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Author Archives: Tim Elhajj
Quick Trip to Miami
Miami was a heck of a lot of fun. I thought it might be similar to San Diego or LA, but it’s a much different feel. More tropical. The birds outside our hotel sounded like the jungle noise you hear in the movies. We stayed in Fort Lauderdale, which was a little off the beaten path for seeing Tim and Carry, but a very beautiful place to be in its own right.
This was the view off the balcony of our room:
Private beach at our hotel:
They had these permanent, collapsible beach tents installed on the beach. I haven’t seen them in Jersey, Delaware, or anywhere here on the West Coast. You put them up and huddle inside and it feels like you’re in a big conch shell. Especially cool at night, under the stars.
Me giving Aaron sand boobs. You probably shouldn’t do this to a kid in puberty, but he took it like a mensch.
Ed, Tim’s step-dad, took us all out to eat an awesome Cuban place in South Beach.
South Beach is notable for having mannequins in retail windows with enormous breasts. You would think just my eleven year old son would notice a detail like this, but these mannequin breasts grabbed me and my wife’s attention, too. What a zoo! I love Cuban food. I have to get one of those little Cuban espresso makers.
I have more to post about the wedding, but I am still collecting my thoughts and fighting off a cold. It was a very happy, joyus occasion, and I want to pass on as much of it as I can for those who couldn’t make it.
Miami Nuptials
Tim is married.
As of Sunday night, March 29th, 2009, Team Elhajj has expanded. We are now blessed with a southern franchise in Miami. I’ve never seen Tim so happy. Carry is gorgeous.
Congratulations, son!
We’re headed back to Seattle now, but I’ll have updates soon. Meanwhile, enjoy the photographs on flickr.
Modern Love in the New York Times
The New York Times’ Modern Love is one the best non-fiction venues available today. I call your attention to this week and last week’s columns, both of which are excellent.
When I started to submit my work, I was largely focused on literary magazines. I was not familiar with Modern Love, but fortunately for me someone in my writing group was. Some writers say you shouldn’t submit a story to a big name venue until you’ve amassed some publishing credits, but I think that’s crazy. What makes more sense to me is to look for where your work will best fit, regardless of the publication’s size or prestige.
My Modern Love story prominently features a Yankee’s cap, which (I’m sure) improved its chances for publication in the New York Times. The story explores the challenges an estranged father faces, building a relationship with his son. I submitted the story in January, which offered plenty of lead time for a Father’s Day publication, although I (oddly) hadn’t even considered this at the time.
Modern Love doesn’t appear in my Writer’s Market, which may explain why I was not familiar with it. Sometimes you learn the best place to publish your work by networking with other writers. The only submission guidelines I’ve found for Modern Love were from a Q&A, hosted by Dan Jones (Modern Love editor) on the New York Times blog site.
Here is Mr Jones on submitting:
Modern Love is open to anyone and we welcome unsolicited submissions. You can send submissions to modernlove@nytimes.com. They should be no more than 1800-2000 words in length (final run length is closer to 1700 words) and the essay should be both pasted into the email and attached as a word document.
UPDATE: The New York Times has publisehd an official submission page for Modern Love essays: How to Submit Modern Love Essays. Good luck!
Watchmen
Watchmen has fascinating characters, an interesting alternate time-line, and stunning visuals. It’s also got a kooky plot, gratuitous gore, and it goes on for well over two hours. But for me, the good far outweighed the bad: I saw it last night and really enjoyed myself.
I was not familiar with the comic book series, but I am planning on picking up a bound copy to see if it’s something Aaron and I might enjoy reading together.
Rough Beast: Stories of Exile and Unrequited Love
My story, Jimi Don’t Play Here No More, which appears in Brevity 29, will also be featured in a new anthology titled, Rough Beast: Stories of Exile and Unrequited Love, from Bannock Street Books.
Helmed by Sarah Black, Bannock Street Books is a new micro-press that specializes in handmade chapbooks that feature flash fiction and memoir (although flash memoir isn’t mentioned on the site just yet).
I’m delighted.
In other “Jimi Don’t Play Here” news, William Bradley linked to my story from his blog. Bradley is none other than the Ethical Exhibitionist, which is something I bet we all wish we could say, but we can’t because Bradley thought of it first.
I found his post this afternoon as I was browsing his site and was pleasantly surprised.
Scenes That Linger Long After You Finish the Book
For me, the mark of a good memoir is how much of it I can remember once I’ve set it aside for any amount of time. Last night as I watched Barack Obama address congress, I found myself thinking about a poignant scene from his debut memoir, Dreams From My Father.
Here is the setup: Barack’s father, a native Kenyan, who has been separated from the family and living in Kenya since Barack was two, is coming to visit. The elder Obama is an official for the Kenyan government. His visit home includes a celebrity visit to his ten-year-old son’s school. Barack feels torn: he is reluctant to have an African show up at his school, but he is excited to finally meet his absentee father. The image used to illustrate this ambivalence is young Barack looking up a picture of a Kenyan in a reference book, only to find a man in a loin cloth holding a spear. How perfectly this scene illustrates those first tentative steps a child takes from private to public life. He looks forward to meeting his father but also values the esteem of his classmates.
This scene works because it’s both universal and specific. It captures the specifics of young Barack’s coming of age—a broken home, the quiet longing, an African father. But it also shows the universals—a ten-year-old sensibility, an elementary school milieu, the child’s growing awareness of his own public identity.
If you asked me to characterize a universal trait of growing up, I am not sure the threat of mortification would ride high on my list. Yet two years after first reading this scene, I can remember a good bit of the detail. Why is that? Maybe it’s because the image of a boy so horrified by his own imagination easily reminds me of my own childhood anxiety around being embarrassed.
Here is what I know: If you try to write a universal scene, you can easily end up with something that sounds stiff and self conscious, completely missing the mark. Instead I think we have to learn to trust our instincts to select the right scenes, the ones with the most emotional impact.
And then just let go and let the muse do the rest.
Turkey Jambalaya
I’ve made this about three times in the last month. It’s easy and tasty. I find if I double the red pepper, the kids only eat it once, and I get all the leftovers for lunches. Evil Dad.
Ingredients:
- 1 Tablespoon olive oil
- 1 1/2 cups chopped onion
- 1 teaspoon minced garlic
- 1 cup chopped green bell pepper
- 1 cup chopped red bell pepper
- 2 1/2 teaspoons paprika
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
- 1/2 teaspoon ground red pepper
- 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
- 1 cup uncooked long-grain rice
- 2 cups fat-free, less sodium chicken broth
- 1 (14.5 ounce) can diced tomatoes, undrained
- 1 can corn (summer crisp)
- 2 cups shredded cooked turkey
- 6 ounces andouille sausage, chopped
- 2 Tablespoons sliced green onions
Steps:
- Heat oil in large Dutch oven over medium high heat. Add chopped onion and garlic, saute 6 minutes or until lightly browned.
- Stir in bell peppers and next 5 ingredients (paprika through black pepper) and saute 1 minute.
- Add rice, saute 1 minute.
- Stir in chicken broth and tomatoes and bring to a boil.
- Add corn.
- Cover, reduce heat, simmer 15 minutes.
- Add turkey and sausage, cover and cook 5 minutes.
- Sprinkle with green onions. Yield: 8 servings (serving size: 1 cup).
Calories 249 (27% from fat); Fat 7.6 grams (sat 2.4g, mono 3.4 g, poly 1.3 g); Protein 17.3g; Carbs 27.4 g; Fiber 2.7g; Chol 42mg; Iron 2.7mg; Sodium 523mg; Calc 37mg
Amazing Talent
This is my niece.
She is auditioning for a choir opportunity at Liberty University. What a beautiful voice! She is overpowering the capabilities of the mike and the sound track is a little out of sync, none of which is her fault, but despite all that, it’s just a really powerful, heartfelt performance.
I am not familiar with the song, but wow.
Girl Scout Camping in the Boondocks
This weekend Kennedy and I went camping with her Girl Scout troop and all the fathers, a father-daughter adventure in the Cascade mountains.
We stayed at a fire training camp, which made the whole thing feel surreal. Everywhere you look there were life-size mock ups of typical fire fighting challenges, including a four story concrete building covered in black soot, an overturned tractor trailer tanker truck (pictured below), a railway tank car, and dozens upon dozens of towering stacks of wooden pallets to set ablaze.
Kennedy and I arrived at the camp first and found it deserted. I kept thinking: this can’t be right. But I was wrong. This was exactly where we were supposed to be. The girls slept on a gigantic mattress, like the ones pole vaulters use to land on. Not sure if this is bona fide fire fighting equipment, but somehow Kennedy managed to slip off it in the middle of the night. She was unharmed.
There was much girl bonding going on.
The fathers were excellent cooks.
There was no snow this weekend so we had to improvise our Saturday afternoon activities. We tried geocaching, which involves all of the father’s standing around intently staring into little hand held devices as their daughters complain.
Fathers can go places that mother would never approve.
More pictures at flickr.
Present Tense 