and we would love you to submit your work. I’m paraphrasing the wording, but it’s the implication, rather than the words, that matters. Your work touched me. It was memorable and I’d like to see more of it. And share it with others.

Wow! Do I really have a fan base? Part of me feels uncomfortable even thinking such a thought. I tend to bristle in spaces where writers and other creatives get too blatantly self-promotional. I know there’s a certain amount of PR that has to be done, but I can usually discern when people are a little too connected to their egos, rather than seeing themselves as merely a conduit for the work they’re doing. I know that is a highly judgmental statement, and I’ll probably need to unpack it–and apologize to anyone I might have offended. But I will continue to stand firmly in an aura of humility, rather than arrogance, though hopefully maintaining enough balance not to fall into self-effacement, as one Jewish spiritual practice, the Mussar, teaches.

And taking that significant step away from self-effacement, I’m glad to take this moment to affirm that it’s ok–more than ok–to acknowledge that somewhere there are people out there who love my work.

Retrieved from Open Access: grfpublishers.org

Which is why I do all these submissions. And write this blog. Because I want to expand my reach beyond the boundaries of my communities to others in the ether, whom I hope will be touched in some small or large way by my words and the messages behind them. Ultimately, what I want is connection, whether it’s through my words or (in the cases of writers/artists/musicians, etc. of whom I’d call myself “a fan”) theirs.

Note: this is not a quick process. It has taken years, and many, many rejections and disappointments to cultivate these relationships. Likely there are editors out there who will love your work once they become aware of it, but the amount of time this takes will try your patience and fortitude. However, it is a great way to feel connected–and to get your words out there to a wider audience. It’s also been personally gratifying to friend some of these editors on social media and get to know just a little bit about them as people, as well as to follow journals I like and get a deeper sense of why these editors have devoted so much time to the unpaid labor of love of spreading words into the universe.

So thanks to Katherine McDaniel at Synkroniciti, Michael Broder at Second Coming, Abby Murray at Collateral, Elizabeth MacDuffie at Meat for Tea, Nadia Arrioli at Thimble, Emily Perkovich at Querencia Press, Matthew Krajniak at Consequence, Hayley Haugen at Sheila-Na-Gig, Lee Desrosiers at  Wordpeace and the Naugutuck River Review, Sally Zaino at Earthshine, and many others that I’m missing here for your dedication to forging connections between writers–and readers.

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When Is Your Work Finished?

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How do you know when something is finished? Is everything a draft until you die?

Photo Credit: StevenDePolo on Flickr

This question was posed last night to three writers from my community at a reading last night: John Shierer, Darlene Elias, and Fin Finley. These are writers I’m happy to know and even happier to listen to, all of whom were authentic in using language beautifully, clearly, and compassionately to tell their own truths. John is a master of the 100-word story whose turn at the end leads you right back to wanting to hear the whole thing again. Fin always impresses me with her eye for detail and a voice that straddles a perfect edge between snarkniness and vulnerability. Darlene writes passionately about her own life as a Puerto Rican woman with roots in the barrios of the Bronx and Holyoke, MA, evoking much deeper questions about racism, generational trauma and womanhood.

People asked several questions at the end, but the one about knowing when your work is finished was the one that stuck with me. I hadn’t heard the “it’s a draft until you die” quote, but I’d heard a similar sentiment: Projects are never done they’re just abandoned. Still, I appreciated what each writer had to say on the subject.

Even as I was reading my story tonight, I was rewriting it in my head, John said (paraphrased as best as I can remember). I had to laugh, because I do exactly the same thing. Sometimes I’m swift enough to change a phrase on the spot from the inferior phrase that’s written on the page, even as the cruel inner judge starts its rampage–How did that crappy sentence ever make it into print?

Fin had a more positive response, (also paraphrased): There’s often just a point when you feel something. It could be tears, or some kind of oomph or other emotional reaction. And then you know that you’ve said whatever it is you really wanted to say. I resonate with that one, too. Some snotty writing pundits decry such sentimentality, but ultimately, while most of my writing is intended for an outside audience, it still has to get through the gatekeeper audience of one: me. So if I’m moved, that’s a good beginning. The question is whether I’ll still be moved when I read the piece tomorrow, and the day after that, and the week, month and year after that…Is the impact momentary or can it hold?

Darlene talked about the importance of deadlines–timelines in which pieces had to be done, perfect or not. And this is also a good thing to remember–especially for recovering perfectionists. I make it a point to spend no more than one-to-two (well, occasionally three) hours on a blog post, and I’m determined complete each one in a single day. So, while I do read over my drafts several times before hitting the post button, making little tweaks here and there, I don’t obsess on getting getting my posts perfect and think of them more as musings in progress. They might turn out very differently if I gave them a week to simmer, but I’ll never know.

Poems, stories, or essays targeted for journals are an entirely different matter. I can’t read over prose I’ve written without omitting at least a few sentences and words that clearly don’t need to be there, though in most of my “finished” stories (which have gotten to a point where I have the emotional oomph) I don’t tend to mess around too much with the plot or the characters. But I have often deleted a page or two at the beginning or end. Or a random paragraph in the middle, or added something to a scene that felt chopped off.

And I do have some poems in my file that have 5 or 8 or 10 different versions.  Sometimes when I take them out to work on, the tenth version seems no better than the first version. Often it seems worse, but the first version also feels like an idea that’s only half-baked. These are the projects that are abandoned. No flood of tears or emotional oomph in sight. But every once and a while a year or two will go by and when I’m going through my files and “Kondo-izing,” I’ll find a gem in these abandoned piles that I can polish into sparkle–and, dare I say, finish it!

Everything will be grand, then–until I read that piece at a reading somewhere and rewrite the whole thing in my head.

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Stories from Trieste

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As promised, I’m posting from Croatia, but I’ve spent the last few days in Trieste, Italy—a town with 5,000 Jews in 1938 and only 500 now.

I hadn’t been much aware of Italy’s Jewish history other than the obvious knowledge that their population was impacted by the Holocaust. What drew me to starting my trip in Trieste was not this gruesome history, but the current joie de vivre I’ve come to associate with Italy based on previous trips: outdoor cafes lining all the little alleys offering good coffee, good wine, stellar desserts I’d deny myself at home, and places to watch the sunset over the deep blue Adriatic Sea.

But I generally have checked out Jewish museums and synagogues in my travels, so it was totally in character for us to visit the small Museo Ebraico in the old city. Now that many synagogues in the U.S. are often under police protection, I shouldn’t have been surprised to see a security vehicle in front of the building, patrolled by two men in army camouflage gear, but of course, I was. It’s hard not to cling to the illusion of feeling safe wherever I go.

Even though I’ve been to many Holocaust museums before and had to do extensive research when writing Escaping Into the Night, something about visiting this museum hit me harder than usual. Perhaps it was the emphasis not on the Shoah itself, but on the period leading up to it: how the encroaching fascism in the 1930s split so many of Trieste’s Jewish families—some supporting the move toward greater order and authority, and others eschewing it in favor of communism or socialism.

Sound familiar?

Or perhaps it was the slow creep of laws restricting rights for Jews and others targeted by the rise of the new regimes. Or the longer overview of all the the times Jews didn’t have rights in Europe, which even though I knew that from past studies, it’s still a concept that’s hard for me to wrap my 21st Century American brain around.

Even with what’s happening right now in our country.

And with what has continued to happen in many places throughout the world.

It’s much easier to embrace the daily joie de vivre, even when I’m not on vacation. And on the days that joie de vivre seems out of my grasp, to focus on the day-to-day household and life problems I can solve, rather than things that are out of my control.

And ultimately it was the deportation stories that tied the threads between then and now. Photos of person after person deported to Auschwitz, never to return. And in front of the pension where we were staying, several blocks away from the museum, plaques commemorating the Jewish family that used to live in that building–all of them ending their lives in Auschwitz.

The owner of the pension, who asked in a whisper if we were Jewish, told me her mother, now 102, lived in Trieste at the time of the Shoah, but escaped with her family to Assisi, where they were hidden in a convent. If it weren’t for that, I wouldn’t have been here, she said.

Some of the families in Trieste didn’t go to Auschwitz. And most were sent originally to Risiera di San Sabba, an old rice mill just outside of town that was converted into a holding facility and deportation center.

Sound anything like current plans to convert warehouses into massive detention camps?

We could have visited the site, but we chose not to. We were on vacation and I didn’t want to see the crematorium. So we chose to go to Miramare Castle instead, and bask for a few hours in lifestyles of the rich and famous, while enjoying the views of the sea.

When we came back we sat outside at a gelato bar enjoying mixed cups of cioccolato nocciola, fragola, tiramisu, e pistachio while listening to a street musician play My Way and Hit the Road, Jack on the saxophone. Later that evening, we walked a few blocks to an Indian restaurant for dinner in order to take a break from all the white flour pasta and pizza we’d beem eating. When the owner said he looked forward to coming to the United States again, we told him he’d be better off waiting a few years until things changed.

And now it’s up to all of us to make sure things do change. Soon.

To-Do List Hypermode

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I’m excited to tell you that my next post will be from Croatia!

I’m looking forward to meanders by the sea, exploring hiking paths with gorgeous lakes and waterfalls, old towns with narrow alleys and medieval buildings. Most of all, I’m looking forward to a break from my life’s nurturing but relentless to-do list, even as I know that all those to-dos in my regular life will somehow seem much sweeter and more meaningful on my return.

Meanwhile I’ve been scurrying around for the past few days in “To-Do List Hypermode,” trying to get things done that I don’t want left hanging when I get back in early May. Already, I know I have to figure out a way of giving myself dispensation because I know won’t get to all of it, and sadly, a lot of the administrative and deeper household maintenance tasks that I often put off for months will likely still be waiting for me. In the meantime, I’ve done the things that feel more essential and time-sensitive, like drafting a thank-you letter to our fabulous Congressman, Jim McGovern, for his unannounced visit to the Burlington ICE office/detention holding facility last week, writing an article for our immigration justice newsletter, and starting on an agenda for the next monthly meeting of our regional immigration advocacy network, which I’ll miss, but am still committed to helping with planning.

And I completed my April writing submissions goals (I usually aim for around 10/month).

I also planted the peas this morning. It’s a bit early, but if I wait until I come back, it will be too late. This involved digging up and composting a big chunk of my cover crop, covering the peas with seed cover to protect them from the birds, and carpeting the rest of the exposed area with as much cardboard as I had to keep the weeds from a three-week party.

I could list tons of other stuff that’s still a hopeful maybe on my list. And that doesn’t even include the essentials of packing, acquiring last minute stuff we need, using up perishables in the fridge, and making sure the house is tidy enough for our friend who is coming to live here and take care of Andre the cat. But I’m trying to let myself off the hook for most of it. What did I write about a few weeks ago: calm, balanced, focused…? So much of my battle with myself is to stick with the task at hand, rather than get distracted by something else.

Of course, weekly blogging is always on the to-do list. So, I’m glad to get this task checked off, even if this isn’t the most profound blog I’ve ever written. It’s an interesting process, trying to figure out what to blog on each week. I usually get to a topic by thinking about what’s gone on in the past week (either in my own life and/or in the wider world) and then–hopefully–connecting that incident or event to some bigger theme related to art for change, writing, activism, or a niggling question about the universe that I hope others share.

But today, it’s just about that endless to-do list and the way it gets so bloated before traveling. I guess that might be universal–our inclination not to leave too much undone. I do take solace in the fact that the minute I get on the plane, the memory and thoughts of what I didn’t do will disappear like wisps of cloud sinking far below my view-scape.

At least, until I get back home…

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