Wordspinning

Things I need to write about

2008-07-28T07:22:00.000-07:00

Isaiah 40:31

But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles, they shall run and not be weary, and they shall walk and not faint.

In meeting this piece of scripture came forward and the poetic structure was pointed out. That usually it would be I can walk, I can run, I can fly. But here it begins with flight and works its way back to the mundane.

I struggle with depression. And I'm tired of that, but there it is. And while I can fly and I can run, it is the walking that causes me troubles. The walking, the opening of mail, the answering the phone, the doing of dishes and laundry and weeding the garden. These are the tasks that truly terrify.

But I can write a novel. I can produce vast quantities of knitted garments. I can build a cedar bench from scratch. I can make lip balm and soap and watermelon rind pickles. I can sew new curtains for the boys' room and quilts for my mother-in-law and skirts for myself. I can play trumpet with a big band. I can hold three jobs and parent two children and two cats.

But all my fish have died. Fish are quiet. They are easy. They are the walking part of my life. The health of the aquarium is an unfortunate metaphor for my state of mind.

In meeting I felt hopeful and nervous because I feel my strength returning to me. I fell ME returning to me and I feel that I may once more be able to accomplish the mundane.

I opened my small bible to a random page and found a Psalms 38:17

For I am ready to fall and my pain is ever before me.

I often feel that I am falling, but I rarely feel ready to fall.

I thought about what it would take to be ready to fall. Faith growing within myself. Faith in me, faith in my family, faith in my religious community. Faith that if I were to fall they would catch me.

Then I flashed on an absurd image of me body-surfing through the meeting.

Growing up one of my dad's favorite sayings was, "If you aren't falling down, you aren't learning anything."

I am ready to fall.

Church Ladies in the Basement and How I Became One

2008-07-28T07:02:00.000-07:00

This past spring one of my elderly quaker friends passed away. He was in his eighties and cancer took him so quickly that the meeting barely had time to process the fact that he was sick before he was gone.

I was not ready for him to be gone. I wasn't ready not to hear his clear voice singing hymns out of the silence or coming up with just the right biblical quotation. At our liberal meeting, he was one of a handful attenders with such a strong background in scripture and the meeting was richer for his presence.

I found myself sobbing at the end of the meeting when we learned he had passed away and it was his wife who comforted me. She said it was a rare privilege to be able to say goodbye to a spouse of sixty-some years.

When it came time for the memorial service they needed people to help organize the pot luck and I willingly agreed. All I knew was that I needed to show up at 8:30 and that the family wanted all ingredients listed for every dish (for the benefit of those with food allergies and sensitivities).

There was a lot of food.

I happily kept busy through the many surprises: four times as much food as we expected, the presence of a caterer, and the fact that the two people in charge of the food-- me and another friend of the family-- had no idea what we were doing. She was a young woman in her 20s. I am 36. At one point we started giggling about the fact that we were the blue-haired church ladies in the basement.

When my friend's daughter met me to thank me for helping she was shocked. She had assumed that I would be of an age with her parents.

She actually gasped when her mom introduced us!

where i'm at for writing...

2008-07-28T06:58:00.000-07:00

1. Switching from querying to revising mode for Shooting the Thorn Tree (my first novel) which I still hope to find representation for in this coming year.

2. Celebrating the fact that while I am probably NOT one of the mentees for the Loft mentorship series in fiction this year, it is the second year I was one of the finalists. Third time is a charm.

3. Starting to send out poetry.

4. Need to send out short stories as well. Plan to submit to literary journals that have reading periods Sept-May.

5. Really excited that #1 son will start Kindergarten in the fall and that I will not be working 3 out of 5 weeknights anymore. This change in schedule should theoretically help my ability to get things done.

waiting for the frelling prize patrol

2008-07-03T19:30:00.000-07:00

So I'm once again a finalist for the Loft's mentorship series in fiction. Which is good, don't get me wrong. I'm happy just to be nominated. But since they sent word that we would likely receive notification in the first week of July I am checking my email every thirty seconds.

scrabulous eats minnesota woman

2008-05-03T12:13:00.000-07:00

yup. that's all I've been doing. all scrabulous. all the time.

Writing again?

2008-02-24T07:55:00.000-08:00

Day one of writing again.

Or something like that.

I did a bunch of research the other day and I gave the latest version of the novel to a friend last week so she could search for errors and the like.

But this morning was the first in a long while that I took pen to paper.

Since blog was originally organizational task for writing I thought I'd use it to track progress of writing again.

Wrote about midwinter Minnesota shark bite.

Oddly enough there have been a few of these this season. On January 25 at the Mall of America, one of the larger sharks tried to eat one of the smaller sharks and swam around with it for half an hour before it was rescued. Both sharks survived.

About a week later, my five-year old son poked a younger friend with a shark tooth I didn't know he had. Which garnered me the mother of the year award when said friend was wounded. Sigh. Both boys survived.

Failure to Fly

2007-12-28T14:40:00.000-08:00

I heard this term for the first time this past weekend used to refer to a child who falls from several stories and survives. Falls that would typically be fatal to an adult. A family friend had a son who dropped to concrete from two stories. He spent a week in a body cast and suffered no lasting damage.

Failure to fly.

My brother is faced with the death of a friend from high school. She suffered from a rare and severe form of post-partum depression. It claimed the life of her baby before it also took her life.

Failure to be faster than a speeding bullet.

When my husband worked at the gas station in downtown Wayzata near the railroad tracks, a man stumbled in late at night mumbling over and over again, "You hear the trains when they come by..." His fiance had been walking with him along the tracks. They didn't hear the train. It swept her under its metal wheels, his arms unable to hold her.

Failure to be more powerful than a locomotive.

I remember that I cannot do everything all the time. That doing some small things is still okay. If I can't finish all the laundry I can still wash a load or two. Small steps still get you somewhere.

I can't always attend to my children, connect meaningfully with my spouse, and clean the whole house and prep for work and sew and knit and exercise and cook flawlessly, diligently, without fail.

Still I can be. And some days that is enough.

Failure to be supermom.

Poety stuff - God Snores

2007-10-28T03:07:00.000-07:00

God comes to meeting before anyone else
Takes a seat toward the back
And rests his chin on his chest

He always wears his nametag
Facing the wrong way

Sorry feminists,
He is an old man with white hair.
A wild beard
Bushy, patriarchal eyebrows

As the silence of the meeting settles
Dusty and full of old prayers
That circulate with the squeaking ceiling fans
God snores

It is a sawing snore
That rattles the windows
Uninterrupted by our polite worship
Our quiet platitudes.

If we sing or dance or shout
Will he open his blue eyes?

Poety stuff - Two Births

2007-10-28T02:37:00.000-07:00

I.
Breathing
Eyes closed
Thinking about opening
Like a flower
Petals falling away from one another
Joints I didn’t know I had
Muscles tense and relax
All this wild motion and stillness
The machinery of life and creation
Moving to welcome you
I wonder
Does a flower feel this burning pressure
This urgency
As the petals unfold?

II.
Utkata konasana
Goddess pose
The pose where your feet sink into the earth
Knees bent
Arms outstretched
Only I leaned against the raised hospital bed
The midwife poised to catch you
Slowly, slowly
As you slipped into her cold hands
Angry and purple, you withdrew your sounds
As punishment
Signing with clenched fists—
ALL DONE ALL DONE

Owen's Profile

2007-10-25T05:45:00.001-07:00

Your results:
You are Spider-Man

Spider-Man		80%
The Flash		80%
Green Lantern		70%
Superman		60%
Hulk		60%
Iron Man		60%
Robin		50%
Supergirl		50%
Wonder Woman		40%
Batman		40%
Catwoman		30%

You are intelligent, witty,
a bit geeky and have great
power and responsibility.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Test

What superhero am I?

2007-10-12T19:45:00.000-07:00

Spider-Man

Spider-Man		85%
Green Lantern		55%
Robin		50%
Hulk		45%
Iron Man		40%
Superman		40%
Supergirl		37%
The Flash		35%
Catwoman		30%
Wonder Woman		27%
Batman		25%

You are intelligent, witty,
a bit geeky and have great
power and responsibility.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Quiz

Divine Hypertension

2007-07-09T18:44:00.000-07:00

Went to FGC Gathering last week as a daily commuter since it was ridiculously close.

I talked to others from my meetings about how we used Gatherings of Northern Yearly meeting and Friends General Conference to connect more deeply with people from our own meeting.

I had the opportunity to sit and have lengthy discussions with several people from Twin Cities Friends Meeting, where I have been a regular attender for three years. We realized that in our regular lives (with children running around, or the need to dash off to work) we hadn't been able to connect in this way.

In meeting this Sunday, reflecting on the gift of spending a week with time slowed from its usual pace I got an image of us as the cells that make up the divine body.

That we are meant to come together and interact in the way we could and did at FGC. NOT in the way our real lives demand. That we are meant to function in coordination with one another.

How much can a single cell accomplish? What does one cell know of the will of the divine? It's why we must come together. The communal nature of worship and of action...

The cellular model made me think of all the racing around we do giving the divine a case of high blood pressure. And we all know that stress can lead to many different maladies.

And we cannot expect divine intervention if health is not restored.

Connect.

Quaker Process and the Introvert

2007-05-23T21:55:00.000-07:00

I am entirely too tired to stay up and write this now, but I don't wanna forget. And now I have stayed up an hour later than I was planning on doing.

I have been talking with a friend of mine lately about Quakerism, Quaker decision making, the format of business meetings etc.

I read Beyond Majority Rule as part of my quakerism 101 class and I have been to one monthly business meeting, and two Northern Yearly Meetings so I am an expert. Ha Ha Ha.

Anyway, the main ideas behind the Quaker process include NOT making decisions based on a vote. Consensus is the key. This consensus is reached through a sometimes lengthy group process in which a clerk leads a group of members/attenders through a stated agenda.

Folks are not supposed to speak unless they have something really important or "spirit led" to add-- and once something has been said other people don't need to repeat it.

The clerk is the one to guide all discussion and mediates where things are going. The clerk is also responsible to say when the group has reached consensus and state what he/she feels the agreed upon course of action is. If someone feels that consensus has not been reached they can voice their dissent.

Behind all of this is the assumption that we all have the divine within us and that we are all working toward the greater good of the meeting.

I realized that part of the reason I am fond of Quaker process is because it feels similar to how Sam and I-- introverts supreme-- solve problems and handle conflicts.

I don't mean to say that Sam and I are holier-than-thou pious types who act according to some perfect plan. Just that our "arguments" look and sound very different than those of the extroverts we know. Quieter. Almost imperceptible to the outside observer.

What is amazing to me in both the larger Quaker meetings and the smaller spousal ones is how often silent reflection, thoughtful listening to someone outside of yourself and sufficient time can create a solution that no one could have conceived on their own prior to said meeting/discussion.

The idealized Quaker meeting for business strikes me as one that a group of introverts would love.

I'm sure I've blogged before about the management groups where group A was made up of extroverts and group B was made up of introverts. The groups were given the same task to complete in different rooms.

When the researchers came back to check on the groups, the introverts had completed the project and were all sitting around reading the books they brought with them. The extroverts were still arguing about how to organize things and chatting about this and that. Making connections. Needing to be heard.

Researchers found that behavior of introverts in meetings was very directed. Introverts had no interest in drawing out the process because being in the large group was not an energizing experience for them. They wanted things done as quickly as possible. They tended to take charge, cut down on off-topic chatter and nail the group down to a solution.

When business meetings go long. Very very very long I sometimes wonder if it is as a result of people trying to work against temperament. After all, the majority of people self-select as extroverts.

A particularly extroverted friend of mine attended a Quaker meeting once or twice and found the group to be unwelcoming. I attended the same group and found them quite welcoming. When I was ready to be welcomed. I like a long, slow introduction. I like the chance to blend in for a while and see what is happening before I engage people.

Is it easier for introverts to enter into and function in the Quaker community?

Owen's stories

2007-04-20T21:03:00.000-07:00

Owen converses with his grandma and George, a visitor from China.

Owen: My mom is a vegetarian, but she eats meat.

Grandma: Fish.

Owen: My dad is a vegetarian, and he doesn't eat any meat. And George, I'm an omnivore."

George: Does that mean you eat everything?

Owen: Yes.

George: (to my mom) How do you spell that?"

Owen: O-M-N-A-V-O-R... (so not QUITE right, but passable for a four-year-old

Grandma: And it has a silent letter...

Owen: E! George, that's because it used to be pronounced Omnivorey."

knit this

2007-04-17T21:57:00.000-07:00

I have been working at Borealis Yarns for several months now. It is not a safe place for me to work. They have fantastic yarn and my co-workers are definitely project enablers. We are all good at talking one another into getting yet another project on the needles.

Currently I am working on several Christmas presents (from last Christmas):
• scarves for sisters in law,
• little animals for mother in law
• sweater for brother in law

• a 60th birthday sweater for my mom (who will be 61 in November)
• a lace shawl for me
• a prayer shawl for a friend being treated for bladder cancer
• two sweaters for Alec
• one sweater for Owen
• the second sock and second mitten for Sam... pairs are so overrated

Plus the many baby socks I'm knitting for Alec with Cascade Fixation.

I stuck him in a pair of Owen's socks back in January and left them on overnight. When he woke up there was a red mark from the elastic. This mark is still there. Now I am afraid to put him in anything but my handknit socks.

Got to go. More knitting to do.

P.S. I'll be teaching two classes at Borealis this summer. In June I'll be teaching baby sox. In July I'll show folks how to knit intarsia.

Should be fun.

Knit knit knit.

Memorial Service

2007-04-07T05:14:00.000-07:00

My Grandmother passed away this last week. She was 91 years old and in hospice care. I had an amazing visit with her two weeks ago where my two children were amazingly charming for two hours in spite of having no nap and over 3 hours in the car. Blessings.

I attended the memorial service with my husband, who was a pall bearer. On the way out to Willmar I reflected on how I could have a worshipful farewell to my grandmother in the midst of a Presbyterian service, which historically has not reached me.

I did a lot of knitting in the car-- thinking of my grandma who taught me to knit when I was six. I read through the bible I had tucked in my purse. Job. Because when I was quite young my grandma told me that it was her favorite book in the bible. She thought it was beautiful. To a nonbelieving nine-year-old, Job is NOT beautiful. It's mean.

I read to find beauty in the verses and I found this passage:

Job 5:20

In famine he will redeem thee from death;
And in war from the power of the sword.
Thou shalt be hid from the scourge of the tongue;
Neither shalt thou be afraid of destruction when it cometh.
At destruction and dearth thou shalt laugh;
Neither shalt thou be afraid of the beasts of the earth.
For thou shalt be in league with the stones of the field;
And the beasts of the field shall be at peace with thee.
And thou shalt know that thy tent is in peace;
And thou shalt visit thy fold, and shalt miss nothing.
Thou shalt know also that thy seed shall be great,
And thine offspring as the grass of the earth.
Thou shalt come to thy grave in a full age,
Like as a shock of grain cometh in in its season.
Lo this, we have searched it, so it is;
Hear it, and know thou it is for thy good

Prayer

2007-03-09T18:17:00.000-08:00

I never much liked prayer when I visited church with my grandma, who was Presbyterian. The minister asking us to bow our heads and then speaking to God on our behalf. It kind of irritated me. He didn't speak what was in my heart, but he seemed so sure of his own authority.

Eventually I stopped bowing my head.

The Unitarians, where I grew up, didn't teach me much about prayer. Other people's prayers, yes. Prayer as an art form or a cultural relic. Something to be appreciated and even deeply felt, but somehow belonging to all other denominations more strongly.

At my Quaker meeting, people pray in many different ways. Asking for people to be held in the light. Quoting scripture. Singing. Expectant waiting. We come from many different traditions but we come together in silence as a way to access the divine in all of us.

I am currently part of a clearness committee for a marriage in which one of the parties is an attender at TCFM and the other is Lutheran. In trying to negotiate an interfaith wedding, the question of prayer has come into play.

How do Quakers and Lutherans come together in worship, maintaining the integrity of each faith? I believe it can be done with care and planning. I believe the people involved are more than willing to do the work required. I believe events such as these broaden understanding of ones own and other people's faiths.

But that could just be the Unitarian in me speaking.

Letting Go

2007-03-06T06:31:00.000-08:00

Alec is teaching me about letting go.

I have always thought of letting go as a kind of surrender. Giving up. Losing. Even when the things I am holding on to aren't things I want. Prejudices, grudges, sentimental shahsh. Anger. Guilt. Self-righteousness.

There is stability and comfort into holding on to these things. I know them. They keep me on my current course. Safety in stubbornness.

I saw another image of letting go when watching Alec, who is learning how to walk. Most of the time he creeps from one piece of furniture to another, unwilling to fall. Every now and again he screws up the courage to let go. Joy. Amazement. Such an expression of overwhelming happiness. From letting go.

It helps me think of things differently. There is no element of surrender in what he is doing-- at least not in a negative sense. He is surrendering the stability of the table for the mobility-- for access to the wide world.

Where am I anchored by the things I believe give me stability? What joy will I feel when I can find the courage to let go?

sloth

2006-12-29T18:50:00.000-08:00

Gluttony and all the other good ones...

I am behind on my life. Living in the moment is all well and good as long as the moments include doing some dishes, washing a few clothes and opening the mail.

Otherwise living in the moment means being slowly crushed by the future as piles of dishes, laundry and envelopes crush you in a glacial avalanche of stress and filth.

Knitting has taken up entirely too much of my life since I decided in November that I needed to knit everyone's Christmas presents. I need a better knit-life balance. The fact that I started working at Borealis Yarns probably is not a good sign for this kind of moderation. Moderation is not typically a word associated with me.

This marks the beginning of my attempt to return to my originally scheduled life.

I'm not doing the resolution thing, it just happens to coincide time-wise with the new year. Resolutions work about as well as diets. I'm not looking to yo-yo into any of these goals.

• Complete sprint-distance triathlon this summer (Lifetime Fitness and/or Green Lake).
• Finish revisions on Shooting the Thorn Tree and send to next round of agents.
• Avoid storing meaningless shosh-- fit my life in my small house.
• Write daily. Even if only here.

Zen

2006-08-05T20:28:00.000-07:00

I went to the Clouds in Water Zen Center with my friend Jim this past Wednesday to experience their intro to zazen.

I figure since I've been meditating every Sunday now for a few years I could stand to have some formal training in how to go about it...

It was a great experience. If I weren't already a Quaker I could be part Zen, but I can't let go of the Christian stories enough to be all Zen.

Why I stay at home - and LOVE Saint Paul

2006-07-31T17:59:00.000-07:00

the long slow march to publication

2006-07-23T12:40:00.000-07:00

I have begun the process of looking for a literary agent. It sounds terribly pretentious to me, but there it is.

After taking a class at the Loft Literary Center I decided that I need to get an agent for two reasons:

1. I am terrible at marketing myself so there is no way I could successfully self-publish (a successful first run would be around 10,000 books)

2. There are many publishers who will not look at unagented manuscripts.

It seems to be a no-risk venture as the reputable agents don't charge money upfront, but take it from a commission upon the sale of the project.

The plan at this time: pitch the book to a bunch of literary agents and hopefully find one. With luck, it won't take more then a year to find an agent. With even more luck they will be able to find a publisher for me.

We'll see.

At the moment I have querries out to about 20 agents. I have been turned down flat by 5 agencies with form letter rejections, I've received one request for sample pages of the manuscript and I'm waiting for responses from the rest.

Keep you posted.

father, son, and holy ghost

2006-07-15T04:13:00.000-07:00

For a nontheist, I am unusually preoccupied with god.

For a Quaker-Unitarian I am unusually obsessed with the trinity.

An idea that made itself known during my yoga practice grew further during Quaker meeting several weeks ago.

As we finished our yoga postures, the teacher finished with her ritual "peace on our minds, on our lips, and in our hearts." and something in her intonation sounded like the Presbyterian minister at my grandma's church finishing his prayer with "father, son, and holy ghost."

I have also been reading a lot of the Gnostic gospels lately. Specifically Elaine Pagel's book Beyond Belief. Got me to thinking about how different Christianity would be if the Thomas Christian texts had been included in the bible. They believed (like the Quakers) that the divine was in everyone and that one needed to find a way to access that inner light.

In meeting I was meditation on the mind, body, spirit connection and suddenly it all fit together. If we are made in god's image and if god is a three-in-one being of father (mind), son (body) and holy ghost (spirit)... then our job is to become balanced three-in-one people. We too face the difficult paradox of being equally whole and separate.

I spent much of my life over-valuing the mind, undervaluing the spirit and devaluing the body. As a recovering anorexic (with over a decade of healthy eating under my belt!) I too often wanted to ignore my body. It sent unreliable signals to me about who I was.

Now in my spiritual practice I am striving for this mind/body/spirit connection. Trying to achieve balance that mirrors the image of this triune god.

prayed for/prayed against?

2006-07-10T12:12:00.000-07:00

After meeting on Sunday I looked out in the parking lot and was surprised to see a circle of a dozen or so people all facing the meeting house with their palms to the sky seemingly praying.

One person had a bowl in which something was burning-- it smelled like sage to me. A few of them, and maybe all of them, had little green tags pinned to their shirts.

The really surprising thing was that no one at the meeting knew any of the people in the parking lot. So far as we knew they were not affiliated with the meeting.

When one member of our meeting left to go to her car, the whole praying circle turned to face her.

Were they trying to save our souls because we aren't of the One True Religion, whatever that may be? Or were they in solidarity with us over something?

I'm burning with curiousity to know who these people were and why they were there. Hopefully someone will know and tell me all about it.

The sage was really what confused me. Most narrow fundamentalist type religions who would demonize the Quakers don't really go in for the burning of incense.

And the liberal wacko fringe like the quakers and the unitarians would certainly be up for this kind of thing but usually at their own meetinghouse...

Shooting the Thorn Tree intro

2006-06-30T19:56:00.000-07:00

Kupanda mchongoma, kushuka ngoma.
You may climb a thorn tree and be unable to come down.
– Swahili Proverb

People invariably want to talk to her about the priest. Had she met him? She was there at the same time—and they were both from Minnesota. People want the inside story: intrigue, corruption, and betrayal. A hometown martyr.

She’d never seen him. Never heard a word about him until the articles in the papers. Not really. Priests were foreign, city-dwelling creatures who lived in slums and spoke rashly against those in power. They were rarely seen in the rural areas.

She had lived for a summer at the foothills of Mount Kenya, just outside the national forest. The priest was killed in the outskirts of Nairobi, more than a hundred miles to the south. She’d passed through Nairobi briefly after her arrival and once again just before she left. She remembered tall husks of buildings, gated apartment complexes, cattle grazing in the flowerbeds of exclusive resort hotels.

It is a shock to be back. A shock to stand on grass made green and lush by a summer of gentle sun punctuated by occasional evening thunderstorms. Sunset at a different time each day. A crescent moon that lies on its side. Smooth, paved roads. Green grass. Lakes, rivers, streams. Rain.

She finds herself staring at everything, everyone. Where did all these white people come from? Their skin seems transparent, insubstantial. They squint in the light of this distant sun, complain about the humidity. They ask about her trip.

People beg for details: wild animals on safari, exotic plants, quaint tribal customs, some small thrill of danger from the African continent. They ask her about the priest. She can tell them nothing about him.

And her own story doesn’t feel like hers to tell.

Serializing the process of publication...

2006-06-30T19:44:00.000-07:00

I'm working on getting my novel published now... it's sitting at the Milkweed Press "unsolicited manuscript" desk where it will hopefully be positively received.

I am taking a class at the Loft Literary Center on the business side of publishing so I don't do really foolish things with the manuscript. I'm assured that Milkweed is a safe place for the thing, but beyond that I'm not willing to drown the publishing world with copies of my manuscript.

I realized that I haven't posted anything here for a really really long time.

I've decided to post some of the sections of the novel to give folks a pre-press peek at what I've been up to for the past year.

I posted earlier versions of the intro. Here's how it stands in the current version...

MFA Reading March 24

2006-03-21T20:58:00.000-08:00

So I'm getting all set to graduate from Hamline this spring.

I defended my thesis a few weeks ago and it went well... I think I'm graduating with honors or something like that. Assuming I get all my paperwork in order. Which I plan to do.

I'll be doing a public reading at Hamline (Giddens Leraning Center 100E) on Friday, March 24 at 7:30 pm along with three other MFA candidates.

I haven't decided exactly what to read yet. I think I need to read from both my poetry and my prose stuff since I did a separate thesis in each genre.

The prose is easy to decide-- I'm set to read the short story "Mary's Baby" that formed the basis of the novel, Shooting the Thorn Tree, and is embedded in the text.

Poetrywise I'd like to grab something from each section in the poetry manuscript, The Jigsaw People. Then I'll get some family poems, some god poems and some infertility poems. I'm not as nervous as I think I should be because I am too tired.

So I'm going to go get some shut-eye.

Role of Silence

2006-02-17T19:53:00.000-08:00

This is really old and I've been meaning to write about it for a while. It's stuff that came out of meeting some months ago, but my unbusiness was not conducive to writing it down...

Unfortunately I don't remember all of the technical grammar terms for these things, but in sociolinguistics there are rules of dialogue that incorporate wait time.

This is the length of time you must wait after someone finishes speaking before you say anything in return.

Wait time varies culturally. Not just nationally or regionally but from one family to another.

I discovered this firsthand when dealing with my husband's family. I grew up in a family that doesn't have much wait time and even allows for some overlap between speakers. He did not.

Eventually I realized this is why I was ALWAYS the one doing the talking at family functions. Their wait time is agonizingly long. So long that I assumed they had nothing to say.

As I sat in silence at the Quaker meeting I thought long and hard about the role of silence. Why is it important to have these long stretches sitting in silence? Why isn't it just a free-for-all of vocal ministry? Is it just to provide the opportunity for silent meditation?

I was then hit by the idea of divine wait time.

If there is a divine being or some force in the universe that we are communicating with, we humans must seem to be in an awful big hurry with our brief and scattered lives.

Maybe this extended silence is necessary in order for the divine to know that we are done speaking-- that we are ready to listen.

Baby Boy Buchanan

2006-01-27T19:01:00.000-08:00

So now that I'm not pregant and exhausted maybe I can get back to actually posting things sometimes.

Alec Matthew Buchanan was born January 21 at 3:25 am at Regions Hospital in Saint Paul.

He was 8 pounds 10 ounces
20 1/2 inches long

Following are the gory details of labor and delivery:

For three weeks prior to the birth I had what Bradley Method instructors call "Normal Pregnancy Contractions" and the rest of the world calls Braxton Hicks Contractions or false labor.

Friday morning I had a regular appointment with my midwife. My blood pressure was elevated and she recommended that I deliver as soon as possible. She stripped my membranes at the office in the hopes that this would induce labor some time in the next 24 hours. She told me to go home and rest since I might be up all night having a baby.

I began to have strong contractions every 5-10 minutes before I left her office. Sam came home from work so he could rest too, and my mother-in-law came to keep an eye on Owen. They continued throughout the day, but didn't become REALLY strong until 11:30 at night.

Sam and I headed in to Regions Hospital and checked in at 12:30 or so. It took them forever to do the admitting paperwork since their computer system was down and they had no access to my medical records.

By this time my contractions were 2-3 minutes apart and so strong that I couldn't walk or speak through them. I was dilated to 4, with the baby at 0 station. Which explains why it felt like he was going to fall out.

My mom was on hand as a secondary labor assistant and photographer. The labor went so fast she didn't have to offer much assistance, but she did shoot over a hundred photos in Alec's first few hours of life.

Of the 14 midwives in the group at Regions I had only met one of them that I didn't particularly care for. Naturally she was on call that night. It was really just that her sense of humor didn't suit me. Her skills as a midwife were not in question.

I have no complaints about how things went with the birth attendants I had with me. During the delivery, this midwife was fantastic and she had a really great intern with her who took the lead on the delivery. It was kind of great to have 2 midwives, 2 labor assistants and a labor and delivery nurse who were all supportive of natural childbirth.

I needed an IV with antibiotics as I did with Owen, but I could ditch all the monitoring devices and was free to move around after the initial intake. Once the IV was in, they ran a bath for me and I did most of my active labor in the tub.

I can't recommend water during labor highly enough. It was amazing the difference it made to be supported by water through the contractions. I stayed in the bath for 20 minutes and would have stayed longer but I worried that I was so comfortable that my labor had stalled.

This turned out not to be the case.

I got out of the bath and it was only a few moments before my water broke and the contractions changed dramatically in nature.

I told the midwives that I needed to push. At the time I was wandering aimlessly around the room trying to find a position that was comfortable during contractions.

"You might want to get closer to the bed."

So I did. I shuffled over there, but was not about to climb back in. I was so uncomfortable on my back and the midwives were supportive of whatever I wanted during the labor and delivery.

So I delivered standing up. Fast. From the time the baby crowned to the time the baby was in the midwife's arms with the cord cut was 30 seconds. My mom has time-stamped digital photos to prove this. It seemed fast, but not THAT fast! I remember thinking consciously that I should slow things down and I pulled back from pushing too hard. I recommend being as vertical as possible during delivery. Gravity is great.

Baby and I are doing very well. Owen is a fantastic big brother. His first words in the hospital were, "Look! It's my baby! Isn't he beautiful?"

For the record, Owen doesn't enjoy being asked how he likes being a big brother. He will scowl, tell you he doesn't like it and it makes him mad. Then he will kiss and hug his baby brother, Alec "Marshmallow" Buchanan and say something like, "Isn't my baby quite adorable?"

Sam seems pretty pleased with the new kid too. What's not to be pleased with-- it's another Sam clone who sleeps all day and all night long. It will be interesting to see if the new one continues to look like Owen as he gets bigger.

Unbusy

2005-10-11T12:00:00.000-07:00

I've decided that taking care of a toddler, being due with baby #2 in January, working 3 part time jobs and trying to finish my masters is not enough to keep me busy.

So I'm now working as an independent consultant for Arbonne International.

This cracks me up for any number of reasons:

1. I am NOT fond of network marketing and its cultlike meetings
2. I can't stand selling things (failed at getting anyone to buy girlscout cookies)
3. I need another thing to do like I need a hole in the head

However, I got hooked on the products, I'm terribly fond of the company's flexibility (I don't have to go to any cultlike meetings if I don't want to) and their committment to research.

So here I am representing a Swiss formulated skin care and wellness company.

Weird.

Poety Stuff - Scales

2005-09-05T22:25:00.000-07:00

On the day He was to create justice
God got involved in making a dragonfly
And lost track of time
– Anne Carson

Justice is a woman
We clothe in folds of bronze or stone
Daughter of the Earth and Sky

When I was little I wanted everything
To be fair
My mother’s voice: life isn’t fair

I made a list of things lacking fairness

Wealth
Weather
War

Language
Love
Laughter

Beauty
Birth
Brothers

We stopped looking to God for justice
After Cain and Abel
After the Flood

After Sodom and Gomorrah
After forty years wandering in the desert
Or maybe after He killed His own son

That wasn’t really
The kind of justice
We had in mind

So we forged an idol based on older deities
Birthed before monotheism
And omnipotence were invented

Ma’at in Egypt
Themis in Greece
Justitia in Rome

Justice is a woman
We clothe in folds of bronze or stone
We give her a sword and some scales

To hold at arms length
The balancing kind
Because they look better

She doesn’t have shoes
And sometimes
There is a snake

We blindfold her
Not so things will be fair
But so she will not weep

At the things we do in her name
Drowning us
In her ancient tears

Believe

2005-08-24T17:53:00.000-07:00

Learning to believe in god is a lot
Like learning to fall asleep. My Japanese friend in college who was transformed into a True Believer by campus evangelists told me. At first you say prayers and it feels like you are talking to an imaginary being. It feels ridiculous and you feel like a fraud. Then after a while it doesn’t seem so imaginary and then suddenly without realizing it, you believe. When you fall asleep you close your eyes and relax, feigning sleep, trusting that eventually you will be transformed. You slow your breathing consciously and at some point you slip over the border that divides sleep and sleeplessness. You cease to pretend and enter the land of dreams. One friend I have is a chronic insomniac. He doesn’t know how to pretend. When he was a boy he would lie in his bed, eyes wide open, waiting tensely for sleep to overtake him. That’s where I am. Eyes wide open, waiting for God.

Sun Under Wood - Robert Haas

2005-08-22T11:47:00.000-07:00

Reminds me a lot of a Japanese "I-novel" in which the poems are all personal and introspective and don't really have a central theme or anything that runs through all of them but the poet himself.

Happiness - a pleasant scene of togetherness on a December morning

Our Lady of Snows - Sadness and bargaining of a boy whose mother is alcoholic

Dragonflies Mating
1 - people who lived here before us
2 - Channel Island Indian story in a bar
3 - Fransiscan priests introducing new deadly illnesses to the New World
4 - Brief meaning of "mother" when used in poems
5 - Fear is a teacher now
6 - watching dragonflies who mate and then are done-- they don't dwell on childhood things

My Mother's Nipples - a poem seemingly written on a dare (Les nipples de ma mere)

Gardens of Warsaw - based on an old travel guide of Eastern Europe, very visually evocative

Layover - Stuck in anchorage, waiting for the invasion of Kuwait

Notes on "Layover" - what the poet could have said instead of what he did in "Layover"

The Woods in New Jersey - Brilliant colored birds in the grey of the woods

Iowa City: Early April - A whole menagerie of animals around the house in Iowa

A Note on "Iowa City: Early April" - The poet speaks to a raccoon, who remains silent

Sonnet - A man talking to his ex-wife on the phone

Faint Music - storytelling and the usual sequence: ego, pain and then singing

Forty Something - Threats of a lover not to leave, or else

Shame: An Aria - Elaborate story of nose picking in an elevator

Regalia for a Black Hat Dancer - Smoothness, emptiness, a really long poem that apparently has something to do with a shrine in Korea

Jarun Sacha - A singing like a golden bell ringing; title taken from an biological study station in the Ecuadorian rain forest.

Frida Kahlo: In the Saliva - "transcribed and translated from a manuscript in her hand"

English: An Ode - Political and economic problems through word definitions

The Seventh Night - Nonsensical conversation taking nature and turning it into a stage being struck

Interrupted Meditation - Mourning for self and the end of a love affair. Also someone else's remememberance of dropping food for Jews in hiding

Poetic Panic

2005-08-19T18:28:00.000-07:00

I'm worried about getting enough poetry stuff put together for my mansucript. I also have no real concept of what form or structure the final project will take.

I have about 20 pages of solid poems about my family.

Then what?

3 poems based on terms from musical Italian
6 poems on how famous composers died
1 Hmong funeral poem
1 Abusive Japanese host father poem
1 Witness to an attack
1 Jesus poem
1 Attack on biblical literalism

These poems are all related to me, but not in any way that I think will make sense in a manuscript. They all deal with faith and language. The language of music, language of culture, language of religion. And in my faith is music, intercultural study, nonviolence and historical perspective.

It is clear to me that I can't make things hang together with what I have so far. There are big gaps and I'm not feeling clever enough to fill them right now. I think I'll just do my best to write some stuff while thinking about language, god, and other interrelated things.

Jim Moore - The Freedom of History

2005-06-15T07:03:00.000-07:00

It's odd to read books written by people you've met. Jim Moore was my teacher for the first class I took at Hamline in the MFA program. The Core course: Readers and Writers, Creators Both. Several of the poems in this collection were familiar to me from the class.

I don't really know what holds this thing together. Let's see:

I. TODAY'S MEDITATION - meditative poems in first, second and third person
II. THE FREEDOM OF HISTORY - a conversation with Czech woman over a number of days
III. WILD LIGHT - mostly visual; metaphorical stuff, imagining things a different way
IV. BLACK & WHITE/COLOR - poems based on visual art: black and white photos, a Matisse
V. TERROR'S ONLY EPITAPH - narrative from a first person experience surviving a bomb
VI. GIVING AWAY LOVE - sex and romance poems
VII. FOR YOU - Issues that cross borders (Vietnam, Europe, Canada, Greece, Vietnam War)

The collection begings very internally, goes outward in conversation, becomes abstract, imaginitive and visual, then returns to personal stories and once again an internal narrative.

I. TODAY'S MEDITATION - meditative poems in first, second and third person

Today's Meditation: It's Not Supposed to Last Forever - remembering being in prison
Today's Meditation: Happiness - perspective through a window (still in prison?)
Today's Meditation - dreaming well (of wild sex and secret meetings) aftermath in leaves
Today's Meditation: Travel: Ravenna - how our lives are written on our faces
Today's Meditation: A Summer Afternoon, Venice - realizing you are not the point
Today's Meditation: The Crucifixion - It is ongoing - a description of a visual image?

II. THE FREEDOM OF HISTORY - a long conversation over a number of days from P.O.V. of Czech woman

The Freedom of History - One side of discussions: American man Czech woman in Prague

III. WILD LIGHT - mostly visual; metaphorical stuff. Not sure why Details from August is in this section

Winter Smoke - visual of smoke as horses escaping into the sky
Snow - Self as snow
You and Snow - Self as snowflake
Into the Circle of Death - death as a flying horse (image from Sioux effigy)
In the Aviary - ravens as mystical
Details from the August Heat: Your Rape One Year Later - Normalcy after horror

IV. BLACK & WHITE/COLOR - poems based on visual art

A Sudek Place - on a photograph by Josef Sudek
The Valley Called Curve - Josef Sudek, photographer (1896-1976)
Here, Too, There Is a Paradise - on a photograph of Prague by Josef Sudek
Rothko - about the painter
Matisse's "Dance" - about the painting

V. TERROR'S ONLY EPITAPH - narrative from a first person experience

Terror's Only Epitaph - On surviving the bombing of La Guardia in 1975

VI. GIVING AWAY LOVE - sex and romance poems

Do See It My Way - risks of falling in love
In Rain - sex as a cat
That's the Dusk - romance of darkness
What the Bird Sees - gentle sex between consenting adults
Giving Away Love - Happy aftermath of loving while love is still asleep
London: 33, The Last Movement, the Longest Day - man panics at being 33-- relaxes at 34

VII. FOR YOU - Issues that cross borders

Fires That Won't Go Out - translplanted Vietnamese waiters in Boston
All the Raised Arms - The calm beauty and tradition of an old city and its citizens
This Passing - A man dying from cancer at 30 (longing to visit Greece in spring)
The Poet of Minsk - Taking risks as a poet (Mandelstam and others) in Minsk in 1928
Beyond the Border - Crossing the border to Canada on a bus
For You - Poetry prof. whose students die in Vietnam finds a reason to protest loudly and go to prison

Cole Swensen - Goest

2005-06-15T06:30:00.000-07:00

Cole Swensen's poetry is not accessible to me. When I read an interview with her I realized why...

Swensen works in ekphasic poetry-- poetry that describes visual art, often paintings. She thinks of the poems themselves as visual art and looks at the page as a canvas.

I am at the other spectrum of poetry-- wanting it to be read. Wanting it to be an auditory, musical art form. And visual art, visualization is my weak point.

I wanted to understand what the poem was ABOUT or hear the beauty in the language, not try to picture the visual that she was describing. As a prose person I wanted more narrative.

But while the poems themselves are inscrutable to me, I can still look at the organization that she uses in the manuscript.

Goest is divided into 3 named sections:

1. Of White - Poems that are definitely images.

The Girl who Never Rained
Others
Five Landscapes
The Future of Sculpture
White Cities

2. A History of the Incandescent - Poems with a lot of historical or quasi-historical information, but still largely driven by image and light.

Lacrymae Vitrae
The Invention of the Night-watch
The Invention of Streetlights
The First Lightbulb
The History of Artificial Ice
The Invention of the Hydrometer
The Invention of the Mirror
The Invention of the Weathervane
The Invention of Automata
What the Ventriloquists Said
The Origin of Ombres Chinoises
The Game of Balls and Cups
The Discovery of Bologna Stone
Things to Do with Naphtha
Of Manganese and Other Things
The Lives of Saltpeter
The Invention of Etched, Engraved and Incised Glass
The Expolration of Fluor-Spar
The Invention of the Pencil
The Development of Natural gas

3. On White - More really visual poems. A return and reworking of similar or the same material handled in the first section.

Razed Cities
The Future of White
Five Landscapes

There is something very compelling about this ABA form to the manuscript. Seeing how the thematic material is changed and transformed from the beginning to the end by the intervening section that is quite different.

So here comes the idea of not putting ALL of the thematically similar material together. Where does it belong?

Elizabeth Alexander - Venus Hottentot

2005-06-10T17:48:00.000-07:00

I'm doing an independent study at Hamline this summer with Deborah Keenan, who is my advisor. I need to put together my poetry manuscript and so my assignment is to study how other poets put together their manuscripts.

She gave me a bunch of people and I'm starting with Elizabeth Alexander, whose first collection of poetry here just blew me away.

The manuscript's organization was especially interesting to me since she includes a lot of family poetry. I have a bunch of that too-- and am struggling with how to not make it an entier manuscript of family poetry.

The unavoidable answer to that of course is that I need to write a bunch more poems that are not family poems. Right.

The book takes its title from a poem about Sarah Baartman, the "Venus Hottentot" who was a woman from South Africa displayed as a freak in London.

It is divided into four numbered sections:

I.
Containing "The Venus Hottentot"

II.
Containing eight poems about herself and her own family
West Indian Primer - grandfather, great grandfather, great grandmother, father
Ode - to the place she grew up
Ladders - Sisters, Neices, Aunts, Fathers
Zodiac - First kiss
The Dirt-Eaters - Great grandma
Who I Think You Are - Daddy, Grandpa, "Baba"
House Party Sonnet '66 - Brother
Nineteen - Her first summer on her own

III.
Containing 9 poems about historical artists and musicians (and one cowboy) tied together with multiple poems referencing collage artist Romare Bearden. With the exception of Frida Kahlo and Claude Monet, the figures are all African American.

Omni - Albert Murray - Albert Murray, Romare Bearden, Duke Ellington,
Robeson at Rutgers - Paul Robeson
Van Der Zee - James Van Der Zee
Bearden - Romare Bearden
Deadwood Dick - Nate Love
John Col - John Coltrane
Painting - Frida Kahlo
Monet at Giverny - Claude Monet
Farewell to You - Romare Bearden, Earl "Fatha" Hines, Willie "the Lion" Smith

IV.
Containing 11 poems that move around geographically sometimes with the author and sometimes with the news. Putting down roots, being transplanted, taking things for granted, exploring the idea of blackness.

Penmanship - differences in education from generation to generation
Letter: Blues - setting down new roots, being lonely
Boston Year - Contact with people from many different cultures in Boston
Kevin of the N.E. Crew - Graffitti, gangs and crime
Four Bongos: Take a Train - Subway musicians
"Radio Days" - Nostalgia
Miami Footnote - Visiting Miami
"Ala - Black men playing basketball in Alabama
A Poem for Nelson Mandela - Pretty self-explanatory
Today's News - Mike Tyson in a street brawl, Mohammed Ali throwing his gold medal away, the inability to define what blackness is-- too many things-- too many people
Preliminary Sketches: Philadelphia - Philadelphia as a place of roots

I'm least sure about the poems in the last set and I'm not sure why Penmanship is not included in the first section, since it mainly deals with differences between generations in her own family and isn't rooted in place, but in time.

I found this a very powerful collection of poems and will definitely re-read it and come back to this post so I can make changes to the analysis.

Northern Yearly Meeting

2005-05-31T08:10:00.000-07:00

I recently attended (with my family) a Quaker gathering of Northern Yearly Meeting-- those meetings here in the upper midwest who are part of Friends General Conference (FGC).

I want to say all kinds of clever things about the experience, but I have nothing very clever to say. I had the chance to attend some annual sessions led by Liz Oppenheimer on the development of a Quaker Identity.

It was very interesting to have a session on quaker identity among Liberal Friends led by a Conservative-leaning Friend.

These can be misleading labels. It has nothing to do with politics. Liberal Friends have a wider definition of Quaker theology. They may include non-Christians and even non-theists in their meetings. Conservative Friends have a narrower definition of Quakerism that is much more in line with historical beliefs of Friends.

What struck me as very interesting is that the main difference between Liberal and Conservative Friends is not in how they develop their individual quaker identity, but in what they demand of a corparate Quaker identity. Conservative Quakers wish for more accord between members.

I understand the desire for this shared spirituality that goes beyond simply shared practice. If all a meeting shares is silence in worship, it could seem empty without an underlying element of common belief.

I am firmly on the turf of the Liberal Quakers. I believe there is a a place for a wide range of beliefs, but I cannot yet articulate the place of Universalism within the Religious Society of Friends.

So much of what Liz was saying resonated with me. I believe that Liberal Friends have lost something and need to reclaim the framework for sharing faith and practice instead of having a room full of individuals. Quakerism is a corporate practice.

The Role of Hate Speech in Christianity

2005-05-21T22:00:00.000-07:00

I woke this morning to a story on NPR about a Christain group in Maryland trying to say that hate speech legistlation that includes gays and lesbians in the protected groups infringes on the rights of Christians. This man being interviewed (and I'll have to listen to it again) seemed to be saying that limiting hate speech against gays was the first step on the path to eliminating Christianity-- that Christians are nothing without their hate.

It makes me sad that I'm a Christian now. I think I could claim more of the moral high ground back when I was an athiest. I just can't get behind the idea that in order to be Christian, it is necessary to be hateful.

I wish I had the answer for how not to have a nation full of people who are ovewhelmingly defensive and self-righteous. I myself am feeling more defensive and self-righteous every day.

I want to say that people should follow their conscience, but so often their consciences aren't that reliable. (Like whenever they disagree with me.)

But aside from the fact that so many people are wrong in their beliefs, shouldn't we really find a way to coexist in spite of differences? Shouldn't we be able to honor the loyal opposition instead of painting them as demons and traitors?

I know I certainly don't feel like a demon and a traitor. I don't feel like a dupe of "liberal media bias." I don't feel that I have fallen prey to "the homosexual agenda." I do feel invisbile and powerless. And I don't feel that proud of being a "person of faith" at the moment.

You never hear about the reasonable Christians in the news. Never hear about what's going on with the UCC churches, or other liberal protestant congregations. There's not a peep about the Unitarians or the Quakers... those of us hanging to the left fringes of Christianity. Why aren't we noisier? Why aren't we as press-worthy?

Jesus is on our side. I know it. Let's start the Crusades again. I hear they were fun.

Poem in 5 and 7 syllables

2005-05-03T22:50:00.000-07:00

Urusai

Single word apology

His hand an afterimage
Imprint turning red
Almost beautiful
Flowering against her cheek

Behind sliding paper doors
The sound of my host father
Beating his nine-year-old son
For doing homework
Not quite fast enough.

I am in my borrowed room
Door locked behind me
Head buried in shame
I should have spoken

Alone on the tatami
My young host sister
A hand to her face
Weeping silently

Urusai, she said
My father is loud
I apologize for him

Three unseasoned Jesus poems

2005-05-01T13:54:00.000-07:00

Come Again

Jesus is pissed
With literalists

Insisting on a second-coming
Of the flesh

I’m here
He wants to say

But most people
Are not listening

The soul is not lost
When the body departs

How can I return
When I never left you?

Abandon

Abandon old prejudices
Empty forms
Cast off loud declarations of piety

I welcomed lepers, tax collectors, prostitutes
Why is your love so narrow now?
You could find no room for me.

Consummation

I was consumed by the fire of my message
Burning brightly for three years
Until extinguished.

Head bowed, crown of thorns
Martyrdom consumed my message
And what remained
Sin, Death, Redemption, Life Everlasting
Was all that could survive the cross

How great now is my pain
Nailed to crosses in every nation
Bleeding still from ragged wounds

Take me down from your walls
Remove my weary body from around your necks

Live in the now
Open your hearts
Love one another
As I have loved you.

Project Outline

2005-04-23T16:46:00.000-07:00

For next week I'm supposed to have a project outline for The Novel and how I will have it completed by the fall so I can register for Thesis I.

Here is the skeleton:

I. Unexposed/underexposed

In which our heroine (Sara) leaves home with little idea what she is getting herself into. Some information about the aunt she is going to visit, basic travel information on the country of Kenya, but little real knowledge of the situation.

II. Focal Length

Enter the cast of characters. We meet a number of people connected with Sara's aunt. Magdalene the interpreter, Mrs. Shah the timber magnate, Phyllis the landlady, teachers at the Shiloh Baptist Nursery School and headmaster of the Kalalu primary school. Sara is still getting her bearings. Trying to figure out which of these people will be main characters in her stay and which ones are playing minor supporting roles to the doctor.

III. Viewfinder

Sara as a tourist. On a wildlife photo shoot in a game reserve. Tea at Mount Kenya Safari Club. Staying overnight in the Maasailand in a traditional mud hut. Riding horses to the Mau Mau caves. Hiking the Sirimon Trail. Swimming at Naro Moru lodge.

IV. Ambient Light

Sara's growing awareness of the issues. Closer contact with the schools, the teachers and the students. She begins to work as a volunteer at the nursery school. Has some dealings with the Chief of the area that make her wonder how much she understands of what she sees... How much can be taken at face value?

V. Depth of Field

Things get more complicated. Violent crime, violent retribution and the matter-of-fact way torture and death are treated by otherwise gentle, intelligent people. She finds some about the history of Kenya's independence. Sours quite a bit on the current regime. Fantasies about organizing a rebellion.

VI. Dark Room

Sara back home. Realizing that her coping mechanism in Kenya had been to shut off all memories of home. Trouble reconciling the poverty she lived with all summer with the waste and wealth she sees upon her return. Now it's easier to pretend that she never went to Kenya. The two lives cannot coexist. Contacts between Sara and Kenya crumble quickly.

VII. Ghost Images

The things that stay with Sara even though she tries to forget. Images captured on film. Songs of the children. Haunting stories of things that happened long before she was there. Death.

Singing in Church

2005-04-07T07:57:00.000-07:00

At meeting last week I had a song running through my head the entire time. It's a hymn from the Unitarian Universalist hymnal based on an African song.

There is more love, somewhere.
There is more love, somewhere.
I'm gonna keep on, 'till I find it.
There is more love, somewhere.

There is more peace, somewhere...

There is more hope, somewhere...

There is more joy, somewhere...

The song played over and over again like a mantra for the entire hour of silent meeting. There was no "vocal ministry," which means that no one stood up to speak. The song played on without interruption.

About forty-minutes into this endless repetition I began to question if it was a message. At which point my pulse started to race and my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth and my hands felt shaky.

By the time I decided it really was a message and I should stand and sing, I didn't think my voice would actually come out. And at the moment I decided that it didn't matter if my voice shook, I just needed to stand up and get it over with... it was the "rise of meeting." People broke the silence by shaking hands.

This was the early meeting, where they have the tradition of everyone introducing themselves. They started at my section and the second person to introduce himself said that he had actually been moved to speak but he hadn't done so because the message didn't feel worshipful. So he shared his message after introducing himself.

When it came to my turn I said that I too had been moved to speak, but my message was a song and I'd been too shy to sing it. So then I sang.

Easter - Take 2

2005-03-23T05:36:00.000-08:00

I am not trying to perform an attack on anyone's Easter thing. Religion is a very personal thing. I'm just struggling with my own theology this season.

I've realized that at the root of my Easter problem is the fact that Unitarians do not buy into the trilogy. That is why they are not called Trinitarians. Even if Jesus is of the divine, he is not God, said early Unitarians. This got them a toasty place at the stake. They've been around, by the way, since the first century.

So, deep in my bones there is this tradition of a human Jesus who died and suffered and was an amazing person whose message was powerful enough to change the lives of those around him and the lives of people living more than 2000 years after his death.

Reading John Shelby Spong's book resurrection: myth or reality? has been helpful for me. It made me realize that I don't hate Easter. Good Friday got somehow tangled up with Easter for me because I BELIEVE in Good Friday but got lost on the way to Easter.

Once I untangled Good Friday and Easter, I realized that I didn't have as big a problem with Easter. My problem then is with the literalness of the resurrection.

Spong doesn't assume a literal risen Christ. It is a fascinating look at scripture with a historical background and an attempted reconstruction of what may have happened.

If the resurrection of Jesus cannot be believed except by assenting to the fantastic descriptions included in the Gospels, then Christianity is doomed. For that view of resurrection is not believable, and if that is all there is, then Christianity, which depends upon the truth and authenticity of Jesus' resurrection, also is not believable. If that were the requirement of belief as a Christian, then I would sadly leave my house of faith. With me in that exodus from the Christian church however, would be every ranking New Testament scholar in the world -- Catholic and Protestant alike...

...There is no exodus of this group from the Christian church because we are convinced that the reality of Easter is not captured in the words of the developing Christian legends. We can reject the literal narratives about the resurrection and still not reject the truth and power of the resurrection event itself. That is the distinction that must be made. We would not have the legends unless there had been a moment so indescribable that legends became necessary to explain it.

I'm okay with that. I have no trouble understanding myths that are far away from the Christian tradition. It is in trying to understand Christian myths that I have the most difficulty. I think it is because I've never spoken with anyone who thinks that Thor really lives in the clouds.

But I've met plenty of people who believe that Jesus was the living God and rose on the third day. And that Eve ate an apple to earn us pain in childbirth. And that the earth was created entire in six days.

It's hard for me to mythify someone's reality. And I guess it is not the myth of Christianity that speaks to me, but the history and the reality of the message. A transforming and powerful message of love, peace and justice. Radical.

This is the Jesus who is alive, who cannot die, who dwells within.

Happy Easter.

Legislation with no defense

2005-03-22T05:34:00.000-08:00

Caution: politically liberal views ahead.

The Quaker church that I attend had a 5-hour-long business meeting last Sunday. They are scheduled to go as long as they need to. What was the sticking point? Whether or not to put out a rainbow flag in front of the meeting house in support of our F/friends in the LGBT/Q community.

This was not controvertial for the reasons you might think. The meeting has been taking same sex marriages "under the care of the meeting" since 1986. That means that same-gender couples are welcome to be married using the same criteria as hetero couples.

It was controvertial because the older, straighter members of the meeting wanted to put the flag out NOW NOW NOW due to impending idiotic legislation to forever destroy legal protection for unconventional families. It was the members of the LGBT/Q community present who wanted to wait until a larger discussion about this to make sure that the whole community and not just the people who showed up for the business meeting were behind the idea.

It is too easy for me to forget that just because I am surrounded by people who accept same-gender couples doesn't mean they aren't under attack.

For me, aside from your feelings about homosexuality, I don't feel that who is allowed to marry should be part of legislation. I don't think majority rule is a good way of determining the right course in this matter. (How very Quaker of me.) Unions are a spiritual matter. They do also offer legal protections, which is I guess why the legislature feels free to put forth the so-called "Defense of Marriage" act.

It seems much more like the "Attack on Families" act. Particularly because it denies not just marriage but also "its legal equivalent" to same-gender couples.

Why is it harmful to offer same-gender couples some manner of legitimacy and legal protection. If you are against gay marriage, don't have one. Don't use legislation to impose faith.

And in that I have sympathy with religious conservatives who feel that this is a matter of faith. They are correct. Marriage is a faith-based institution. And I believe that legislation such as this infringes on the rights of religious communities to decide for themselves who will be married under their care.

If you are from Minnesota, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE tell your representative not to vote for this legislation that will affect real families with real children. Outfront makes it very easy to sign their petition.

Write letters. Call your representatives. It is very important even if you think you don't know any people in the LGBT community. Because you probably do.

Like the oranges

2005-03-22T05:07:00.000-08:00

My son is officially smarter than I am. He's almost two and a half. It was bound to happen sooner or later.

We went to visit my friend Kim. We haven't seen her for months. But Owen talks about her sometimes and remembers playing with her puppy, who is an exuberant lab mix.

"Do you know who this is?"

No response. He continues to tell her about the pictures he drew and his friends at ECFE.

"This is Kim. Do you remember her dog's name?

"Yes."

"What is it?"

"It's like the oranges."

At first I didn't get it. I was thrown by Kim saying that yes, she was an orange dog. That is not what he was saying.

Her name is Clementine -- like the oranges.

Bright Lights, Big City

2005-03-20T06:31:00.000-08:00

A woman in my fiction class started telling us about her trip to the mall where she stopped by Banana Republic. "This is litererary, I promise," she insisted.

She walked in and saw signs for their "Bright Lights, Big City" sweepstakes. Hmm. She asked "the nine-year old behind the counter if he'd read the book." No.

Maybe he was more familiar with the movie starring Michael J. Fox?

Who's Michael J. Fox?

"And at that point I wanted to kill myself."

She explained that it was a book about yuppie drug culture in the eighties. About a guy doing cocaine. Did he think that was a very good theme for a promotion?

She got the name and number of the 28-year-old head of marketing for Banana Republic and asked him if he'd read the book. No. She didn't tell him what it was about, just told him to ask his mom what SHE thought of the idea.

He sent an email back to her. Mom's response: WHAT WERE YOU THINKING!?

Our prof. did point out that a store with a social conscience probably wouldn't be named the Banana Republic in the first place.

Shooting the Thorn Tree

2005-03-20T06:10:00.000-08:00

So I've been writing up a storm on my thesis project. Learning more and more about the main character as she becomes less and less me.

Turns out she is totally into photography. Handy, because I have an interest in it and I have an ancient camera that I learned on that takes fantastic pictures so I can write about it with some confidence. But for me it's a hobby and for her it is more of a passion. What music is for me, photography is for her.

This knowledge is helping me frame the whole story. The title - Shooting the Thorn Tree - and the titles for the sections will come from photographic terms. And I think I'm going to ditch my previous intro with a less dense one:

You see the problem? Usually she takes fantastic pictures.

Haven’t seen one of those in years. Miranda? They went out of business before you were born.

Here’s some close-ups I shot earlier in the trip. But look. This last roll only exposed half of each frame.

All metal body… probably outweighs you too.

The shutter feels sluggish. I cleaned her out as best I could, but I didn’t want to risk scratching the lens.

These were fine cameras. You shoot black and white?

Some.

Wow. Where did you take these? Those trees are amazing.

Acacia Thorn. I stayed with a relative in Kenya this summer.

Look! A giant stuffed Rabbit.

2005-03-18T06:51:00.000-08:00

Not yet happy with this post, but it's going out anyway...

We were in a mall with my son Owen and there was an Easter bunny. Of course. "Look, Owen, a stuffed rabbit." was my brilliant comment.

Couldn't bring myself to say Easter Bunny because then I would have felt obliged to explain Easter and try to cover how the torture and killing of my favorite historical figure ties into cute bunnies with baskets of eggs and other pagan rites of Spring.

I can do it, don't get me wrong. I was raised Unitarian and if I think about it I can retrieve all the bland equinox celebration-type things. And the ties between Christ rising and all the spring fertility stuff is not that big of a stretch. Still. I do not care for this season. In fact I have a bit of a problem with Easter.

Growing up in a liberal UU home Easter was not much of a religious holiday. It was a rite of spring. In fact, my mom was a little appalled at my fascination with Christianity and Bible stories and Jesus in general. She was convinced that I was going to rebel against my religious liberal upbringing by becoming a Catholic nun.

I'm pretty sure that wouldn't work, given the fact that my Jesus is not divine. This is fine at Christmas, but considerably less comfortable come Good Friday.

Here is the problem I have with Easter: I get stuck on the cross. It has always disturbed me that Christians chose to use an implement of torture as their symbol. And that for so many Christians it is the bodily resurrection of Christ that cements their faith. I had one friend tell me that if they ever found the bones of Jesus that would be the end of her entire belief system.

For me the bones are not the important issue. His last tortured moments are not what I want to focus on. I don't want to observe the gruesome and horrible event each year. (He was lucky, in some ways. It took most people 3 days to die after being crucified. Jesus went in only 3 hours, likely because of massive internal injuries caused by earlier beatings.)

And because I don't really celebrate the resurrection in the bodily way-- his death seems pointless, cruel and unnecessary. And depressing. I can't understand how people can be so happy or why it is the most important day in the liturgical year.

Now that I'm a Christian again, I feel like I should want to reclaim Easter in some way, but instead I find I'm pushing it further away. I don't want any Eastery things in the house. I would rather not go to Easter dinner. I am reading John Shelby Spong's book Resurrection in the hopes that it will help me calm down a bit about all this rising again. He's not so literal.

And the Quaker in me really believes that the risen Christ is within us all. ALL. Not just Christians. And bodily resurrection need play no part in that.

In the mean time I'm keeping my eye out for more stuffed rabbits and trying to come up with an answer for Owen when he asks about Easter that's better than "It's a holiday your Grandma Jo celebrates."

Poet Laureate 2001-2003

2005-03-01T12:35:00.000-08:00

I heard these poem on NPR a while ago as read by the poet and I was thrilled to find them again.

A really cool poem mocking pretentious poetry - The Litany
This great one in praise of a dog - Dharma

Sara's Story Intro?

2005-02-19T13:28:00.000-08:00

(Note: on August 24, 2000 Father John Kaiser, a priest from St. Cloud, MN was found dead outside of Nairobi. He had been shot in the head and left on the side of the road.)

People invariably want to talk to her about the priest. Had she met him? Did she know him? They were both from Minnesota, there at the same time. Friends and relatives want details: wild animals on Safari, exotic flora, quaint tribal customs, brutal dictatorships. Mystery. Adventure. They ask about the priest pretending concern, but she knows they really just want to be entertained.

She'd never seen him. Never heard of him. Priests were mysterious creatures who lived in slums and spoke out against the government. Missionaries were fearful wanderers holed up in gated communities in Nairobi. Some ventured out as messengers, delivering supplies to remote areas. Occasionally they made their way out with medicines or books or news from home. The mail could not be trusted.

She had been at the foothills of Mount Kenya. At the equator. She crossed it twice a day. Nairobi was a place she had been to briefly after leaving the airport. She remembered there were cattle grazing in the flowerbeds of exclusive hotels. The drought brought “the landless” in to the city. Her host was nervous because she'd forgotten to remove the thin gold chain from around her neck. A foolish risk. A mistake.

It is a shock to be back. A shock to be surrounded by all these white faces. No one is staring at her, which seems strange. She finds herself staring at everyone. Everything. Where did all these white people come from? Their skin seems transparent, insubstantial. They squint in the bright, distant sunlight, complain about the humidity. Everything seams too clean. Roads are smooth. Grass is green. There are lakes and rivers and streams. It rains.

They ask her about the priest. She can tell them nothing about him. And she can’t bring herself to tell her own story. It doesn’t even feel like hers to tell. Tell us about your trip. How was your aunt? Always the same questions. Without fail.

She walks away.

Nonviolent Response

2005-02-15T18:35:00.000-08:00

In Quakerism 101 we were talking about the different Testimonies that the Quakers hold dear:

Simplicity, Peace, Integrity, Community and Equality

This led into an activity dealing with violence. There were four quadrants:
Violent/OK
Violent/Not OK
Non-Violent/OK
Non-Violent/Not OK

The leader proposed a scenario, and we were to stand in the quadrant that corresponded with the situation.

1. You shoot a duck during hunting season.

This one was split pretty evenly between Violent/OK and Violent/Not OK with a large number of fence sitters. The rational for the Not OK folks was that many of them didn't eat meat, so for them to shoot a duck would be just for sport.

One person saw this as a non-violent/OK act. He saw it as part of the circle of life. I disagreed with his position in that I see the circle of life as being naturally violent-- not maleveolently so, but nature is not a pacifist.

2. Someone is trying to mug you; you knock them down and run away.

I was surprised at the number of people who classified this as non-violent/OK. How is pushing someone down NOT a violent response? If asked to come up with a non-violent reaction to a mugging, knocking someone over wouldn't be tops on my list.

The majority was in the Violent/OK side. One lone voice said it was violent and not OK.

3. There is an armed burglar in your home. You shoot him in self-defense.

This nearly came to blows. People felt very passionately about where they stood and believed they needed to convert the other side to the correct way.

From the Violent/Okay side: I have four kids; he's threatening my family. I have no choice. It's him or me. He forced this on himself. It was in self defense.

From the Violent/Not OK side: What am I doing with a gun in the first place? What if I shoot one of my four kids accidentally? We told you you needed to spend more time at the shooting range! There is always a choice. Aren't all shootings "in self defense?"

4. Your neighbor has an army recruiting bumper sticker. You write "work for peace" on it in permanent marker.

Here I got very very irritated with the people who called this a Violent/Not OK act. Some of them were the same ones who saw pushing someone down as non-violent. WHAT? Writing something is more violent than knocking someone over?

Those of us on the correct side saw this as a non-violent, not OK act and tried in vain to pursuade the others that it wasn't a violent act, it was just very not OK. But they insisted it was violent. As is calling someone "stupid." As is verbal abuse.

There is gets kind of gray for me. I believe you can be verbally violent. But the written word just doesn't have the same wallop for me.

Advanced Fiction - "This is a novel about..."

2005-02-12T10:59:00.000-08:00

We did an exercise where we started "This is a novel about..."

First one sentence to summarize:

This is a novel about a girl from Minnesota who travels to Kenya for the summer to visit her aunt and is confronted by drought, poverty and corruption.

Then one paragraph:

This is a novel about a girl from Minnesota who travels to Kenya for the summer to visit her eccentric aunt who works there as a Doctor. She comes face to face with drought, poverty, corruption and tragedy through the history of the space she is in as well as current events. She returns to Minnesota with bruised idealism.

Then one page:

This is a novel about a girl named Sara, who lives in suburban Minnesota and grows up spending summers at "the cabin" with her grandparents and cousins. She wants to see the world and is sent on a trip to Kenya after high school graduation to visit her 72-year-old Aunt Meg, In Nanyuki Kenya.

Meg has been working in Kenya as a doctor for 10 years. Sara can't understand why her aunt is so distant from the people she treats. Why can't Meg speak even a little Swahili? Why won't she learn the names of her patients? She insists on calling all the women "Mary" and all the men "George." And when she has so much apparent disdain for the cultures here, why has she stayed?

Sara finds the answers to these questions as she learns about the history of the area and her aunt's own personal history with the tribes she deals with in her practice. As she is confronted with widespread poverty, killing drought, and corrupt government officials Sara's idealism is challenged.

At the start of her journey she longed to make connections with people she met. When she returns to Minnesota she cannot wait to put the whole experience behind her. Essentially she puts up the same barriers that she saw in her aunt.

Religious Refugees

2005-01-30T16:42:00.000-08:00

My Quakerism 101 class discussed Universalism this last week. There was a lot of talk about Universalists being open to any religion so long as it isn't Christianity. Many people seemed to have had bad experiences with Unitarian Universalist congregations that were not accepting of Christian leanings.

I grew up as a Christian-leaning Unitarian Universalist in a secular humanist congregation. I did run across some people who were anti-Christian or at least anti-specific-Christian-sect. But for the most part, there was a positive relationship with Christianity.

The congregation still celebrated the major Christian holidays and there were occasional sermons based on new testament sources. So as not to offend non-Christian members these sermons were peppered with, "Some people believe..." before each strong statement about Jesus or God.

There were also some people who wanted to bring traditions into the church that weren't a natural fit, in my book. They missed communion so they had something they called "apple ring commonion" where people could come up and get a piece of dried apple and pretend that this was a spiritual experience.

I attribute both the Anti-Christians and the Silly-Ritualists NOT to Universalism but to the problem of religious refugees.

I am not a religious refugee. I have chosen freely to immigrate from Unitarian Universalism to the Quakers. I did not flee my faith community in pain. Instead I sought out something that was missing in my life right now. I found a better fit for myself.

Refugees did not leave by choice. They fell out of their faith or were pushed out by intolerance or narrowness or any number of other things. They bring their damaged selves to more accepting churches.

The most potently anti-Christian people I have met are ex-Christians or people who were raised in a Christian home. Over time many of them relax their views once they have some distance and once they have found a new faith community.

Universalism should not be blamed for accepting these people into the mix. Refugees and Immigrants are both welcomed in religious liberal faith communities. But with this comes the burden of absorbing new biases and intolerances.

Most people in the Unitarian Church were not born to it. I am a rare "cradle Unitarian." There is a constant flow of people from other religions. The same is true of the Religious Society of Friends.

This may mean that both groups will need to actively combat Anti-Christian bias in their congregations, but I maintain that Christianity has an important role in both the Unitarian Church and the Society of Friends.

The Inward Light - Samuel D. Caldwell

2005-01-26T15:18:00.000-08:00

This was on the reading list for tonight, and I had some pretty strong reactions to parts of it.

He tries in this essay to tie together the Universalist and the Christian elements of Quakerism, claiming that they are both deeply embedded in the tradition of the Friends.

Here's what he lists as the important chacteristics of the light (same as one from class)

• divine or supernatural - not like your reason or conscience
• personal
• saving
• eternal
• resistable
• persistent
• pure
• ineffable
• universal

So what really ticked me off, was his insistence that the light being personal meant that it had to be a BEING, a god. No, a God. THE God. Okay, quote:

The Light is personal. It is no mindless, purposeless, undifferentiated force or power. It is the mind and will of God -- the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Sarah -- who indwells our souls. To claim, as we do, that we are led or taught by the Light is to accept by inference that the power by which we are led or taught is capable of actively leading or teaching us. This requires a personal or theistic conception of the Spirit, which Friends have traditionally held.

This blocks all agnostics and nontheists from the Religious Society of Friends!

I also have a problem with thinking that if we can be led by the Light, it must be the God of Abraham and Isaac. We can be led by any number of amorphous ineffeble things. Why does it necessarily follow that we must be taught by a theistic God?

He's very harsh on people he calls "pseudo-universalists" accusing them of "way-hopping" and never delving too deeply into any tradition. I agree that it is difficult to make much spiritual progress with a great deel of bredth and no depth. But he goes to far in stating that if you are not following a single religious tradition you are withoutu any benchmarks for what is right and good.

Because it is a view of religion and not a religion itself, and becasue it accepts no particular religious tradition as normative, pseudo-universalism has within it no principle whereby it can discriminate between what is true and what is false in any particular religious view. To what standard, for instance, would pseudo-universalism appeal reagarding a membership application from an avowed practitioner of the religion of satanism?

Clearly this is not someone who values secular humanism or understands that there are some normative values. In fact, though the terminology differs, the sentiments are much the same. Quakers see the Light in every human being. Humanists see the humanity in everyone. Both acknowledge that there is something essentially good at the core of people that they can choose to foster or to ignore.

That said, his description of a view of religion and not a religion itself is the primary reason that I left the Unitarian Universalist faith.

Concerts to attend

2005-01-26T14:30:00.000-08:00

February 12, 8pm

Carrie Newcomer concert at Macalester College to benefit Open Arms of MN and 2nd Harvest food shelf. Concert free, goodwill donation of foodstuffs appreciated.

February 27, 4pm

Sounds of Blackness concert at U of MN Tedd Mann Concert Hall. Also free.

And someday I want to go hear Dan Schwartz play again. Really like his stuff.

Quaker Light Within and Universalism

2005-01-26T13:48:00.000-08:00

Last week I foundered at the topic of the "Light Within." This is a new concept for me. It isn't one that I have used to describe my experiences. It becomes more complicated when you realize that people who talk about the light within aren't necessarily talking about light. It could be a voice, or music or a feeling. Light is only the metaphor. It seemed a less problematic metaphor than god.

Here's some stuff about the light:

• It illumines us, casts light on our faults
• It also makes it possible for us to overcome our faults
• It is personal. The messages you receive are meant for YOU.
• It is difficult to explain
• It is something within you, not something that shines down on you
• It is within EVERYONE
• It is resistable; people can choose to ignore the light within them

Universalism

"No amount of rational philosophy, nor of political debate, will ever convince us which faith is the true one, which conception of what it means to be a human being is valid. Our vision of our human destiny is one to which we can only be drawn by love, by enthusiasm. The great communities of faith, with their various scriptures and traditions, hold up for us our good possibilities, showing us their nobility and attractiveness, drawing us to them." -- Dan Seeger

The Golden Rule

Let not any man do unto another any act that he wishes not done to himself by others, knowing it to be painful to himself. (The Hindu Mahabharata, Shanti parva, cclx.21);

Do not do to others what you would not want them to do to you. (Confucius, Analects, Book XlI, no. 2);

Hurt not others with that which pains yourself. (The Buddhist Udanavarga, verse 18);

As ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise. (Jesus, Luke 6:31);

No man is a true believer unless he desires for his brother that which he desires for himself. (The Muslim Hadtih, Muslim, imam, 71-2).

Goal Setting

2005-01-26T13:24:00.000-08:00

My friend Leo and I (a fellow teacher from Open School) both have aspirations to be physically fit, published authors.

Since moving to my new house in October I have done yoga three times. And no walking. But I have managed to do an impressive amount of writing.

Leo works out at least four times a week and is getting set for yet another Birkie (51-kilometer ski race in Wisconsin). But he hasn't written anything new since... well for a long time.

In the past we have very successfully collaborated on both things: when I was pregnant with Owen I was on a triathalon team with Leo. He did the bike leg and I did the swim. Our runner was injured at the last minute so we grabbed a student from school to run for us.

We also met once a week one summer and did creative writing stuff. We each got a new and fairly polished short stories out of the deal.

So we're trying to renegotiate some sort of collaboration to our mutual benefit.

Knowing that people are more likely to achieve their goals if they write them down, here are the goals we set for ourselves (to be accomplished by our first meeting on February 10).

Kiara's goals:
Place in the top 10 in the women's finishers of an Ironman-length triathalon.
Have a second kid.

Leo's goals
Get married and have first kid.
Publish a novel.

We figured these were good goals because they were attainable (I'm not finishing first, his novel isn't a best-seller) and they are objective and measurable.

Yeah.

2 by 2

2005-01-23T14:11:00.000-08:00

Tami was one of my closest friends when I was a kid. We still stay in touch and have both gone on to become teachers in the public schools. We met in 5th grade and within a week our teacher had marked us for lifelong friends.

I find this interesting looking back, because in the land of suburban Protestantism, I was a vocal atheist and she was from a very conservative Christian sect that had no name. But we both stuck out, weren't the norm, and were stubbornly insistent in our beliefs.

I found it even more fascinating that her parents allowed her to be friends with me. I was very frank with them about my lack of faith, but I was also adamant about never pressuring Tami to do anything that was frowned upon in her tradition.

I was very curious about her beliefs. Why did she have to wear her hair long? Why couldn't she wear jewelry? Why wasn't she supposed to own a T.V, go to the movies or dance? Her answer to everything was "because it's in the bible." I didn't waste my time on T.V. and the movies, but I did go home and find every reference to Dancing unto the Lord that I could find in my King James version of the bible. Her King James Version had substituted other words for dance-- sing, shout, whatever...

She had no explanation for this, since according to her faith the Bible was the one true word of God and he would not allow it to be corrupted. I tried talking to her about errors in translation, mistakes of copyists, different interpretations of archaic language. Her reaction was to tell me that I was sent by the devil to test people's faith.

Amazingly we continued to be friends. But then again, many of the people I went to school with assumed that I was going to burn in hell. Also that I had no morals and could do whatever I wanted without repercussion. I can't believe that some people believe their conscience comes entirely from their religion and that without religion one is without conscience!

But I digress.

I didn't find much out about Tami's Religion (as I called it, since it had no name) until after I graduated from college and attended one of the Meetings with her family. The ministers are unpaid and own nothing. They rely on the charity of the congregation. There are no churches. They meet in people's homes. Everyone is encouraged to read the Bible and come to an understanding of how the words fit their own lives here and now.

I liked a lot of things about this. I started having a rosy picture of how fantastic this faith community was. They were so supportive of one another. They were very welcoming of me. I started to think that if only I believed in God I could be her religion. I forgot all of the perceptions I'd had earlier about the controlling, conservative, overbearing nature of the religion

I did some poking around lately that reminded me of some of those things that rubbed me the wrong way. The principal problem I have is with something called the Living Witness Doctrine that states nobody gets into heaven unless they profess their faith to on of the Workers and hears the gospel from a Worker and lives according to the rules set forth by the Workers.

It's hardly the only denomination to say that it's the only way. It just makes me sad to think of people being shackled to a faith not because it feels right or brings them spiritual fulfillment but because they fear damnation. Which again is probably not unusual. I just have a very limited understanding of salvation and damnation and they are not what drive my spiritual quest.

Sam and Owen at the Zoo

2005-01-20T06:14:00.000-08:00

Sam and Owen at the Zoo,
originally uploaded by afongen.

I am trying out posting pictures from Flickr.

Here are my boys Sam and Owen watching the dolphins at the zoo.

So now we are both famous

2005-01-17T23:25:00.000-08:00

First I'll tell you about my famous husband. I just stayed up until past my bedtime listening to a podcast of Sam being interviewed by Garrick Van Buren (whose name I most likely just misspelled).

It was fun.

I'm famous too since I got interviewed by Weekend America on NPR (or was it MPR?) but there is no permanent record of me because I think I was just local color. They asked if I had any book to recommend what would it be. I said Anil's Ghost by Michael Ondaatje.

This is true.

If you have not read this book, you really should.

It may be of particular interest to people given current events because it is set in Sri Lanka and follows the footsteps of a Sri Lankan-born woman who lives in Canada and has been hired by the UN to investigate possible human rights abuses by one or both sides in the long civil war.

It is not a mystery.
It is not historical fiction.
It is fascinating.

At the beginning of the book I couldn't wait to find out the answer to the puzzles she was examining. By the end of the book I didn't even care about the investigation. It took a back seat to the politics and the personal struggles going on with the characters.

Ondaatje is the master of weaving fact and fiction.

Read him.

Now.

Conservation of Soul

2005-01-17T21:45:00.000-08:00

From a fine discussion with a friend over coffee

Is there an afterlife? Does the soul continue? Or do we live on metaphorically in our children, the memories of those whose live's we've touched, the work we've done while on this earth?

Lately I've been thinking of afterlife in this way. We do not cease to exist. Parts of us live on in the hearts and minds of others. Words on a page we leave behind. And our bodies are made of matter which can neither be created nor destroyed. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.

As I sat in meeting, breathing deeply, "centering down" I thought of the fact that the air we are breathing is the same air that people have been breathing for thousands of years. Some of the molecules I'm taking into my lungs may once have been in the lungs of the living Jesus. I breathed deeply, taking in as much as I could, hoping to hold some of his peace, his wisdom, his compassion and his active faith.

It was an odd combination of philosophy, theology and science. But then so am I. An agnostic Christian raised as a Unitarian (by a family of scientists) but now pursuing membership in the Religious Society of Friends. Go figure.

Quakerism 101 - session 1

2005-01-12T19:30:00.000-08:00

So I'm taking this class to learn about Quaker History.

Here are some interesting things that came up:

In contrast to the Puritans, Catholics and the Church of England, Quakers went for:
• Free will over predestination
• Church governed by the laity rather than pope or King
• Ministry free and open to all rather than restricted and hereditary
• Religious authority directly from God, rather than from priest or scripture alone
• God is Unity, not Trinity
• Sin comes from our own actions, not Adam's fall
• The state should not be involved in the business of the church

George Fox describes the torment he experienced as a young man searching for theological answers and spiritual meaning in his life. He was disappointed by the answers he received from priests of all denominations and eventually discovered that the answers were revealed to him directly through "openings" in which God spoke to him.

Was the term openings one that was in common use at the time or was it coined by Fox?

Selected early Openings of George Fox - Chapter One of his Journal

• God does not dwell in temples made with hands but within the hearts of people.

"God, who made the world, did not dwell in temples made with hands... the Lord showed me, so that I did see clearly, that he did not dwell in these temples which men had commanded and set up, but in people's hearts."

• To be born into the priesthood is not sufficient to make one a minister of Christ.

"...as I was walking in a field on a First-day morning, the Lord opened unto me that being bred at Oxford or Cambridge was not enough and fit to qualify men to be ministers of Christ."

• The priests and other holy people could not speak to Fox's condition, but Christ himself held the answers and would reveal them.

"And when all my hopes in [preachers and priests] and in all men were gone, so that I had nothing outwardly to help me, nor could tell what to do, then, Oh then, I heard a voice which said, 'There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition.'"

• Everyone is enlightened by the divine light of Christ.

"and I saw it shine through all, and that they believed in it came out of condemnation and came to the light of life and became the children of it, but they that hated it, and did not believe in it, were condemned by it, though they made a profession of Christ."

• Through the example and the inner spirit of Christ Fox could overcome temptation

"Christ opened to me how he was tempted by the same Devil and had overcome him and bruised his head, and through him and his power, light, grace and spirit, I should overcome also, I had confidence in him. So he it was who opened to me when I was shut up and had not hope nor faith."

• The temptations and torments Fox experienced helped to strengthen his faith

"I was taken up in the love of God so that I could not but admire the greatness of his love And while I was in that condition it was opened unto me by the eternal Light and power, and I therein saw clearly that all was done and to be done in and by Christ, and how he conquers and destroys this tempter, the Devil and all his works, and is atop of him, and that all these troubles were good for me, and temptations for the trial of my faith which Christ had given me."

• Many people who spoke the words of Jesus and quoted scripture ignored the example of Christ's life and the things he taught.

"As the Lord spoke he opened it to me how that the people and professors did trample upon the life, even the life of Christ was trampled upon; and they fed upon words, and fed one another with words, but trampled upon the life, and trampled underfoot the blood of the Son of God, which blood was my life, and they lived in their airy notions, talking of him."

Jesus Before Christianity - John the Baptist

2005-01-10T12:53:00.000-08:00

I have been reading and rereading Jesus Before Christianity by Albert Nolan, a Dominican from South Africa. He has some very interesting ideas about Jesus and his life within a historical context.

Nolan states that the purpose of the gospels was not to give a biography of Jesus, but instead to show how Jesus could be relevant to people outside Palestine after Jesus' death.

The book is an attempt to tease out Jesus' intentions through examining his choices and decisions as outlined in scripture and other historical documents.

The first such choice highlighted is Jesus' decision to be baptized by John the Baptist. This instantly set him apart from the other religious movements in Palestine at the time:

Zealots: fought Rome with violence for 60 years in an underground movement. Overthrew Roman government in 66 CE; 4 years later Romasns sent an army to destroy them. The last held out in Masada until 73 CE when 1000 committed suicide rather than submit to Rome.

Pharisees: concerned with reforming Israel. Believed that the Roman yoke was punnishment for the unfaithfulness to law and tradition. Name means "the separate ones" and they set themselves apart from everyone not faithful to the law to form closed communities. They believed in an afterlife, ressurection of the dead and a future Messiah who would liberate them from the Romans.

Essenes: spearatists. Outsiders were hated as "sons of darkness" Considered themselves the faithful remnant of Israel. Allied themseleves with Zealots in 66 CE and were destroyed.

Sadducees: religious conservatives out to preserve status quo. They were the priesthood, upholding ancient Hebrew tradition. Rejected afterlife and resurrection of the dead as novelties. Reward and punishment in this lifetime

Apocalyptic writers: believed god's plan for the end of the world had been revealed to them.

John differed from these groups because
• he was a prohpet of doom and destruction
• he appealed to ALL of Israel - including sinners, tax collectors, prostitutes and Herod himself
• he expected each individual in Israel to repent and experience a change of heart.
• he appealed for social morality

"the fact of his baptism by John is conclusive proof of his acceptance of John's basic prophecy: Israel is heading for an unprecedented catastrophe."

Disadvantaged Families

2005-01-03T17:33:00.000-08:00

I did take a bit of a break from writing after my class ended in December, but I have an excuse. Apparently I am a Disadvantaged Urban Family.

So says the Campus Crusade for Christ, which sent four young evangelists to my door bearing gifts of canned new potatoes, dried kidney beans, sushi rice and a four pound bag of dried milk.

In my confusion over how they had found their way to MY doorstep, I caved and agreed to do a survey in which they asked me what I liked about my neighborhood, what I wanted to change about my neighborhood and if I regularly attended church. Unfortunately I went on to explain that I attended the Quaker Meetings here.

I say unfortunately because as part of this explanation I covered the Quaker testimonies including the testimony on peace.

Had I not just finished telling them how peaceful Quakers are, I might have been tempted to kick their asses when they told my two-year-old that

1. God loved him more than his mommy and daddy did
2. When he didn't listen to his mommy when she said to go to bed that was a sin and it made god mad.
3. That Jesus died for him and the blood of Jesus washed him clean of sin until his sould was white. And wasn't it great that Jesus died for him.

They said some other stuff too, but I was sufficiently angry that I didn't pay much attention.

I didn't care much for their theology, and I have a philosophical problem with missionaries in general, but now that I've had a bit of time to cool off I've realized my main bone to pick with them has to do with what is appropriate information to give to two-year-olds.

I doubt that Owen was scarred much by this encounter. Hopefully there won't be too many future encounters where I don't have the foresight to halt the conversation. It hadn't occurred to me that there was a different consequence to being polite to missionaries now that I have a child.

At Meeting the other day I shared with the group that I was struggling with religious tolerance. I value religious tolerance and I like to say that people can believe whatever they want. However, I have found that it is much easier for me to be tolerant of other religious liberals.

Someone suggested that I could be tolerant of beliefs, but not so open about specific practices. I have trouble disentangling faith from practice. How can I say it's okay for you to believe that it is your duty to spread the gospel as long as you don't actually go around spreading the gospel? It makes no sense.

Mau Mau - Iraq Connection

2004-12-08T12:17:00.000-08:00

While doing research on the Mau Mau insurrection in Kenya just prior to their independence from Britain I developed a critical case of deja vu. The language used to describe the state of emergency, the actions taken by the colonial government, the outcomes of their lack of cultural understanding... It seemed so much like what is going on now at the hands of the US Government in Iraq.

In 1950s Kenya there were prison abuse scandals, prisoners who died while in custody... There was a government insisting that there was a highly organized group of terrorists and it was necessary to declare a state of emergency, remove the corrupt leadership and educate the savage people in the ways of the West.

I may find more intelligent comparisons later, but I've already come across an article that makes some of the same connections.

John Pilger wrote an article called "Get Out Now, Before We are Thrown Out."

It is really eery the parallels between our so-called nation building and the acts of a colonial government bent on keeping power.

Alice Munro - Moons of Jupiter

2004-12-08T07:35:00.000-08:00

Alice Munro

2004-12-08T06:09:00.000-08:00

Alice Munro is a widely read, highly decorated and amazing Canadian Fiction writer. She isn't known as well in the states, maybe in part because she writes short stories and we are much more obsessed with the novel here.

Here's some stuff from different interviewers and reviewers:

Lorrie Moore in The Atlantic Monthly

Munro deals powerfully with the family and "the wrenching incompatibility of a woman's professional or artistic expression with her familial commitments."

Many of her short stories deal with ambivalent parents who don't expect toward their children as we might expect. "There are no happy ending here, but neither are the tales tragedies. They are constructions of calm perplexity, coolly observed human mysteries.

"Munro has said she sees stories architecturally, as a house whose various rooms one can roam in and out of, forgoing any prescribed order; this accounts for the nonlinear aspects of so many of her narratives."

"All the women here [the short story collection Runaway] are attempted runaways of some sort, and they seem to feel that the situation they run toward harbors more truth and hope than the difficult daily world they run from, though the story itself will not judge."

Jonathan Franzen in the New York Times Book Review

Raves about how fantastic a writer Munro is. "I want to circle around Munro's latest marvel of a book, "Runaway," by taking some guesses at why her excellence so dismayingly exceeds her fame.

1. Munro's work is all about storytelling pleasures
2. As long as you're reading Munro, you're failing to multitask by absorbing civics lessons or historical data.
3. She doesn't give her books grand titles like "Canadian Pastoral," "Canadian Psycho," "Purple Canada," "In Canada" or "The Plot Against Canada"
4. The Swedish Royal Academy is taking a firm stand (too many Canadians and too many short story writers have received the Nobel).
5. Munro writes fiction, and fiction is harder to review than nonfiction.
6. Because, worse yet, Munro is a pure short-story writer.
7. Munro's short stories are even harder to review than other people's short stories

"Here's the story that Munro keeps telling: A bright, sexually avid girl grows up in rural Ontario without much money, her mother is sickly or dead, her father is a schoolteacher whose second wife is problematic, and the girl, as soon as she can, escapes from the hinterland by way of a scholarship or some decisive self-interested act. She marries young, moves to British Columbia, raises kids, and is far from blameless in the breakup of her marriage She may have success as an actress or writer or a TV personality; she has romantic adventures. When, inevitably, she returns to Ontario, she finds the landscape of her youth unsettlingly altered. Although she was the one who abandoned the place, it's a great blow to her narcissism that she isn't warmly welcomed back -- that the world of her youth, with its older-fashioned manners and mores, now sits in judgment on the modern choices she has made. Simply by trying to survive as a whole and independent person, she has incurred painful losses and dislocations; she has caused harm."

Daphne Merkin in The New York Times Magazine

Interviewed Munro in Clinton, Ontario (a three-hour drive from Toronto) where she lives with her second husband, Gerald Fremlin. She has published 10 collections of short stories and one novel. Her books have been translated into 20 languages She has won a National Book Critic's Circle Award in the United States and "every literary prize Canada has to offer."

Munro talked about her two marriages-- she met Fremlin when she was 18 at the University of Western Ontario when they were students and she was already engaged to James Munro. She was married to Munro for 20 years and had three daughters. She was very unsentimental in describing her first marriage. "You got married to have sex. Methods of birth control were too chancy." She also is matter-of-fact in her ambivalence toward being a mother. She didn't feel it was her choice, but something foisted upon her by the expectations of the time.

After leaving her marriage in her early 40s she took an appointment at the University of Ontario and met Gerald Fremlin again. From their university days he was the first admirer of her writing and she counts herself very lucky that both of her husbands supported her craft.

Alice Munro was the oldest of three siblings and grew up in the Scottish-Irish farming community of Wingham, Ontario. Her family were "outsiders on all counts: temperamentally, socially and geographically. Her father was an unsuccessful silver-fox breeder, and the family lived on the outskirts of town in what Munro has described as a 'kind of little ghetto where all the bootleggers and prostitutes and hangers-on lived.'" Unbeknownst to Munro, her father harbored literary ambitions of his own, and wrote a novel which was published shortly after he died.

Munro's mother fell ill and was eventually diagnosed with Parkinsons disease, leaving the oldest daughter to keep the household running at the age of 12. It was a very important event in her emotional life. She wanted to get out of this place where she didn't feel like she fit. She feels guilty that she emotionally abandoned her mother-- not going to see her for the last two years before her death.

Carol Shields - Larry's Party

2004-12-01T11:25:00.000-08:00

When I read Carol Shield's book Swann - A Mystery, it really pissed me off. I can't remember why exactly. I read it voraciously trying to get at the answer to the mystery and I think the answer was such a disappointment to me that I felt betrayed as a reader. I got to the end and thought, well there's a chunk of my life I'll never get back. What a waste of ink. Other than vague memories of anger, I have no remnant of the book remaining in me. Couldn't tell you what it was about. Some poet. Who wasn't really maybe. I don't know.

I did remember thinking that it was well written and I think that's why I was so angry. It COULD have been a good book. So I wasn't at all worried about Larry's Party. I was pretty sure she couldn't disappoint me the same way twice as a reader. I was right. I got a lot out of this book and the way it was structured.

The chapters are almost stand-alone short stories. They are very linked, and very chronological. There are hints dropped about the past and the future, but for the most part each section could survive on its own.

1 - 15 minutes in the life of Larry Weller, 1977
Once upon a time there was a guy named Larry Weller and he was kind of odd and worked in a flower shop and had a Harris Tweed coat. One day at a coffee shop he took someone else's much nicer Harris Tweed coat and wore it outside. He was all set to keep it, but remorse and fear got the better of him and he threw it in the garbage, walking the rest of the way in his shirt sleeves.

2 - Larry's Love, 1978
This guy named Larry Weller got a haircut, was married by a justice of the peace and then went on a honeymoon in Europe with his newly pregnant wife. He fell in love with hedges and mazes and this would become a pretty important part of his life.

3 - Larry's Folks, 1980
Larry buys a house and goes about creating a hedge maze that takes up the whole yard. He worries about his parents. He recalls the history of their coming to Canada. They left England after his mother's unfortunate incident with runner beans, botulism and a mother-in-law. Murderer.

4 - Larry's Work, 1981
Larry likes his work. Flowerfolks becomes more corporate-- purchased by Flowercity. Larry still likes his work.

5 - Larry's Words, 1983
Labyrinth, paradoxical, hypothesis, axiomatic, closure, upmarket, preoccupation, turf mazes, shepherd's race, Julian's bower, knot garden, Jerusalem, Minotaur, jeu-de-lettres, pigs-in-clover, frets and meanders, the Tremaux algorithm, pavimentum tessellatum, fylfot, wilderness, unicursal, topiary, nodes, the Mount of Venus, maisons de Dedalus, Troy-town, cup-and-ring, ocular or spiral, serpent-through-waist, chevron, banal, spokeshave, vellum tips, endpapers, lips, cords, lying press, millboard, headbands, glair, codex, railway, cooker, petrol, mazel tov, tantric, obsession, Cotoneaster horizontalis, Caragana arborescens, Ribes alipinum, dilemma, accomodate, Leguminosae, solstice, equinox, knowledge, pain, shame, emptiness, sorrow, relief.

Larry's marriage ends when Dorrie has half the maze taken out with a backhoe.

6 - Larry's Friends, 1984
Larry goes to a 16-year class reunion with his friends.

7 - Larry's Penis, 1986
Some of Larry's sexual history. He is now married to an intellectual woman called Beth.

8 - Larry Inc., 1988
Larry's business card reads A/Mazing Space Inc. He's hired to do custom mazes. Dorrie still has the half-maze in the yard of their old house in Winnipeg.

9 - Larry So Far, 1990
Larry turns forty and freaks. Then he relaxes when he turns forty-one.

10 - Larry's Kid 1991
Larry's relationship with his kid is awkward but bolstered with occasional bright flares of authentic love. He wants to talk to the kid about his conception and his parent's decision to marry, but Dorrie talks him out of it.

11 - Larry's Search for the Wonderful and the Good, 1992
Larry and his wife Beth both apply for Guggenheim fellowships. His is accepted, hers is denied. He didn't tell her he applied. So some strife, but they both go. Both do their work. His in mazes. Hers in female saints.

12 - Larry's Threads, 1993-4
Beth is offered a job in England. She takes it and they try a long distance marriage for a while. We get the history of Larry's clothes and then his hair. His second marriage is over.

13 - Men Called Larry, 1995
Larry King - TV personality, Larry Holmes - boxer, Larry Olivier - actor, Larry Liddle - from Windows Incorporated who rediscovers each year that he shares a name with Larry Weller, Larry Wellington - Chicago architect, Larry Fine - a neighbor who teaches psychology at the University of Chicago.

14 - Larry's Living Tissues, 1996
Larry falls into a coma. The ex-wives send faxes as flowers. The girlfriend sits vigil. The son reads him the newspaper out loud. Larry comes out of the coma. He and his sister take their mom's ashes to scatter them in the same lake as his father's ashes. They forget to bring the ashes, but go back the next day.

15 Larry's Party 1997
Larry hosts a dinner party for nine people:

Larry and Charlotte
Garth and Marcia McCord
Sam Alvero
Midge and Ian
Dorrie
Beth

In which it becomes clear to everyone that Dorrie and Larry still have something between them. Beth reveals her pregnancy, announces plans to move to Toronto and then withdraws this plan after seeing Larry and Dorrie at the party.

Looking back over this list I'd have to disagree with myself. Very few of the chapters could stand on their own as an independent story. But they could be shuffled around almost at will. They wouldn't need to be chronological. Sometimes peoples lives don't make the most sense in chronological order.

The chapter titles and the hedge mazes at the beginning of each section did a lot of work. It's part of what made each chapter feel complete I think. There was a theme. It's what I'd like to try with the Kenya material. We'll see.

Canadian Literature

2004-11-16T21:02:00.000-08:00

Distilling everything we've read so far I have determined that this is what makes up Canadian Literature.

It's about immigrants not melting in. Groups of people speaking discreet languages and taking care of their own. The dangerous jobs they have- digging tunnels, tanning leather, crocheting wires to form bridges, mining uranium, mining the sea for its treasures. Maybe it's too cold for them to melt together. Each group freezes into its own shapes.

Canadian Literature is about looking back to countries of origin. The heavy family history of the survivors who live on in Canada. Remembrance of the misery before leaving. Crushing poverty. Sickness. An uncertain future. Misery during the crossing. So much water stretching forward and backward. Sickness and death following them from their homeland. Small bodies wrapped in cloth, sliding down a plank. The ritual of burial at sea.

Then there is the cold. Ice that freezes solid enough for horses to walk across. But also ice that freezes treacherous enough for cattle, sleighs, and people to fall through and be swallowed whole. Cold that kills.

Trees that serve as a border. Trees that speak, that flow down rivers in a "corduroy road," that are stuck into the ice as a guide. Trees that signal danger. Trees that hide the danger. Danger trees.

War and its aftermath. Missing limbs. Dead sons, siblings. Maimed bodies and minds. The missing people who should be there but aren't.

Canadian Literature is also about not being America. Not assuming that everyone wants to be just like you. Not being a world superpower. The importance of provincial autonomy. Republic. Confederacy. Nationalism on a local level. Going beyond the appearance of things, but also concealing more than is revealed. Ambiguity. The absence of bad men. Being the younger brother.

Caring too much and trying too hard.

O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.

Kenya Research

2004-11-13T05:54:00.000-08:00

Jomo Kenyatta Speech 1952

Summary of Kenya's struggle for independence

CIA World Factbook on Kenya

How Britain Crushed the Mau Mau rebellion (BBC Chanel 4)

Basic Kenya History

Book on the Mau Mau by a Kenyan (reviewed here)

Military info on Mau Mau

BBC 2 - British abuses against Mau Mau

I need to get a copy of Thiongo's A Grain of Wheat

The Lightening Bolt to the Head

2004-11-13T05:39:00.000-08:00

Clearly lack of sleep does something for me. Maybe it's like the spirit journeys taken by some Native American traditions where sleep deprivation is involved. When voluntary, maybe this dizzy delerium gives you access to the spirit world.

Becuase I got few hours of sleep last night (I can clock them if I look at the times between this post and the last one) and I had to get up and write.

I think I have an idea not only for my final paper but for Thesis as well. And happily, Advanced fiction is being taught on Saturday this spring, so my academic career is not in ruin and I should be set to take Thesis I next fall.

Here's my thought:
Novel/collected story about Kenya that juggles voices of Sara, her aunt, Magdalene, and someone in the past during the uprising. Maybe someone Sara's age at the time. Intermingle emails from Sara to home. Include news clippings of things happening while she is there and news from the uprising. Possibly include illness of her mother as one of the reasons her parents sent her to Kenya for the summer.

The final paper - a creative endeavor

2004-11-12T23:31:00.000-08:00

I am thinking of what to do for the last paper for my Canadian Lit class.

What are some things the keep coming up again and again?

• The Loyalists who fled to Canada after the American Revolution.
(Atwood, Davies)
• The huge impact of World War I, which was not felt anywhere near the same scale here. (MacFarlane, Davies, L.M. Montgomerie)
• Deadly force of nature
(Atwood, Robinson, Wright)

I'm still attracted to research-based things:
• Ondaatje's historical fiction In the Skin of a Lion incorporating facts and characters from real life.
• Anne Simpson's burial at sea poem: "Descent."
• Atwood's Alias Grace.
• Autobiographical elements in Mistry and Davies
• Intertwined narratives in Mistry, Davies, Ondaatje

Do I let the research drive the creative work? Or do I begin creative work and then seek out the research that I need? Expectant waiting is definitely part of my creative process. And only occasionally am I struck in the forhead with a bolt of lightening telling me what to do next.

My autobiographical stuff has focused on the trip to Kenya lately.
Research could be on the current situation and historical situation.
I could write from several character's points of view.
I already have Magdalene and a bit of Camille.
I could cover the Doctor.
She wasn't there for the scariest times.
I could also do her friend, Mrs. Shah, who was.

Interlinked stories? We all seem to be taken with Mistry.

Robertson Davies - Fifth Business

2004-11-10T14:40:00.000-08:00

Roberston Davies, along with Umberto Eco, Michael Ondaatje and others whose names I can't call to mind at this moment, knows more than he has any business knowing about any number of subjects.

He used his love of the theater, Jung, and a great deal of autobiographical experience to craft Fifth Business.

• Davies and Ramsey both had fathers who were one-man publishers and Davies grew up in the publishing business.

• Davies and Ramsey were raised in the Presbysterian church but later rejected its strict doctrines.

• Davies had a lifelong love of the theater, travelling circuses and drew heavily on these for the scenes with the adult Paul Dempster.

• Davies also had a lifelong interest in Carl Jung's readings and in the Saints, which he gave to Ramsey.

Here's a Robertson Davies Bio

I cam across something that stated most of the characters in Fifth Business could be identified as Jungian archetypes.

Mother - nurturing one
• Ramsey's mother to other families, but not so much to him
• Mary Dempster in an unconventional way

Shadow - perceived as the enemy, but really amoral; like the snake in Eden. Monsters, demons...
• Mary Dempster as seen by the town
• Liesl
• Paul Dempster

Persona - public image, good impression
• "Boy" Staunton
• Leola early in her marriage

Anima/Animus - Female/male spectrum - two halves in equal partnership
• ?/Ramsey

Father - authority figure
• Amasa Dempster

Family - ties that go beyond reasonable explanation
• Ramsey and Mary Dempster

Child
• Paul Demptser as a child
• The statue of Mary

Wise old man
• old monk/priest

Trickster
• Ramsey as a child
• Paul Dempster as an adult

Hermaphrodite
• bearded lady

Jung Archetypes

Online Works Cited for my Ondaatje Paper plus more

2004-11-10T13:10:00.000-08:00

BBC article on finding the tomb of Gilgamesh

Storytelling, The Meaning of Life and Gilgamesh

John Berger

Crafting Histories: Michael Ondaatje

Discussion of In the Skin of a Lion

How many buckets of Sand it took to build the Bloor Street Viaduct

Really Awesome Gilgamesh text

Ondaatje and Gilgamesh

2004-11-06T21:55:00.000-08:00

So I'm doing my paper on themes of Gilgamesh that are also covered in In the Skin of a Lion.

There's a lot. It's kind of fun, but I don't think I'm in any danger of becoming a brilliant literary critic. I feel very out of my element. I'm not sure I've even read any literary criticism up to this point.

I went out and got some Susan Sontag essays so I'd have some idea of non-boring critical stuff. That was a good idea. It was also a good idea to pick an author I'm rather attached to. Even if this is not my favorite book. I still have a lot to work with.

And I think maybe if it were a favorite book I'd just get lost in the adoration and write a stupid, trite and worshipful paper that would inspire my professor to write a smiley-face on it and add "cute," in emerald green ink.

If I had to pick four words to describe my writing, cute would not be one of them.

The cute thing actually happened when I wrote a paper as an undergrad for an East Asian Studies class. I hadn't written an essay since high school, which by this time was four years away. My teacher was married to my advisor and even though I was really interested in his class, it was right after lunch and we had class in a warm dark room and he had a voice like Garrison Keillor.

So I fell asleep every day.

I tried everything I could to stay awake. I had cafeine. I chewed on carrot sticks and ice cubes. I took a nap in the morning. I went for a walk right before class. I sat in the very front row, thinking I would be too embarassed to fall alseep right in front of everyone. No such luck. Every day I woke up half-way through class. With drool on my desk.

I wanted the paper to make up for my considerable shortcomings in classroom participation. I wanted to be brilliant and inciteful. I wanted him to say I had touched on points that he hadn't considered before. I wanted him to tell his wife that I was a gifted student. Instead I wrote a mediocre paper that earned me a "cute" out of ten.

Maybe that's why I don' t like the essay form and I feel like a fraud when I try to approach anything critically.

I don't exactly have the attitude of my friend who thought, "I'm just a graduate student... what right do I have to say these things?" I think instead, "Why would I want to bother with this? Someone else has probably already done it better and besides I think I have to wash my hair or do the dishes or perhaps go get my teeth cleaned instead.

Canadian World Domination Page

2004-11-06T21:52:00.000-08:00

Here are the aims of Canadian World Domination:

The systematic destruction and sublimation of all opposing the Canadian reign -- and the polite, yet horrifically brutal, control of our future territories of conquest.

Infiltrating the USA and through a cleverly designed plan, destroying it, and using its resources for our own purposes.

Demonstrating to the world that Canada is the final and ultimate power.

Decontaminating the world of American influence.

Reorganizing a New World Society of Canucks to suit our kindly, peace-loving, and diabolical aims.

Revealed Poetry

2004-11-06T21:15:00.000-08:00

There is so much unnecessary beauty in the world
Why should trees shedding their leaves
Become souls on fire.

There can be truth in silence.

Poety Stuff - Coats

2004-11-03T23:33:00.000-08:00

Pink Coat, Size 2T

Fake Fur
Cotton as Candy
Soaking up great slurps of grey slush
A mother weeps over the laundry.

Green Coat, Size 6

That year the snowdrifts peaked at the tops of the lamp posts
And I went sliding with no sled down the mountains in our yard
In my new coat of Austrian wool with embroidered edelweiss and pewter buttons
She told me she would never buy me another coat again
And why couldn't she have a stupid daughter with one grain of common sense

Vintage Coat, Size Unknown

Someone else wore this coat
In another life
And years ago the lining
Separated itself
And the insulation
Settled in the hem
Like silt
When I opened it up
Slit the lining to replace it
Clouds of orange dust
Powdered the room

Purple Coat, Size 3x

I bought it before you were born
in the spring
when you were the size of a soybean

It was a great tent
that covered even
the November of my belly

And afterwards I kept wearing it
wrapped around us both

your little head
peeking out
above the buttons

And more random ideas

2004-11-03T23:25:00.000-08:00

Here's some more snips from class:

• Sweaters in the House and what they reveal

• The secrets of the laws of my parents. Who were they revealed to and when?
(my parents were the communist party)

• Think about being dressed by others
(people are always offering to iron my clothes for me)

• The loss of self

• Where did you get taught the idea of a happy ending?

• How do women come to hate other women?

• Transformations you have feared big or small
Did they make you more yourself?
Less yourself?
Horrifying to you but interesting to others?

• Unofficial Biographies on my job list

• Whose stories am I in ownership of?
(the sad people always come to me with their stories)

• Give something a name.

"Not just playtime at the Language Zoo"

• A "traveller's guide" to where you have felt unwelcome

The Main Story

2004-11-03T23:10:00.000-08:00

What is the main story? The one that defined you?

My friend Shannon once asked me if there was any moment in my life that I could grab to make a good movie. This was in college.

I thought about my years in high school with my eating disorder and my clinical depression and the shedding of my personality. And maybe it would make a good story and it CERTAINLY defined me but I couldn't write it.

I remember thinking at the end of treatment that I was glad I had gone through everything I'd gone through because it had made me who I am. And I was strong and truthful and fearless. I felt the power that is given to cancer patients to not deal with petty crap but cut right to the chase.

But here's why I couldn't write it: there are big holes in my memory. My junior year is pretty much gone. I have snatches of senior year. There are a few completely clear moments. I remember the day that I decided to seek treatment for the depression. I was sitting in band practice and they passed out a sheet of new music and I couldn't read it. But I don't remember people or classes or conversations. It might seem normal to forget, but I didn't forget. The memories were never written on my brain to be forgotten.

I wanted to read about depression from someone else who'd experienced it so I read William Styron's Darkness Visible. But after I read it, I didn't think it helped me remember what it felt like to be depressed and it made me realize a fundamental truth. It is hard to write about depression because when you are depressed, you cannot write. And once you are no longer depressed, you can't quite remember what it was like. You just know things weren't how they are now.

Other reasons I can't write my defining story:

In a writing workshop someone told me that I couldn't have a character who was a writer and who was depressed because they were so goddamn sick of reading about depressed writers.

And I don't want to write a Hallmark Hall of Fame story about one more anorexic girl. Blah Blah Blah. Recovery may have been a powerful experience for me but I'm afraid to use it even in fiction. Unless I warp it a lot. I'll have to think about how to do that.

Multi-Genre Writers

2004-11-03T23:05:00.000-08:00

A lot of the people we've been reading write in multiple genres. Atwood and Ondaatje are the two I'm thinking of particularly. We talked a bit in class about how they stop the action in the narrative sometimes and get some poet's work done. How do they do that? When do they do that?

It's hard for me sometimes to separate the poety stuff from the narrative stuff. Many of the authors that I love to read like Michael Ondaatje and Salman Rushdie write with consistently beautiful language throughout the book. Sometimes I don't even notice that the action has slowed down. I'm lost in love of language. (Like the 'literation?)

Both Atwood and Ondaatje spent a great deal of time in flashback, and they also leaped from one character to another and stayed with them for a chunk of time.

Spiritual Things in Monkey Beach

2004-11-03T21:58:00.000-08:00

We made a list of things that were of the Spirit in Monkey Beach. Here it is:

plant gathering
death sendings
dreams
songs
voices in the water and trees
Aunt Edith's prayers
Ouija board
fire/smoke
T'sonoqua
Little troll (really creepy leprachaun)
Crows/crow
raven
offerings: whisky, hair, clothes, tobacco
B'gwus

Questions to ponder:

What 4 words describe what you want to be as a writer?
• connected
• prolific
• cross-genre
• unexpected

What haunts you through your life?
• Christianity -- but in a non-creepy way

The Religious Rant

2004-10-27T20:36:00.000-07:00

"I seize upon these generic names like essay or opera in despair as I'm sinking under the waves of possible naming for any event that I come up with. I really don't know what to call anything. And if I can ever get some generic name that seems close enough that nobody will laugh out loud, I clamp on it."

- Anne Carson

People in my family have interesting theological history.

I was raised Unitarian Universalist, which means I grew up studying everyone else's religion and my job was to figure out what I believed. That was a very hard job. The study was much more enjoyable.

My maternal grandmother belonged to the Finish Swedish Lutheran church. My great grandfather was one of the founders of the church. She was very upset that my mom wasn't religious. She thought it was the death of her husband, my grandfather, that caused my mom to lose her faith. My mom tells me she had already seen the hypocrisy in people at church before she went through confirmation. They gave lipservice to kindness and charity every Sunday and then said horrible things about people behind their backs and behaved dreadfully during the week.

My paternal grandmother belonged to the most conservative Presbyterian church she could find. I always thought she perceived God exactly as he appeared in the Sistine Chapel. He was an old man with white hair. Definitely male. Definitely old. When my grandfather died she said the best part of her was gone. Her head. The thinking part of her.

Now she won't disagree with anything my father says because he sounds like her late husband. She used to give me bibles on every religious holiday. At first I liked it because they were part of my study. Then I started to feel like she was pressuring me to be her.

I made sure when I got married that we included a prayer in the service so she would feel like it was a real service. It started out, "We pray..." so it could be inclusive. After the service she said how much she liked the prayer.

We pray.

Her husband didn't share her faith. They never talked about religion. According to my dad, his father believed that god was made up of the souls of people. There was a little god in all of us. So maybe I take after him, as I'm discovering my Quaker leanings.

I don't know what my dad believes. He believes in singing at church. He believes in "what will the neighbors think." He believes in covert actions and the importance of keeping up appearances. He believes in the coercive power of tears.

My mom is probably not necessarily non-theist.

My brother in high school said of his friend, incredulously, "He really believes that god stuff."

Both of my brothers went to youth group at the Unitarian church where my parents belonged. I was the churched accompanist. I was clinically depressed, unable to practice the piano, and often stumbled over very simple hymns. That they didn't fire me was a testament to the kindness of the music committee.

None of us can talk about god, really.

It's part of what doesn't feel like home in the Unitarian church for me anymore. There's a level of spritualism or something that's missing. Too often the sermons feel like college lectures. My brain gets a lot out of it, but I need to find a way to feed the soul. A way to talk about god that doesn't make my flesh crawl.

I used to call myself Christian, but it didn't fit most peoples' definition since it incorporated the teachings of Jesus, but not his divinity. So then I called myself an atheist. Which made them tell me I'd burn in hell. I switched to calling myself Unitarian. Which meant either people would assume I was Christian or that I would burn in hell or both. Now I'll try on the Quaker mantle. My beliefs haven't changed much through all these incarnations. I just struggle to find a community that shares more in common with me. A label that fits.

And if I can ever get some generic name that seems close enough that nobody will laugh out loud, I clamp on it.

"Most people think the beloved is beautiful in order to fall in love with them, and I want to know what that force is in human life, an interaction. Because it appallingly isn't identifiable with truth in lots of examples one could think of, and yet we keep following it as if it were. It seems impossible not to."

Okay. I'm going to say a list of words and you respond however you want.

Red?
Necessity.

Water?
Is best.

Language?
Skin.

Husband?
Drudgery.

Truth?
Uncovering.

Beauty?
Justice.

The Disorganized American in Exile Rant

2004-10-27T20:35:00.000-07:00

"Personally, I don't think very well about things that I haven't actually touched. For example, I can't enter into conversations with philosophers when they're talking without examples. I have to say, "Give me an example of that concept," and then I can get inside and think. And that's just a drawback of being me, maybe."

- Anne Carson

What is the drawback of being me? The bad PR of being an American woman. In Japan as an exchange student in college this meant a lot of attention from drunk businessmen in their late 50s. Who had watched too many American films in which the lead female role goes to bed with the first man she meets on camera.

I had never been around drunk people before. I had never been accosted by anyone. It was appalling to me. Embarrassing. "Hey baby. Blonde hair." I have brown hair. I could understand what they were saying to each other in Japanese. Once I told them to shut up using a very direct colloquial language. It scared the crap out of them.

No. Those weren't the old men. They were boys on bicycles, not the old men. The old men were never scared. Everything I did was exotic.

The drawback of being me.

I joined the music club at college, but I quit after one day when I found out that the band, which had old dented crappy instruments decided to by a new beer refrigerator with their surplus funds. Also one of the boys in the band made me very uncomfortable by trying to get his girlfriend to admit that western eyes were so much more beautiful than asian eyes and then naturally he wanted her to say that my eyes were so much more beautiful than hers.

A seventeen-year old boy in the English class I taught developed a crush on me. I had no idea until the week I was leaving. He never said anything in class. I mean he never said ANYTHING in class. Which was awkward becuase it was an English conversation class.

In that final week he had his mom call my host mom to ask if he could see me off. I thought, fine. He can come wave at the train. I was taking a train from Osaka to Tokyo and then flying home to Minnesota.

But no. He planned to take the train with me to Tokyo and from there he would fly home. Very odd. But by then I had already agreed. He still said nothing. All the way to Tokyo. But he carried my luggage, which was nice. He sent me a few creepy letters about visiting the states.

Exotic foreigner.

A drawback of being me.

I'm so not used to being exotic. There's something very freeing about being of Scandinavian descent in the land of the Norse in Exile. I can blend in. I am not approached on the street. I am unremarkable. These are not drawbacks. In my introversion I enjoy the annonymity.

My relatives left Sweden to come here when my grandparents were children. I have been back to Sweden with my mother, who is now taking Swedish lessons. When she travels, she is one of those people who puts a Canadian flag on her lapel. We live in Minnesota. We can pass.

I nearly grew up in Canada, but my dad had high blood pressure and an extra bone in his foot which they discovered when he went in for his draft physical.

My mom was at home packing her bags for possible flight across the border. They were in Ithaca, New York at the time.

The Political Rant

2004-10-27T20:33:00.000-07:00

"I think it has educated me to always go as far as I can go in a thought or in a sentence and then go around the corner to try to find some pocket of it that hasn't been apparent yet, in the faith that there is going to be one there. That's what the Greek experience gives-- the faith that there's always another corner in a word or in a thought that you haven't gotten to yet. It doesn't close off."

- Anne Carson

How many thoughts do people not turn the corner on. How many people hear one answer and it resonates truth and that is what they run with.

I had a boss once whose brain seemed to hard-wire the first information she got on a subject. Even if it was later disproved, there was no room to encode the correction. (How many people read retractions of stories in the papers. Do they even print them anymore?)

A lot of people, I think, are like this.

It's why we have the following appalling statistics taken from a poll done by the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) in September 2004. ( PIPA is a joint program of the Center on Policy Attitudes (COPA) and the Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland (CISSM), School of Public Affairs, University of Maryland.

75% of Bush supporters continue to believe that Iraq was providing substantial support to al Qaeda,
63% believe that clear evidence of this support has been found.
60% percent of Bush supporters assume that this is also the conclusion of most experts,
55% assume, incorrectly, that this was the conclusion of the 9/11 Commission.

Why do so many people believe that Iraq carried out the attack on America on September 11.

Why do people who in their rational lives might be intelligent, cling to the idea that we had to respond with force because they attacked us.

"The roots of the Bush supporters' resistance to information," according to Steven Kull, "very likely lie in the traumatic experience of 9/11 and equally in the near pitch-perfect leadership that President Bush showed in its immediate wake. This appears to have created a powerful bond between Bush and his supporters--and an idealized image of the President that makes it difficult for his supporters to imagine that he could have made incorrect judgments before the war, that world public opinion could be critical of his policies or that the President could hold foreign policy positions that are at odds with his supporters." (from PIPA article)

I think in part it's because as a national identity we have to be the Good Guys. Good Guys are allowed to do violence, but only as a response to violence or injustice. Good Guys would definitely not just decide to attack someone because someday they might do something bad to us. Good Guys would not claim war as a last resort and go crashing in before exhausting all other possibilities. Good Guys would have more respect for the men and women in uniform, and more care for the international community and the lives of fellow human beings.

But in addition to the Good Guys we have the Cowboys and Northrup Frye's "bad men-- the outlaws of the west." And that too is part of our national identity. We like to be the rebels. We like to buck the system. No one can tell us what to do. You aren't the boss of me. How adolescent. I know we're a young country, but do we have to be so blatantly and stereotypically going through this teenage angst crap at the expense of ourselves and the world community?

And of course the Teenager in Chief, the Cowboy of the Whitehouse leading the charge. And proudly declaring that he is incapable of changing his mind on any subject. Inflexibility as a virtue.

I can't remember where I came across this idea but it rang true to me. Terrorism doesn't just harm the victims. It robs a cause of a rational voice.

Once something has blown something up in your name, you cannot get anyone to listen to your cries for peaceful discourse. No matter that you have no affiliation with the terrorists beyond nationality or skin color or religion.

All planes are weapons.

All Muslims are extremists.

All Americans condone "pre-emptive war."

Outsiders like Margaret Atwood heaps scorn upon America and Americans and is a very very angry person. I'm angry too, but I'm angry from inside this nation and I am inseparable from the institution that angers me. She has a voice to speak. I am part of the amorphous all-devouring popular culture machine that is these United States.

I have no voice. People are being killed in my name. I cannot love America without becoming a cowboy. I have no place here if I can't rejoice in the mess we've made of Iraq. What body in the international community will hear my voice?

Majority rules.

Anne Carson

2004-10-27T06:28:00.000-07:00

So Anne Carson is this incredibly brilliant classicist who knows way more about stuff than I do. But that's okay. She draws me in.

After reading her book Glass, Irony and God I went out and bought a used copy of Wuthering Heights and a really neat book on the lives of the Brontë sisters.

And I decided to read the book of Isaiah in my New Oxford Bible.

None of this was really necessary to appreciating the work in Glass, Irony and God, but the essays and verse just sparked an interest in digging further into some of the threads she teased out.

The following posts were inspired by Anne Carson's interview. Originally I had them all posted together and it was a giant scary mess. I also read it as a whole to my Canadian lit class and that is where I decided that it must be split or destroyed. So there.

Blogging

2004-10-25T19:24:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting in Leo's house trying to usher him into the twenty-first century. But I'm pretty sure I could swap out his newer computer for my older one and he wouldn't notice. Which would be cool cause his plays dvds.

Gallop

2004-10-23T15:10:00.000-07:00

Here's the story that I wrote about riding horses in Kenya. I thought it was maybe a salvagable short story that came out of a class I took with Pablo Medina this summer.

The class was called Real Time/Imaginary Time and we talked about how to alter real events or real people to suit us in a fictional setting.

I was told that this is not a short story, but the start of a novel. Which it may be. I think I'll play with the characters for a while and see what happens.

Here's a related post we did while we were in Kenya.

Mau Mau

2004-10-23T02:02:00.000-07:00

In doing research-based fiction I need to collect some research. I'd like to continue with a story I wrote about a trip to Kenya.

Here is information the Mau Mau uprising.

Here's the Aberdare Country Club.

I need to see if that is really where we went and road horses, but I think it is.

Completely Unrelated to Anything

2004-10-23T01:34:00.000-07:00

Woke up and couldn't get back to sleep, so decided to do the Belief-o-Matic and find out what religion I'm supposed to be. Turns out that I was raised as a Unitaran Universalist and lo and behold, I came out to be 100% Unitarian Universalist...

Here are my results:

The top score on the list below represents the faith that Belief-O-Matic, in its less than infinite wisdom, thinks most closely matches your beliefs. However, even a score of 100% does not mean that your views are all shared by this faith, or vice versa.

Belief-O-Matic then lists another 26 faiths in order of how much they have in common with your professed beliefs. The higher a faith appears on this list, the more closely it aligns with your thinking.

1. Unitarian Universalism (100%)
2. Secular Humanism (97%)
3. Liberal Quakers (92%)
4. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (90%)
5. Neo-Pagan (70%)
6. Theravada Buddhism (68%)
7. Nontheist (65%)
8. New Age (61%)
9. Bah�'� Faith (57%)
10. Taoism (55%)
11. Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (54%)
12. Mahayana Buddhism (52%)
13. Reform Judaism (47%)
14. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (45%)
15. New Thought (45%)
16. Orthodox Quaker (41%)
17. Scientology (40%)
18. Sikhism (35%)
19. Jainism (33%)
20. Jehovah's Witness (33%)
21. Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (32%)
22. Hinduism (29%)
23. Seventh Day Adventist (19%)
24. Eastern Orthodox (15%)
25. Islam (15%)
26. Orthodox Judaism (15%)
27. Roman Catholic (15%)

I was glad to see that the Liberal Quakers were on there because that's what I'm investigating at this time.

Alias Grace Quilt Blocks

2004-10-15T21:27:00.000-07:00

The Chapter titles for Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood are all quilt blocks. Many quilt blocks have more than one name.
Click here for some quilt history

I. Jagged Edge
II. Rocky Road
III. Puss in the Corner
IV. Young Man's Fancy
V. Broken Dishes (Antique Broken Dishes Quilt)
VI. Secret Drawer
VII. Snake Fence
VIII. Fox and Geese
IX. Hearts and Gizzards
X. Lady of the Lake (Alternate Lady of the Lake)
XI. Falling Timbers
XII. Solomon's Temple
XIII. Pandora's Box
XIV. The Letter X
XV. The Tree of Paradise

Margaret Atwood - An Angel

2004-10-12T21:42:00.000-07:00

I really wanted to put this whole poem here, and if you checked this blog during the few hours before I amended this you would have caught it. But while I haven't thought of this as publishing, my husband pointed out that it is. I don't want to rip off Atwood. I just wanted to include the poem that sparked my "Angel of Doubt" poem.

Here's the first line and the last line. You should read it. It's really good.

I know what the angel of suicide looks like. I have seen her several times. She's around.

Wings, of course. You wouldn't believe a thing she said if it weren't for the wings.

Monkey Beach by Eden Robinson

2004-10-12T11:48:00.000-07:00

Here is language from Monkey Beach which reminds me a lot of Rainy Lake . It's interesting because Rainy Lake was about the culture of Lake cabins in Minnesota among the Scandinavian and German descendents who live here... Something I'm very familiar with. And Monkey Beach was set in British Columbia on the sea in a Haisla community. The parallels came from the importance of water, families coming apart and coming together, and tragedy on the water.

This is just language that I love. Eden Robinson's use of language also reminds me of Robin McKinley's Deerskin. As soon as I unpack one of the dozen copies I have somewhere in my new house I will quote some of her stuff here. My favorite passage is one in which people are expressing disbelief by saying something like, "It was as if someone had suggested a tadpole might inherit the sea upon the death of water. " Which is not the best example of why her use of language reminds me of this, but oh well.

White feathers tumbled down from the half-eaten chickens caught near the top of the tree, where the hawks had dropped them. The chickens were still alive. They flapped their wings, kicked feet, struggled against the net. Their heads had fallen to the ground like ripe fruit. Their beaks opened and closed soundlessly, and their eyes blinked rapidly, puzzled and frightened. P124

A sea otter dives. Long streams of sunlight wash through kelp trees, undulating like lazy belly dancers. A purple sea urchin creeps towards a kelp trunk. The otter dips, snatches up the urchin, carries it to the surface, where the sound of the waves breaking on the nearby shore is a bitter grumble. Devouring the urchin's soft underbelly in neat nibbles, the otter twirls in the surf, then dives again. The urchin's shell parachutes to the ocean bottom, landing in the dark, drifting hair of a corpse. P131

The rain is easing. Sea gulls circle and land on something between the logs on the rocky shore. A flock of sea gulls is called a squabble, and they are doing that right now, fighting for a place on whatever has washed up on shore. As my speedboat buzzes by, some of the sea gulls hop away, revealing something dark, but then they cover it again. It must be big to have attracted so many. On the other side of the channel from me is a tanker on its way to Alcan's dock. It moves with the ponderous weight of a loaded ship, is low in the water and oblivious to me. When we were kids, Jimmy and I used to watch the tankers through binoculars and try to decipher the names. Some were Russian or Japanese, or rusted beyond reading.
The crows wait at the outskirts of the squabble. They are little black dots that flutter and edge nearer to the corpse until the sea gulls drive them away. A flock of crows is called a murder. P163

My fall from grace was spectacular. If I'd had head lice, scabies, worms and measles, I couldn't have been more unpopular. Rather than sit with me on the bus, kids would sit on the floor. Rather than be my lab partner in science class, kids would claim to be sick and have to go to the nurse's office. Rather than eat with me, kids would throw their lunch bags in the garbage and claim they weren't hungry. P172

Food is dust in my mouth without you.
I see you in my dreams and all I want to do is sleep.
If my house was filled with gold, it would still be empty.
If I was the king of the world, I'd still be alone.
If breath was all that was between us, I would stop breathing to be with you again.
The memory of you is my shadow and all my days are dark, but I hold on to these memories until I can be with you again.
Only your laughter will make them light; only your smile will make them shine.
We are apart so that I will know the joy of being with you again.
Take care of yourself, wherever you are.
Take care of yourself, wherever you are.
P174

Poety Stuff - The Angel of Doubt

2004-10-07T09:23:00.000-07:00

I know the Angel of Doubt
I'm pretty
Sure

She's ten
Or eleven
Just moved
To a new school

(Hideously long lunchtables of emptiness on either side)

She thinks
She fell

Not sure there is a God
(They never met)
Minor staff
Least seniority

Maybe she didn't

f
a
l
l

Maybe she was just
L e t g o

The girls with winged hair
And expensive sneakers
Are regular Sunday School Attenders
And have no room for Doubt

When she voices uncertainty
On historical basis of the biblical narrative
Or wonders about errors of translation in the text
They claim she was sent by the devil
To test people's faith

The Angel of Doubt
Wears garage sale clothes
Ten years out of fashion
And reads Jean Paul Sartre
She's pretty
Sure
At puberty

She will grow wings

Rohinton Mistry - Swimming Lessons

2004-10-07T09:00:00.000-07:00

I would love to write a collection of short stories like this where there isn't a thread running through the whole thing, but there are recurring characters that kind of cement the whole work from beginning to end.

He drops names and refers to past and future stories in a way that doesn't break the narrative of the current story even if you haven't met the character yet. The stories by and large could stand on their own but are much stronger for being put together.

The book takes place in the housing project in Bombay, India called Firozsha Baag. The characters live in different apartments there and the sons and daughters either leave or stay as the years go by.

The character of Kersi seems to be very close to the author, allowing him to touch on autobiographical themes. Kersi begins the book as a young boy in India and ends the book as a young man in Canada waiting for his published book to arrive by mail.

A very clever book, but not so clever that it seems contrived. I was steeped in the world of Firozsha Baag. I believed in the crumbling plaster walls covered with old calendar's from soap advertisements. I could smell the rotting fruit and the drips from the plumbing and I was fairly certain I could hear cockroaches eating the papers underneath my bed.

I want to create a world like this. When I grow up I would love to be Rohinton Mistry.

Marlene Nourbese Philip

2004-10-07T08:22:00.000-07:00

We read Nourbese Philp's amazing book of poetry called She Tries Her Tongue.

She is a Carribean woman who moved to Canada and became a writer. Since 1983 she has been struggling with the idea of mother tongue for people who were enslaved and whose original language was stripped from them. There is something horrific about creating art with the words of the overseer.

In her quest for original language she has done a lot of work in Patois, but she also writes passionately in standard English. She Tries Her Tongue brings in so many different kinds of language it made my head spin. She begins with an essay on language that starts out entirely in the academic language of English and then moves into Patois and back into standard.

There are poems that make use of definitions, historical edicts for slave owners, the sound of words. It is an homage to language.

It is interesting to think about getting back to an original language. Most of us are not speaking the language of our ancestors, at least not in the U.S. or Canada. We speak the languages of conquerors and imperial powers. But there is a great difference between my speaking English as a granddaughter of Swedish immigrants who chose to come here. Immigrants who struggled to learn English and didn't speak Swedish in the home so their children would not speak with an accent. There's a big difference between that and former slaves whose language was forcibly ripped from them. Sometimes by the roots of the tongue.

For Nourbese Philip, the idea of getting back to her original language has been a very fertile ground for creation of great work. It doesn't send me off and running in any great directions though. I don't think Swedish is my "original language." I think language is a tool and you choose your tool for maximum impact.

I would be interested in doing a paper on Nourbese Philip and the sociolinguistics of language and dialect choice. This might be my first paper. I need to poke around a bit. Read more about her linguistic journey.

Anne Simpson

2004-10-01T13:02:00.000-07:00

Researched immigrants coming to Nova Scotia and wrote “Descent”

Descent

The Hector brought emigrants to Nova Scotia in the eighteenth century.

Water isn’t treacherous
nor is the descent into it,
made easy by a plank held
at an angle on the ship’s rail
so that a small girl wrapped
in a length of flannel could drop
quickly. In the silence
after her body slid on the wood
and the brief splash
I recalled nothing of her,
not the undulating terrain
of her skin, not the sleeping
animal of her hand
in mine, not even the cleft in her chin
which I used to touch,
marveling.

Ideas coming out of Anne Simpson:

• Research-based poem
• Research-based short story
• A list poem like “>”
• Poems based on punctuation
• Myth in writing
• Essay on “A head like hers” with Elizabeth’s mom, Camille’s mom

This I also think is amazing.

>

Aphrodite > Hera and Athena

Paris is only a boy,
choosing between them. What he really wants

is the apple shining in his hand, but they won’t let him
keep it. Anyway, it’s all based on first impressions.

Hera has power and Athena’s got brains. But who sees
these things? Aphrodite has perfect legs,

gilded hair, and blue eyes that open and shut
just like a mortal. He considers, marks each one—

Hera Aphrodite Athena
smiled is all warm smiles will smile
tricked and small tricks, will trick
brought bringing her little myths will bring
gave of love, she gives kisses will give
desired like petals, desiring will desire
took him, taking whatever will take
turned is needed to turn the tables will turn
decided and decide the outcome will decide

—and declares Aphrodite the winner. She laughs,
disappears. The other two pause, gazing at him.
It begins with an apple: heaven’s usual device.

I love the cheerleader chant: Hera has the power…

Wasn’t there something boys got the muscle, teacher’s got the brains, girls got the sexy legs, we win the game!

Also the lines about gilded hair, and blue eyes that open and shut just like a mortal.

Conjuring images of a perfect little plastic doll whose eyes open and shut as you tilt her this way and that.

7 or 8 things I know about her/An unwanted, unauthorized biography

2004-10-01T11:57:00.000-07:00

7 or 8 things I know about her/An unwanted, unauthorized biography

Her name is
        Carol
Something.

She lives in San Jose
And is the same age as everyone else --
Forty-nine.

She has two or three grown children
Who may all be girls

When she
        found out he
Was married
        at first
She had nothing
        to do
With him.

I would like her she’s fun they have so much in common.
Biking, skiing, hiking, taking
        “business trips” to Florida.

Someone named Richard
Found a business card.
And a love letter.
Called my mom.
Read the note.
Written from our home on Christmas Day.

She was secretly engaged for three years before this call.

She never did get married.
Or move to Minnesota.
Or meet my father’s only daughter.
I’m glad.

Hera	Aphrodite	Athena
smiled	is all warm smiles	will smile
tricked	and small tricks,	will trick
brought	bringing her little myths	will bring
gave	of love, she gives kisses	will give
desired	like petals, desiring	will desire
took	him, taking whatever	will take
turned	is needed to turn the tables	will turn
decided	and decide the outcome	will decide