Hate me if you must, but I am convinced there are two types of people in the world:
The Packers and the Non-Packers
I have never met anybody in the middle.
I of course, am a Non-Packer.
I avoid packing until the absolute last possible minute …. & then
the last second, which is sometimes unadvised if you are a girl who
prioritizes adventure over comfort.
Before you ask, yes, I am procrastinating from doing my packing:-)
* 1 more trip to the Vernon Super Buffet with Dad
* 1 more Chinatown bus trip
* 1 conference call
*
1 happy phone call telling me I won the scholarship competition for the
Writers Conferences & Centers
(http://www.awpwriter.org/contests/wccscholarship.htm)
* more goodbyes, hugs, wishes & leave-takings
* from a pond growing lilypads to a street growing trash for pick-up
* Brazilian stew
* ice cream & cheesecake crepe in Queens being the most exciting Saturday night deal
* Victor taking millions of pictures of me & him, several beneath a sign on the subway entitled "army wives"
* debauchery this week = crashing boys’ night out drunk karaoke at the Rubyfruit queer karaoke spot!
*
a good conversation with an old visual artist friend from California
about breaking out of the comfortable community arts space into the
great {white? academic? wider?} unknown for the sake of bringing your
creative arts to a deeper level
1. a river visit!
2. lasting sunshine
3. no hiding ticks or biting ants
4. calming down my perfectionist/supercritical self — no pressure!
5. reading some poems
6. open heart to receive feedback//discerning eye to give feedback
7. tea w/local milk & honey
8. see my last bit of green, trees, sun before heading back to concrete for awhile.
The other resident and I gave each other deadlines yesterday to look at
each other’s manuscripts, which resulted in a 15-hour straight-through
power writing (4 new poems!) & revising session birthing a (yes,
I’m gonna say it) first book draft, 55 pages long! I still can’t
believe that I’m working on this book — that these characters are
speaking to me (demanding poems written in their voices) & all this
organic building keeps happening from poem to poem. I almost cried
when I printed it out & flipped through page by page. & of
course, I’ve got edits now & more poems & another draft to
write.
We are winding down here, trying to catch our last
glimpses of the deer, the mating ducks, the sunshine over the pond, the
gushing river, the elusive emu (maybe?), avoiding the ticks (we are in
the birthplace of lyme disease). I am collecting new book suggestions
left & right, thinking up new schemes & dreams (hmmm …. maybe
writing for children? maybe another project?)
Feel myself gearing up for a hectic few months of traveling & writing before I head back to California.
My past self (5.13.04):
How notions of home & roots shift…. Re-orienting. Re-alignment. Return home.
hello friendlies,
My poem, After Virginia Tech, is up at New Verse News, newversenews.com, a site which publishes poetry on current events:-)
xoxo,
After much hemming & hawing, ekeing out of reluctant words, thrashing & throwing tigers, we’ve had ….
—
a fieldtrip to the other residency in town (this one has an
environmental park & visual artists & a composed plus one
random writer & has a much more organized, larger-group feel,
reminded me a little bit of vsc)
— a visit to the 5 building
used-book Book Barn where i found a great chinese poetry anthology
ACTUALLY put together by chinese people! & one of the guys’s names
was irving, such a typical chinese american boy name! ha!
— & yes, a villanelle makes 50 pages:-)
This is the last week here & my goal is to get a workable draft done by the time I leave. So back to the words I go.
Marilyn took us on another field trip, today to the free day at the
Florence Griswold Museum, which used to be the first artist’s colony in
the area for painters. We walked around the old rooms and saw the
paintings of these mostly white, male, privileged painters who were
coming to rural Connecticut, a back to "Colonial" movement at the turn
of the century where they felt that the immigrants were taking over
& they wanted to return to "the good old days." They called the
women "blots" and did not really consider them seriously as part of
their group unless they were the wives of a male painter or if they
were too "good" to ignore. Also, apparently, women who painted cows
were acceptable as opposed to those who painted "landscapes"
(scandalous!) or the human form! The other resident thought that might
have been about property & ownership.
There’s a room where Marilyn’s poems about Venture Smith, a former
slave who bought his own freedom & that of his family eventually,
were paired (and recorded so you can listen to them on CD while walking
around) with certain paintings from the collection, notable because
most of them are landscapes mostly devoid of humans (the people were
all white in the paintings, said Marilyn).
Then we went out for
a drink, calamari & ice cream while Marilyn told us about her
relationship with a college friend who became a monk and the type of
spiritual love you have for someone that you know will last your whole
lifetime. She lost touch with him and then decided at 45 y.o. to track
him down and wrote him a letter every day for a full year without
hearing a response. But now they are in each other’s lives and she’s
travelled to all these places because of him and they have the type of
friendship that is indescribable. I can think of only one person who
I’ve felt that kind of kinship with in this lifetime (outside of that
white heat of lover passion), but only the test of time will tell.
7.5.2004:
Revolutionary
art for the people. Propaganda art. The concept of art not in
galleries but the community as your gallery. Your art in the
newspaper, at the party, on posters, on billboards, store windows,
telephone poles, disseminated throughout the country!
I am making nice with the animals here. So far, I’ve observed the
mallards mating from afar, a hawk in the sky, deer outside my window.
Yesterday, we went to the lamb farm and saw the baby lambs and played
with a baby cow.
Today, I took an extralong special walk to
make up for my backwards day when I jinxed myself by telling AL that I
have been really good about not indulging in nighttime activities …
and then proceeded to stay up really late for no reason! I learned my
lesson the next day, missing my morning exercise, having Moodle crash
out on me just as I was finishing up someone’s feedback, missing my
river visit, skipping breakfast, rushing around, bringing back my old
community organizer overextended stressful all day without eating days
& feeling all out of sorts all day. Today, a dog in the bookstore
insisted on having a belly-rub. On the walk, there was a staring
contest with a llama which I think the llama won, and a kitty cat
almost followed me home. This was after a story by the other resident
about seeing a horde of wild turkeys and some other stories about mean
turkeys trying to bring down the roof while practicing flying. But I
didn’t see any turkeys:-)
I realize I am still multi-tasking for no good reason. I guess it’s entrenched.
I found my artist’s manifesto from the past. Funny, I recognize it as one of my poems, but not as my artist manifesto.
in a new world of our creation
we would build into each other
layering poem upon song
each memory of the way we came to freedom
6.5.2004
Reminded by this challenge of Sonia Sanchez’s last summer to let go of
all negative thoughts for 24 hours. When I first heard Sonia say it, I
was immediately that sarcastic hand-waving kid who didn’t believe in
God in the back of the room during Chinese Sunday School, wanting the
teacher to prove to me God exists in physical, concrete details. But.
Still. It is a beautiful thing to aspire to. Listening to my teacher
Erica repeat this lesson to disperse negativity by not allowing
shit-talking to pass your lips for awhile to notice what does come out,
while overlooking this bean-shaped pond (yes, I have been informed it’s
a pond, not a lake) framed by trees that will be growing leaves, it
does seem possible. Here have been the things I have been grateful
here & in my life.
From my journal a few days ago (4.29.07):
For
being here, for all the words & stories coming before & now
finally knowing they’re out there & where to begin to look. How to
plug in & get connected if I desire & also for the lesson of
taking self-care time & having boundaries. For the special people
in my life who have kept me afloat. For music. For travel. For
girlhood and womanhood in many facets. For sex & sexuality. For
ideas. For journals. For rituals & beauty. For laughter. For
rivers & ponds & birds. For fish & honey & tea &
coffee & meat & salad. For cheese & ice cream. For milk.
For rocks to sit on. For the lapping of water. For the feeling of sun
on your back. For ink. For tradition. For heritage. For song. For
layers. For breast, for belly, for lip, for eye, for curve, for glow,
for leaness & for plump juicy girlflesh. For dancing. For sweat.
For love. For decades. For experience. For sidewalks. For glisten.
For weekends. For mornings. For beds. For magic. For the smell of
hair. For knowing your own body. For nourishment. For imagination
& creativity. For praise. For growth. For tongue muscles. For
the form & body of poetry. For invitation. For sharing. For feet
dangling. For almost. For pebbles. For possibility. For sizzling.
For anticipation. For giggles. For beginnings. For letting go. For
pathways. For forks. For chances. For cycles. For monks &
monasteries. For sand. For ripples. For mint. For rice &
harvest. For family. For mothers. For fathers. For tidiness &
putting things in order. For lovely chaos. For glimpses. For
slivers. For gratitude.
