Me Like Daughters

Only two things are certain right now: School and Writing. 1. School has started. And this means a rigid schedule is back in effect and it's putting the screws to everyone. Holy shit, it's tight! We've been very graceful about it considering because we've pumped up the Start of School for weeks. Maya's a high schooler! This is huge and wow is she good at it already. She's so responsible and getting in her groove. She’s equal parts maturity and goofiness. So great. Mina's a fifth grader! This is also huge because she's ruling school this year. She's the big cheese. I did not tell you guys that I received her state test scores in the mail a couple weeks ago. We all know the Infamous Second Grade Debacle, how she was tagged as remedial and "not cut out for school" and I, shocked beyond belief, was all, the fuck she ain't and you just don't understand her is all! and I'll take matters in my own hands thank you very little . . .For fourth grade Mina tested advanced in math and just shy of advanced in language arts. It was her best year yet. I rubbed the test paper all over her when she came home. We sang “You did it! You did it!” for days. She was thrilled with herself. So, anyway, school . . .it's all consuming. Riding their asses is exhausting. Keeping them engaged, very tiring. But seeing them rocket on their own has been transformative for me. You hope it will all pay off but really you can't think about it too much, you just have to do it no matter how it will turn out. They'll still have to make decisions on their own. But honestly, they really are amazing people. 2. Writing. I'm writing so a bunch of other balls have dropped. I get obsessed and then whoa, I wonder if plants need water to live and if so, why haven't they figured out how to do that on their own? Or is toast a legit dinner? I like it. But is it good for everyone else? It's not like I'm at the computer 10 hours a day writing this novel. It's more that I'm thinking about it 10 hours a day so tasks that require, oh, remembering stuff or too much cognitive awareness is challenging. Some of the things I'm still able to do while I'm internally piecing together a plot are: cleaning/laundry, walking the dogs, cracking a homework whip, uh, let's see what else, working (it's robotic work anyhow), buying food at the grocery store though haphazardly because the meal-plan side of my brain is a little soft right now, working out. That might be about it. Everything else is shot. 

Home From Squaw

When I baptized myself in the Truckee River on day two of the Squaw Conference, it wasn't a full immersion. I needed a simple promise, not a full epiphany. I needed something more relative and not so manic. A solid and sustainable promise is what I needed.

I put my feet in the water and forgave myself. I washed away the notion that I've wasted my time in regards to writing, that I've squandered my talent. I haven't. I haven't stayed focused and I haven't put in the work, but any regrets for time passed, I sent afloat down the river. Dorothy Allison told me personally that it took her twenty years to build up the courage to write Bastard Out of Carolina, and ten more years to actually write it.

Honestly, I don't know if I could have written anything complete and of real value before. I haven't been brave enough. I'm talking about the kind of bravery that allows one to edit out all the crutches and bullshit. The type of bravery that lets "the bones rise to the top" as Dorothy told it to me. Also, I hadn't copped to the work it takes to hone talent, and it takes a lot of work. Writers -- underdeveloped ones -- seem to think that natural talent will magically form into books and stories. Trained musicians and dancers don't think that way. Their lives seem rooted in practice. Why would it be different for a good writer?

Courage didn't suddenly fall upon me. It has taken years to coax myself to this point. No time has been wasted at all. Now a new promise begins.The Truckee River stayed alive for me in photos, but the valley did not. It hid its full shimmer from the camera. The valley holds out for personal visits only, apparently. The magic of the Aspen trees especially didn't come across in still pictures. In person, the leaves shake and reflect light like round, strung-together mirrors. They sounds like the shelled anklets of far away African dancers. But when photographed, they are still and flat. I will question what I saw the Aspen leaves do when I go through all the photos, but that sound -- that rainstick rustling -- stays with me.

So, the river: I think of bodies of water as protective women in my life; the Pacific Ocean, a mother. The river, an aunt. That second day, I rode my bike along the river path. The Truckee was gentle and pretty and lined in long grass. She's an intimate river. The water rolled with a soft, thick ripple when it was not speeding over scattered rocks, creating small white water.We talked this week about rivers as symbols in literature, a line dividing things: Cities, classes, past and present. I might have made up the past and present thing because maybe that's what the Truckee is for me.

There were many places to turn off the bike path and join the river, and I went to a small opening with good rocks for sitting. I flung off my flip flops and considered jumping in, but I wanted to keep it a calm visit and I decided to have the feet baptism.The first thing Dorothy Allison said to me after reading my story was, "Are you willing to put in the work?"

I had learned early in the week that my one-on-one conference would be with Dorothy Allison, of all people, and I alternated between nausea and ecstasy after hearing the news.

"Yes ma'am," I said, and not confidently.

We spoke with our faces twelve inches apart, and we bore holes with our eyes, hers into mine and me syphoning from hers. She speaks in a fading drawl which revives when she reads stories aloud. She emphasises words with a raspy, loud inflection, an almost whisper-yell.

She said, "You have STO-RY and VOICE and PAS-SION, but your mechanics are breakin' your knees, crippling you as a writer." We stared. She waited for a hint of resistance from me, but I waited, opening my eyes as wide as possible to let her in.

"First thing you gotta do," she said, "is when a character speaks, make a new paragraph. For a whole YE-AR anytime someone talks, a new paragraph! Make what they say count."

"Yes ma'am," I said.

She did not appreciate all the sentences I began with "and" and "but". She objected in general to my frivolous use of "and".

She said, "So often women are afraid of the declarative sentence. STATE. IT."

I thought, Hell Yes.

My mechanics problem stems from not putting in the work. I don't read enough. I don't read out loud enough. I sure as hell don't write enough. The basic question loomed: Was I willing to work.

She placed my story on the table. She asked me if my mother was still alive. Was I still angry? I didn't have to pretend that the story was all fiction. The conversation we had from there is a private one. She got me tearing and choking over truths. She shared a couple intimate details about her step father, but mainly she told me it was time to write the story.

"Be RUTH-LESS," she said.

Dorothy hugged me hard with her big, soft body. She told me to keep in touch with her because she wanted to hear how it comes along. I believe she meant it. Then I went outside and cried my eyes out for a half hour.

The staff at Squaw -- well-known writers, agents, editors from publishing houses --spent a lot of time erasing the line between them and us. They were generous and discerning. They were honest. After workshop, we went to panels and talks and, our favorite, readings by the staff writers. The most comforting lectures were when published writers described their intimate relationship with Self Doubt. It never goes away, they told us. It can be paralyzing, they said. Amy Tan's closing talk was all about this. She detailed how she thinks her brain is shrinking, and she fears that she has peaked, that not one more word will ever come to her. Karen Joy Fowler, who wrote the The Jane Austen Book Club, hilariously described how she procrastinates. She was on a panel called Sustaining Momentum. She leaned into the microphone and said,

"Having me on this panel is like having King Henry VIII lead a panel on the Keys to a Happy Marriage."

She described how she used to spend hours spinning her wedding ring atop her desk, going for personal bests. Her husband then bought her a ring that wouldn't spin. Karen said she had a friend remove Solitaire from her computer, but only when she wasn't present to prevent Karen from tackling the friend as she did so.

Besides Dorothy, the other staff writer I connected with was Dagoberto Gilb. I'm reading his latest book The Flowers, which is written from the perspective of a Mexican-American middle school boy from LA. The language of the book is exactly how a kid like this speaks. When I got to know Dagoberto, I realized this was his voice, he speaks just like that. He and I confessed our fears of embarrassing ourselves in front of all the MFA'ers and the college-educated people, but we both know that this doesn't keep us from telling a damn good story.

During one of my workshops, the staff facilitator of the day schooled us on greek terms. He said shit like,

"The syntax demonstrates parataxis," and immediately I thought, Whatever! But really I didn't know what that meant until he schooled us.

I came out out of the work shop and to Dagoberto I said,

"Today I learned that I don't know shit about shit."

He said, "I just LED the workshop and I realized I don't know shit about shit either."

Dagoberto had a stroke three months ago. He's in his fifties only, I think. Three weeks before Squaw, he started walking again.

He told me, "The left side of my body died."

When we were at a party though, he had me dying, laughing, about how when he was reading from The Flowers at the conference, he thought he was going to fall a couple times.

"I was reading, thinking at the same time, OH FUCK! I'm gonna fall! WHOA! DON'T FALL! And sometimes my face does shit I don't even know about. I DON'T EVEN KNOW ME, MAN!"

We laughed, near tears, and he took a drink from a big, red party cup.

"Like now," he said, "I'm fucking crushing this cup and don't even realize it. FUCK!"

We doubled over. Then for one moment, and not longer, he got serious.

"But I won't let myself fall. I'm not falling, man." He was staring passed the cup that was at his lips. I knew he could clown easily about what had happened to him, but I knew more that he was not a man about to fall because of it.

Buy his books. He ain't traditional -- I love that -- but his work is important. Though his syntax displays plenty of hypotaxis and shit.

I want to write another post about the camaraderie of Squaw, but I'll save it. I've written enough for now. I did tell Dorothy that my friends love her, you too, Trasherati. Mainly, I wanted to tell you guys that I did love the ever-living fuck out of every minute of all seven days.

Miss you.

Here's Dorothy Allison.
Dagoberto Gilb. My good friend and mentor, Lisa Alvarez (Rebel Girl). Amy Tan is behind us.
I'll post more photos on flickr soon.

Squaw's Eve

I leave Saturday morning for Squaw, the writer camp/intensive program I got into this year. As my friend Honduro says with despair, "I'm too excited about it." We're nervous about loving Squaw too much. Why does the excitement feel explosive and doom-like? Like I'm preparing to die from happiness there. Honduro says he looks forward to having conversations with the aspen trees along the Truckee River. I said, Ooo oo, I'll work on my hawk call and hope to get answers back from them. We happily surrender to our inner nature-word geek and we feel unashamed about it, though Husband looks at me with side glances as the time nears and says, "ookkaayy" a lot. My geekdome is busting at the seams. It's ok. Because during this week, diving deep to string words together well will be unobstructed. I'll get to freefall into understanding them. I will be un-obstacled by work, by any regular demands. I won't even be blocked by the self consciousness of my charged sense of observation, a trait I usually try not to put on display. And I won't be hindered by the self-consciousness of obsessively wanting to assemble words until they click together perfectly. It's safe for everything to be a wonder there.

I'm bringing Loops too, to commute to workshop in the morning, in the summer-mountain air, and for overwhelming rides around Lake Tahoe where the sheen of lake water will blind me. Wait until you see pictures of this place. I'm also going to meet one of my favorite writers, Dorothy Allison, who has been on staff at Squaw a few years now. She's going to sign my crinkled copy of Two Or Three Things I Know for Sure, and I'm going to be awkward, bursting with nothing to say. And I'm going to ask Rebel Girl if I can stow away in a back cabin room for the rest of the summer, well beyond the seven days of the intensive. Just until I can sort out my feelings and compose myself. My stomach hurts from loving too much what's about to happen, even when I told myself I wasn't going to let anything lilt too high or dip too low. But really, I just want to release it and let me feel it and pay the consequences later. Go ahead. I'm down for the ride.

I thought of something recently, about the corralling of feelings and why it's destructive. This has nothing to do with writing, but it has all to do with real emotion, and writing falls in that category for me. I was remembering how people used to tell Mama not to baby me when I was little. She would've coddled me to death, and I would have gladly let her, but the advice from everyone else deterred her. She'd spoil me, she was told. Don't baby her, they said. I didn't see her that often and I didn't know why she wouldn't just let me sleep with her or at least fall asleep with her, until my stepgrandfather would tell her to put me to bed to keep me from being spoiled, which is really exactly what I needed. Man, I ached for it. And Mama, who was not strong, didn't let me in her bed, she pulled the reins on how much she wanted to love me, but she did baby me as much as she could get away with. Then she died when I was still young. So really, what was the point of rationing the love? The absence of it hurt more after. And I kind of feel that way about anything where real emotion and love is felt. Like, why be scared to love Squaw or anything or anybody too much. Love the fuck out of it for god's sake. Love it now.

Come on. I'm ready for the ride.

Patio Farmers, Black Out and Squaw Valley

Santa Monica has a growing number of community gardens spread throughout the city. The most famous is on Main Street, south of downtown, and has been there since the 1970's. I remember staring at them as a kid and wondering how people got so lucky to get a garden in a pack of gardens in the middle of town. It didn't occur to me to call the city about getting one of them myself until a couple months ago. I applied for a plot, told them I'd take any size at any of the three locations. I'm 250th or so on the waiting list – that’s what the lady told me! It will take years. I can wait.

Mina and I drove past the Park Drive Gardens, the closest community garden to our house, last weekend. We walked all around the locked lots and tried to identify all the food coming into harvest; tomatoes, strawberries, basil, corn! They were fantastic. Some of the lots were tiny, maybe a 100 sq. feet, and it occurred to me that my back patio is only a little smaller than the smallest of these lots. I said, "Mina, these gardens are tiny, right? Don't they look the same size as our patio?" Her eyes lit up. "Yes!" And in that moment we decided to become patio farmers.

For the record, I know not a thing about the soil. In technical terms, I know not what makes it tick or what would move it to miraculously produce something so perfect as zucchini, let's say. Or a watermelon. I mean, that's nuts, right? A watermelon grows from a seed, y'all! So the thought that I could somehow coax the earth to do the same for me is a bit mindblowing. It's logical to believe that anything living needs nurturing, nutrients, love. I know that much, I suppose.

When I was 13, Mama lived in a trailer in Westlake with a bit of a yard. One spring she planted strawberries seeds in high, holey terracotta pots. We sat on the back trailer steps and waited for things to grow. Quail families ran through the yard with small bobbing head feathers. When jagged green leaves crawled out of the holes of the pots, I was impressed. But when small red berries exploded in bloom between the leaves I thought Mama was in on something godly. Of course she was, but I was not moved to try such miracles myself. I didn't think it was possible for me, in an apartment. Growing food was for people with land and with a calling.

I've been called now, or I self appointed a calling to myself. It's yet to be seen if I can lure food from the ground. I did successfully keep some herbs alive from existing plants last summer. That alone was chest-puffing for me.

Mina and I started our patio farm with some plastic planters that had been in storage or discarded.We spruced them up with good dirt, and seeds and some seedlings though these bell peppers are a bit more than seedlings.Hey, 'member I got this Envirocycle rolling composter a year ago?Yo, talk about miracles! Did you know -- and I'm really just talking to my city folks right now -- that scraps of food, over time and mixed right and rolled around in the above contraption, really turns into a dirt-like substance? It's crazy! Here's a cupful. Check it:Don't ask me how the worms got in there; I'm just a bystander in the natural ecology of things. We added our homemade compost to our soil and apparently our lil' plants are gonna eat it up and dig us for it. You know who else is diggin' the project? Patio Farmer Mina. Here's what we have so far: Tomatoes in the corner, herbs from existing plants, seedling bell peppers and sugar snap peas, and from seeds (hopefully) will come carrots, zucchini, pole beans and I have some eggplant getting started indoors. (I read the packets very carefully.) I'll keep you posted because, lord have mercy, when I see the first hint of an edible substance coming from our p. farm, I'll be snapping pictures like it was my first born.
In other news . . .Husband has been staging a bit of a silent protest. He is the production manager for a clothing line and he works really hard, too hard really. He works 11-12 hours days, every day. He works Saturday mornings most weeks and since they've added a factory in Mexico, he's had to make trips there twice a month. He is a machine. But it's too much. You know when the hardest working person just ends up taking on most of the work? He's that guy. And I tell him that they'll work him as hard as he'll let them, and he says I know I know, but still he works until the brink anyway. About a month ago, he unceremoniously started wearing only black to work; black t-shirts, black jeans, black sneakers. Every single day without fail, all black. I don’t want to worry, but I don't see an end in sight, and coworkers are starting to make comments. It's as much of a protest against the work load as Husband can muster. It's like he's telling his work, "I'm saying fuck you in my mind right now." Kinda. Poor Husband! I love him so much.

And in other other news, I got accepted to the Squaw Valley Community of Writers Program this summer (!). I've attended this workshop before, a few years ago and many, many years before that. 'Member when I was Janet Finch's personal DJ last time? Oh man, she's great. Anyway, Squaw for me has been an amazing experience and the alumni and staff are intimidatingly impressive, but really the valley itself is magic for me. Squaw Valley in the summertime is the most beautiful place I've ever seen in person. I can't tell you what staring at the velvet valley does for me. For 7 days, I will get to geek out on writing with a good mix of budding brilliance, pretentious gas bags and straight lunatics. I love them all. I applied with my new story, which is the first I've written in a while and I'll get it workshopped during the program. In the past, I've held high expectations for myself when going to the workshop only to disappoint myself even more later. After the program, I have felt huge crashes; tumblings down after hoping to retain the hope and highs I felt at Squaw. Writing good fiction takes everything from me. It's the only thing that I do that takes complete silence and full concentration. That's a tall order in my house. Anyway, no expectations this year. I'm just gonna be myself and geek out and appreciate what I was able to churn out lately. I’ll ride my bike next to Lake Tahoe and of course stare at the valley. That's all I really want, is that valley to hold me still for a while.

This & That

I've been craving cinnamon-sugar toast lately. I always think that's a sign that my grandmother is hovering. But then I'm embarrassed by the notion, like it's too romantic. Maybe I just crave that sort of comfort now and again. And who doesn't crave cinnamon-sugar on a regular basis? That's probably it.

I've received a few concerned notes from my out-of-town friends about the Metrolink train crash here, which is now the most tragic incident in Metrolink history; fifteen deaths and counting. Thank you so much for the concern, but I wasn't anywhere near it. That train goes in the opposite direction as my train, but still, the disaster has me a bit freaked out. It should be such a secure mode of transportation -- it's on a fixed track! -- and I don't understand why they wouldn't know well in advance when a freight train is coming at them head on. The investigation continues, but there's speculation that either the red light warning of an on-coming train wasn't noticed or it malfunctioned. There's no back up? Either way, it seems such a gross, needless oversight. Sometimes when I'm on the train, I think the driver is going too fast, like I know anything about train driving. But I can feel when it's going faster than normal and there are rougher parts of the track, between Fullerton and Union Station, that when rolled over causes the train to shake more violently than seems normal. I write the feeling off to Another Anxious Traveling Moment. I guess that's it; all forms of transportation worry me; car, plane, train; not so much the bike though that's complete denial, isn't it? Please tell me I'm not turning into that lady: The Scared of Traveling Lady.

I started my writing workshop. It's been going for two weeks, and I show up early and leave late. I ride the line of over-anxiousness. During my bike commute home afterwards, I don't ever remember pedaling. I float it home. I've turned in two stories so far. One received good reviews, the other so/so reviews. The So/So story has been a pain in my ass for over a year. I can't seem to get it to a place where it would be more moving. My teacher, who is amazing and thoughtful, X'ed out pages of the story. Pages! And I know as a writer you're not supposed to fall too in love with your own concepts and phrases when they need editing, but I don't always know how to move a story along passionately otherwise. I cut about 300 words from the story because of his suggestions, but I left the pages pretty much intact due to the fact that I'm in love with certain concepts and phrases. Kill me. I think I just need to move on. File the story away in the Nice Try folder.

But I wasn't discouraged. Which is a fresh concept for me after criticism. Fuck it; keep going. So I'm not instantly brilliant no matter how much I've fantasize that I am. Back to work because hard work has always been my most reliable characteristic. Day dreaming, not so much no matter how endearing.

Seeds Were Planted

When I was nine, my mother rented us a room out of an apartment in Santa Monica from a woman named Jean who was an ex-nun. Or a former nun as my grandfather would say because ex means they're dead, he had said. The apartment was a run-down, first-floor dingy two bedroom place cluttered with a million years of Jean's stuff, but the apartment sat across the street from a bluff that overlooked the ocean. Inside, the place was grey and heavy and dark, but the windows revealed brightness and a sense of the spectacular.

My mother and I shared the back room off the alley which was sunlit during the day. What fit in the room was my mother's full-sized bed that we shared, our dressers and a thirteen inch black and white TV complete with wire hangers shoved into the rabbit ears. My mother hung every piece of art she owned or had painted on the walls and they covered it floor to ceiling. Every night my mother would watch TV from her side of the bed after I was told to roll over and go to sleep. I caught many episodes of Fantasy Island or the Merv Griffin Show with one eye open.

At the time, my mother was part of a team that put together the ceramic Heritage Floor of Judy Chicago's brilliant and feminist iconic art piece, The Dinner Party. The Dinner Party is a huge installation piece of a triangular table set for thirty-nine famous or impactful women in history. Each place setting features a cloth banner depicting some of their story, a plate, a challis-like cup and flatware; all made of ceramic. The Heritage Floor contains the names of 999 more women that have made a mark. The piece is on permanent display at the Brooklyn Museum and I highly recommend visiting it because when fully assembled it looks like God put the table together Herself. That entire summer, I hung out in and explored the massive warehouse-studio that was filled with the constant smell a fired-up kiln and freshly glazed ceramics. The plates were fashioned into the shape of colorful three-dimensional and flower-like vaginas. The glaze was often iridescent and without realizing exactly what they were -- though there was constant talk about the plates as vaginas -- I thought they were beautiful. Thirty or so women artists assembled the piece within the warehouse, all orchestrated by Judy's powerful vision and presence. I stayed clear of Judy as much as possible -- she scared me -- though I did get yelled at by her once when I knocked over some blueprints in a back concrete hall way. Of course I had bumped into them just as she was rounding the corner. The team of artists eventually taught me how to embroider a caterpillar for the Mary Wollstonecraft banner, which was terrifying. I did not know how to sew and my hands shook as I tried to make a perfect, shag-like caterpillar. During the process, I stared constantly at the scene embroidered on the main part of the banner which was of Wollstonecraft dying during childbirth. The satin crimson thread used for the pool of blood on the bed was a gorgeous color. It haunts me still a bit. Needless to say, this experience is a highlight of my life because the residual empowerment inherited to me locked into my young mind, and never left. Many of the women who worked on the project raged hard to reclaim this empowerment; they were boisterous and rebellious advocates of the ERA movement and of women's rights. They said things like "herstory" instead of history. They constantly sited how men were holding us down. My mother told me -- and they echoed -- that high heels were invented so women couldn't run from rapists. My mother also had a bumpersticker that read: "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle," which is sadly ironic coming from her. But that's the point; these woman, including my mother, had to exaggerate a sense of entitlement to their rights to reclaim them, to even recognize what they were. While assembling The Dinner Party, we all received a tremendous herstory lesson that many of the women, no matter how bra-less or how much armpit hair they grew, still might not have known excised. And I, as a kid, absorbed it, without having been too tainted by sexism just yet. I was able to build a strong base of my womanhood first.

Jean The Former Nun didn't talk about why she had left the church. This seems a heavy and personal decision that would not be easily discussed with a child. I spent enough time with Jean for her to have had the opportunity to tell me, and I was still attending Catholic school which made the topic even more accessible, but Jean never did fill me in. I wish I knew now, but back then it didn't matter to me. I loved Jean nun or no nun. She was in her fifties and shaped like a ball. A ball with a short steal-grey haircut. She had two Siamese cats; a mother named Katrina and a cross-eyed son named Ivan who often fell off the TV when he napped. Jean worked at what was then called The Museum of Science & Industry and I would often go with her on the weekends she had to work. As she worked I would wander the halls of the museum alone for hours, staring at the kinetic energy display and the neon exhibit. The dental exhibit was one of my favorites because the set of teeth on display filled an entire room. I pretended to get eaten a thousand times.

Jean was a champion for me. A champion in an even stronger sense than my grandmother Mama because Mama never confronted my mother in regards to me, especially not in front of me. But Jean did; Why had she hit me for that? Why did she leave me alone? I couldn't believe my ears the first time I heard her speak up.

Months before my mother and I moved out of Jean's place, Jean had cleared out the front hall closet and crammed in a small desk for me to use. She clicked on the overhead light and said I could work in there, for homework or whatever I wanted. I said, "I can do what I like in here?" She said, "Absolutely." I promptly painted a portrait of Susan B. Anthony on the wall. I don't think that's what Jean had in mind, but she wasn't too mad at me about it. In that tiny closet, I tried to close the door with a chair at the desk, but it wouldn't shut all the way. I pretended anyway that I was in my own private office, and I decided then that I was going be a writer. I had written one small composition for my fourth grade class and it was the only piece of school work that the had nuns complimented me on. My teacher even read it aloud to my class and I temporarily soared out of by body for those few minutes. I sat at the desk in my closet, staring at Susan B. Anthony botched in acrylics. I never did write anything else in there, but the dreaming about it was grand.