Binding Wor(l)ds Together

Necessary Magics

2011-12-13T21:55:00.000-08:00

"For me, the art of language, the heft and pull of literature, the act of attempting to craft something elegant and large are intrinsically tied to a conviction in something transcendent. When I stopped believing that this kind of beauty could exist, I could no longer work on my novel." - Lisa Jennifer Selzman

I often feel guilty about the Hawaii Project: guilt for having taken so long to write it, guilt for taking the time away from my family to write it, guilt for even entertaining the notion that writing about postpartum depression is 'appropriate' material. These guilts come in little phrases like "It's been 14 years, how could you think it's timely?" and "You've got kids and a job. You should be taking care of them and not writing." Not to mention "Don't air your dirty laundry in public."

Lisa Jennifer Selzman's column in the November/December 2011 issue of Poets and Writers, Why We Write - A Necessary Magic, reflected what I feel every time I step up to the keyboard - writing while mothering a child in a hospital is nearly impossible; finding the strength to write when your child is home again takes recovery, not just from the trauma but from essentially a loss of faith.

"Words, always until then my solace, were feeble. They meant nothing to me. They might as well have been black checkers on the page, or pennies, or cough drops."

What does a writer do when that magic is gone for all the right reasons? Feelings of loss are doubled - your child is in danger: she no longer lives the happy, healthy life you hoped for. Your child is in danger: there is no time to do anything but exactly what needs to be done to keep her alive. Losing your writing seems a small price to pay for the chance your child will survive.

"It wasn't so much that I didn't have time to write, although that was certainly an issue. It's true that I was drained, functioning for months without deep sleep...Plain and simple, I stopped writing because I didn't see the point."

But the sacrifice takes a toll. The artist unable to express their experiences is like a person who has lost connection to their senses. Blindness. Numbness. Loss of hearing the music of words so long familiar before your child has become ill.

"With her sick, I moved encased in a scrim that muddied colors, turned food chalky, shortened sound...The most dramatic adjectives -- words like desolation, agony, and torment, straight out of a fourteenth-century epic--suddenly become relevant and authentic."

Sometimes, no, often I struggle to dampen those impulses to write with words with Epic Proportions. Tell it simple, I'm directed, tell it straight. Let the moment speak for itself. But sometimes the abstraction pops up because the memory of all those details are just too hard to bear remembering again. The scent of disinfectant that cramps your stomach in fear. The sight of an examination light you shy away from, remembering a time when you could not look away. The certain smoothness of surfaces that remind you of hospital equipment. Cracking those abstractions open requires a trust that reopening those memories is worth the pain.

"I hovered two inches above collapse, getting everything done...this is the world without art. This is the real world."

Before Hawaii, I was a fiction writer too, and I hope to write fiction again once this memoir is completed. The Hawaii Project though is a story I am compelled to write and is the sole reason why I've thrown myself into learning how to write memoir these past few years. I want to tell the story right, to have both the art and the reality sit right next to each other just like they sit next to each other in my heart.

"I wish I could say I had an epiphany, a moment of intensified certainty, but the way back to writing was subtle...I have to breathe. I have to write."

Being a writing mother isn't easy, but it's who I am. So, it took me a while to get here, but that's because I was being the mom. Now I'm easing into being the writer who is also a mom. And having the faith to tell the tale.

The Hawaii Project

2011-11-29T21:28:00.001-08:00

For a little over a year, I've been writing something I'm calling the Hawaii Project. I've actually been drafting this book for over a decade, producing a decent essay that's garnered some recognition. I've felt all along, though, that the story is a much longer one, taking on the breadth and depth I hope will make a good long memoir.

I've chugged along some 80 pages now, with another 20-30 pages in the wings waiting for development. My sense is that I've close to 1/3 of the book 'done' and that soon I'll transition from writing the first third to the second third. Like all my writing projects, the Hawaii Project has taught me more about myself, what I've fear and hope for, what I've dreamed and failed at.

It's a story that has endured like few in my life stories have, at times haunting me like a nearly forgotten song, at other times, a piercing memory. But always, always tinged with a feeling of great regret.

I lived for a year in Honolulu and it nearly destroyed me. That I survived is a testament to one man's love and my stubborn belief that to be a writer, I had to write. Writing, or even speaking, in such epic terms often solicits disbelief, questions that probe. Countless friends and family are amazed I dare to speak of Paradise in such dire terms. And sometimes their narrative of white sand beaches, palm trees, and sweet cocktails nearly overwhelms my narrative of sleepless nights with a colicky baby, persistent self-doubt about parenting skills, and bodily pains not covered in maternity books. And I feel guilty for suggesting that Hawaii could be anything else but Paradise, for clouding their dreams yet unfulfilled. Sometimes it's easier to be silent rather than risk feeling all those conflicting feelings again and again.

But writing memoir is about telling the truth and making art from experience even when that truth doesn't seem logical or when the art is shaded dark and forbidding.

I'm often asked what my book is about.

It's about moving from Moscow, Idaho to Honolulu, Hawaii. It's about my first child being born 8 weeks premature 8 days after we moved. It's about trying to hold all the shock and grief at bay, and doing all the things a new mom does to keep a baby alive, well-fed, and growing. It's about the slow madness of postpartum depression and the power of self-expression to heal. It's about leaving everything that kept me grounded, and thereby stagnant, and plunging into Pele's fire.

No wonder I came back singed.

An Encounter with Arjia Rinpoche

2011-05-02T22:59:00.000-07:00

About a week ago, I had the chance to meet Arjia Rinpoche at a reception in his honor. He's currently touring the country, promoting his book Surviving the Dragon and raising money for a medical facility project in Mongolia. I'd heard about his visit from friends in the local Mongolian community - we've worked on the same arts events in the past few months and I performed at the Tsagaan Sar New Year's festival this year. I missed his talk because the time conflicted with a workshop I was teaching that same day, but I was invited to join he and the others at lunch.

Although I've read books by Buddhists such as the Dalai Lama, Ticht Nhat Nanh, and Pema Chodron, I had never had the chance met a Buddhist monk before, let alone a reincarnated person. Friends who had met the Dalai all mentioned his sense of humor and child-like approach to life. Arjia Rinpoche was the same - he radiated a sense of wonder and seemed genuinely surprised to hear that not only could I cook (my recipe for biko was used to make dessert, I found out) but I was a storyteller. He asked me questions about how I found the stories and how I performed them. It was strange because I knew he had been talking to my friend Doug Banner, my mentor in storytelling, just a few minutes prior. But Rinpoche's questions made me feel like I was the first person he had ever heard do such a thing. I don't think it was because he forgot or was trying to amuse me, but that he was trying to understand what I felt when I was Telling. He wanted to understand my experience.

This was in keeping with what I had heard from others. They said he spoke about how as humans, we are to practice Compassion and Wisdom. The barriers to the Journey are Ignorance, Attachment, and Hate. Our conversation showed me that he was genuinely interested in taking the opportunity to be compassionate and to gain wisdom from our encounter. I didn't expect that, I didn't expect that there would be anything I could offer that would be of interest to him.

I went to see him because wanted to ask to him about The Golden Tara of Agusan a golden statue from the Buddhist period of Philippine history. I had heard that before the US, before the Spanish and the Muslim, Buddhism influenced the governing and philosophy of the people. The Source material for this claim is scant, and based on archeological finds and the work of William Henry Scott, but still, the possibility of Buddhism in the Philippines intrigued me. I was unable to attend the talk given by Lama Choyin Rangdrol last Fall, and had little luck finding any other sources of information on the statue or the practices associated with the Golden Tara.

In conversations with Lama Rangdrol, I discovered that "Golden Tara" is something of a misnomer, since researchers aren't sure the image is of the goddess known as Tara among mainland Asia Buddhists. Lama Rangdrol was adamant that the goddess depicted should only be understood in relationship to the Philippine people, their viewpoint and understanding of compassion and wisdom. So who is She in the statue?

I wondered what Arjia Rinpoche might know of "Golden Tara." He didn't claim familiarity with the statue, but speculated that Buddhism in the Philippines came from the Pali branch - Zen and Tibetan Buddhism being the other two branches. All three trace their roots to original Sanskrit texts, but each translated the texts into the dominant languages later. It would make sense, he said, that Buddhism spread from Central Asia, through South Asia (Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia, etc) then across the sea to the Philippines. Tara, though is distinctly Tibetan, he said, so he couldn't speculate on who the image was. He asked if perhaps it was instead Kwan Yin, but I mentioned that her mudras (hand positions) were not classic to Kwan Yin. In fact, her mudras were none I had come across.

He didn't seem disturbed by my questions, just curious and engaging as we puzzled it out together. I wish I had brought a picture of the icon to show to him, but just having the conversation has helped me feel more secure in the possibility of a branch of Buddhism in Pre-Muslim Philippines.

Why is this so important to me? I guess I need to see the concepts of Kapwa, the Self in the Other, in not just the indigenous peoples of the Philippines. That the concepts of Compassion and Wisdom were part of the island culture before colonization. That trade with the mainland also meant trade of thoughts, ideas, and philosophies. I shared with Rinpoche my limited understanding of Kapwa and again, he approached the topic with an open heart, linking my words with his own experience and beliefs. I think we both wished we could speak further on these things, but he had to leave after lunch to continue his travels.

I'm in contact with a couple of researchers of the Golden Tara and I'm hopeful to learn more of the statue's origins and the practices associated with the goddess.

Struck Blind

2010-12-04T23:10:00.000-08:00

Once, on the Big Island, Pele struck me blind. She didn't want me to look at her, nor to write about her. I could here her say, "So you call yourself Woman Warrior, do you? Take that." I feel fear even now as I write her name. And I could hear the Hawaiians: "You have taken our land. Don't take our stories." Maxine Hong Kingston, Hawai'i One Summer, xii

The book is slim with a green cover and a photo of an entry way strewn with hats and ti leaf leis. It's closer to a chapbook of essays than a full-length book. Kingston writes about living in Hawaii during the height of the Vietnam War, her struggles with writing, with belonging.

I would publish these humble pieces in New York, and bypass Hawai'i. I mean to honor kapu, not touch kapu things at all. But though I did try to leave her out, Hawai'i--people sing her and speak of her as Spirit--made her way into these essays...Now a dozen years after leaving her, I realize a way free to tell a story of Hawai'i.

I tried to write about Hawai'i too, over the course of a dozen years, a couple of decades after Kingston. I managed one good essay and a handfull of false starts. You'd think I'd give up on writing about Hawai'i. If Pele had struck me blind too, wouldn't it be better to just accept the darkness rather than struggle for the light?

I don't think she struck me blind when I lived there. No, but Pele perhaps shoved me off the island. Pushed me right back to the Northwest where the volcanoes are more patient, more familiar with my feet. Kulshan, Shuksan, Wyeast, Klickitat, all of them did not seem to mind my wandering, my questions. Perhaps it's because Loowitlatkla is known for her patience and kindness... at least in legend. She did blow her top, after all, in 1980.

No one means to anger an Old One, especially a Firey One, and perhaps that's why she shoved me off and didn't blind me. No matter. What's done is done. If I get a chance to try again, I'll send a message first or ask the Old Ones here to speak to her and let me come in peace.

But back to Kingston... It took her a dozen years to write about Hawai'i and it's been about that long for me too. I'd say, it was only in the last couple of years I could speak about Hawai'i without feeling a terrible weight on my heart, a shudder on my spine, and brief but persistent panic in my throat. But I realized, I was still talking about Hawai'i, still wanted to write about Hawai'i. That persistence of story is why I don't think I was struck blind, so much as body-checked.

Like most of the Hawai'i story, I meant it to be different. Meant to have a different life there, but how can we be different than who we are? I think the thought ran that I'm genetically tied to islands - the Philippines first, Fukien Island on one branch of my tree. I'm mistaken for Hawaiian almost as often as I'm mistaken for Salish or Nez Perce. I should have been able to handle the heat, the sun, the ocean all around. I was moving to paradise, the place people vacation to get away from it all, go someplace completely different from where they live. It all made sense that I could and would survive and thrive there.

What happened?

The Light was too strong and too predictable. In summer, the sun went down before 7pm when I felt it should be up until 9pm. In the winter, the sun was up as late as 6pm when I needed it to be dark by 4pm. The quality of light was yellow not green-blue. The foliage was yellow-green, not blue-green. Plumeria on one side of the street bloomed while on the other side it was shedding leaves. Worst of all, I sunburned right through my brown skin, like the magnolia trees they nickname "tourist trees" in Hawai'i because they peel in the sun.

The ocean was no help. I got vertigo every time I went to the shoreline. I needed to see an island or peninsula, anything to tell me that there was something other than the vast ocean to swallow me up. I was looking for the edge of the lake, the edge of a pool, the rim of a bathtub. Anything I could latch onto if I fell. The waves pulled on my ankles but did not cool me off. The hot sun burned my feet worse than the sands thrown into dunes by the Snake River.

And the mountains. The mountains were young and scraggled and sharp. Clouds raked across their knuckles and I imagined their fingers grasping the seafloor to keep from floating away. We were warned not to venture too far into the jungle. It was too wild there, too many creatures whose language we did not know, who did not mind eating us bit by bit, or tricking us into falling down a cliff. This was not about mischievous menehuenes. This was about Hawai'i, wild and predatory.

I thought I could learn the language of the islands easily, because of my heritage, because I knew the land would have a language at all. I could sit a the top of Moscow Mountain or Steptoe Butte and hear the wind across the Palouse bringing stories down from Canada. The waves of the rivers licked my bare toes, the melted glacial water chilling me on hot summer days. The salt and pepper beaches were old and patient, happy to be noticed, willing to tell me the short stories woven in sea grass and bullhead seaweed. These familiar things made me arrogant when I stepped on Hawaiian shores. I knew enough to know I did not know pidgin, but didn't know enough to realize that Pele's language would be so indecipherable as to render me deaf and numb.

How long does it take to recover from the touch of an Old One? Apparently 12 years. From then to now I've been haunted by the story by day, nightmares of half-remembered things by night.

But here is this - I know Pele loves my child for being born there. I know she calls to her still. She may hold a grudge or at least a judgement against me, but perhaps my child will lead me back, open my ears and eyes and skin gently, teach me the language of her blood. That gives me a bit of hope, enough, I think, to finally write about it all.

By Any Other Name

2010-11-26T22:17:00.000-08:00

Black Friday. The day retailers go from operating "in the red" to operating "in the black," a day when they can breathe easy knowing that they can show a profit at the end of the year. I remember as a kid going with my parents to downtown Seattle, not to shop, but to see the window decorations. Animatronic scenes of the perfect Christmas moment - children playing with new toys, mother's decorating a Christmas tree, friends taking a ride in a sleigh - usually Victorian in style with window dressings in gold and red to match.

I remember one year we went to the top of Fredricks and Nelson and rode a small train through a wintery scene, very much like the rides at Disneyland only smaller, more compact. Fluffs of fake snow fell gently from the ceiling while large snowflakes covered in sliver glitter floated on wires. I don't remember if the ride cost anything, but I do remember that the ride seemed to last forever, a transport from the grey rainy day outside to a kind of winter I wouldn't experience until I was living on the Palouse where winter temperatures were typically in the 'teens and the snow stayed from Thanksgiving to well after New Years.

I do remember being bustled about through the crowds. The press of a mink coat on one side of me, my mother's hand firmly wrapped around mine as we made our way to the escalators. I remember instrumental symphony renditions of Christmas songs like Sleigh Ride and Rudolph the Rednosed Reindeer and the Halleluia chorus floating over the murmurs of shoppers voices. I remember bright packages with gold and silver bows stacked on top of tables. I don't think they had anything inside them, but I know I wanted to see what might be wrapped up. Something big, I imagined, something wonderful, but I was never very specific about what a surprise might be.

I was always a bit non-specific about my gift requests - books were a safe choice, Legos were a favorite when I was in grade school, but usually if someone asked what I wanted for Christmas, I wouldn't really know. I always wanted it to be a surprise, I think, to have my face light up like on the commercials when the kid opened the box - didn't rip the paper off the box at all, just lifted the top and kept the wrapping and bow intact - and looked as if she just received the most wonderful gift of all. For me, it wasn't the thing inside that was important, it was the surprise, the wonderment that someone had gotten something just for me, put thought into it and it was a perfect thing.

Totally unrealistic, but then again, I wasn't the most grounded of kids - not really grounded now, I suspect. I was in for the experience, not the object, and I think I'm that way still. I once gave an improv storytelling performance as part of a contest to be included in an exclusive group in writing workshop. I wasn't particularly interested in getting into the group, other than that wanting to belong to something special. What caught my interest in the contest though was the challenge of making up an origin story based on a few lines of text. It was great fun and I had a blast. Folks laughed and followed along, and many thought I should have won the contest. I didn't get into the special group, but I did win a small trophy and gift certificate for a book. The thing was, the best part of it all was the experience of getting up there and trying something completely new. The prize I got was a bonus.

This post has gotten away from me - I meant it to be about how today is Black Friday for those of us who shop and how even though I dread crowds now, I did manage to get out and buy some new pants I needed for work (at a terrific price too). I meant this post to be about how the day after Thanksgiving means different things to different people, like the President who has declared today Native American Heritage Day, or those who see our society as addicted to materialism, urging us to Not Shop on this day. For others it's the start of the Christmas season, and on Sunday we begin the Advent Season, the preparatory time for many Christians who look forward to the second coming of Christ by remembering His first coming.

Then again, all those things are about perspective and experience. Today people all over the country focused on having a certain experience today - some went shopping, some hoped to make a profit after a particularly difficult retail year, some expressed their desire to honor the accomplishments and achievements of Native Americans, others focused on gathering family stories and avoiding retails off and online. Each made choices based on their perspective of what this day means and if each of us was conscious of moving through our lives in a particular way, that's a pretty cool thing. Life can be like that present the kid opens on Christmas day, something that's all wrapped up with a bow and given freely. It's our choice to bring an openness to each experience, to accept the joy the moment brings, the unique experience of the moment.

I still wish that I could go downtown to see the animatronic window displays, but at least I have the memory of the scents and sounds of those grey post-Thanksgiving days when stepping into another world was as easy as stepping onto a moving escalator in the heart of Seattle.

Line in the Sand

2010-11-25T21:43:00.000-08:00

When is a story your story to tell? When do you know that a story you've been given is one you can share?

I'm wondering this tonight because I have a story about one of my relatives, one I've heard before, but finally took the time today to ask the right questions, to find out the little details that make a story more complete. What year? What hospital in Spokane? How long did she stay? Did she take a train to Montana? Why did she go back?

I wanted to write it out here on my blog, but I haven't asked her if it's okay to write her story publicly. It's not a story she would write herself. I've asked her to, asked her to write all about her life, because it's a piece of history her family would like to know. She's tried, she says, would like to write it all down finally, but I know she doesn't actually write it out. I even gave her a journal about a decade ago to help her along but she would rather read about interesting things like the way scientists think the universe works. I can't fault her that, I guess, since it's hard for me to write about my life and it's what I'm learning to do right now.

Her story is one I think needs to be written, reflected on somehow. I could write it, I suppose, from the perspective of how her story impacted my life, but still, is that enough 'distance' to give me the right to tell her tale?

When someone's story intersects our own, when does the writing of it cross that line? And what's that line for? Morality's sake? Respect? Other writers have crossed that line, I think, writing about their families in unflattering ways, not caring what the individuals thought. "If you don't like what I wrote," they say. "Then write your own version." This sounds a bit bullying to me, but what is a writer to do? We don't grow up in a void or write in a perfectly objective way. We have to, at some point, involve someone else in our stories because memoir is as much about relationships as it is about meaning. Maybe memoir is really a bit of both, the making of meaning from the relationships we have. There's experience too, writing about experiences we've had, but these can be dry accounts if they lack the context of a relationship.

The part of my project I'm working on requires that I see myself and my husband as characters living a life where they don't know how things will turn out. I do. I know how things turn out in the end, maybe not what it all meant, but at least how it all ended up happening. I'm building a scene to show our relationship to each other and our lives, hopefully giving perspective on the choices we made. Working that scene on paper feels different that telling my relative's story. For one thing I was there and can speak to what, at least from my perspective, was happening at the time. I wasn't alive when my relative made her decisions, can only speculate on what she overcame within herself to make those decisions which really were quite uncharacteristic of her. She was a different sort of person during that time than when I knew her, more willing to take risk, more willing to just see what happened if she took advantage of an offer.

She speaks of that time with great fondness, proud of her accomplishments and a little amazed at herself for having the audacity to do the things she did far from home. She possessed a quiet sense of adventure I rarely saw when I was getting to know her, but there were glimpses here and there if I really thought about it.

That might be one way to get to that story, writing about how I approach adventure, what I was taught about thinking outside the box, and how that's reflected in her story.

Might be a cool thing to do.

I'm not sure that I've necessarily figured out what 'the line' is that I keep trying not to cross when I'm writing a personal story, but I see a bit better how I can take someone's story that intesects mine use it as part of a larger story that focuses on the relationship I have with them.

Patron of the Arts

2010-11-24T22:58:00.000-08:00

I don't think I'm alone in the dream of finding a wealthy patron to materially support my artistic projects. Back in the day, an artist of talent, or at least potential talent could get hired at a manor house developing their art over a long period of time. The patron would provide food, housing, a staff, and endless encouragement. The artist would produce unique pieces that the patron could show off to their friends and gain social coin.

I've read accounts where artist-patron relationships were positive and others that were negative. The relationship between Michelangelo and Pope Julius II is legendary. The sculptor who needed money took a job painting frescoes on the ceiling of a chapel. Their relationship was the stuff of legends, immortalized by one of my favorite movies starring Charlton Heston and Rex Harrison - The Agony and the Ecstasy "When will it be done?" Julius asked time and again. "When it is finished," was Michelangelo's constant reply. For the artist lucky enough to find an enlightened patron willing to support visions that no one had conceived of before, the work was satisfying and continuous. For the artist unlucky enough to serve a social climbing patron, s/he might well find her/himself doing stuff they just aren't inspired to do.

With the rise of the middle class and the shift toward independent (meaning solo) thinking, the artist/patron relationship waned in popularity. In its place has emerged the artist-as-non-profit organization supported by several patrons. Strong artists with wide appeal create communities of support that allow them to express their vision freely. Others, most other artists, I think, struggle to find enough audience to support them. Many artists take work-for-hire or 'day jobs' in order to make ends meet. But I think, like me, many hope to find that perfect patron, wealthy and indulgent, supportive in every material, intellectual, and emotional way.

Pipe dream, right?

I thought so too, until I read something interesting in an emailed note from the folks over at fear.less. Tech publisher Tim O'Reilly started out as a humanities graduate with a passion for Greek and Latin classics, but became a kind of translator between the tech and non-tech worlds by writing such books to help others learn the emerging technical jargon of the last decade. He writes:

Learning the ropes of writing technical documentation was a stretch, but I'm so glad I had the opportunity. Tech writing has provided the financial support for my fiction writing career--kind of like my wealthy patron.

I was struck by his thoughtful alignment of his 'day job' with a sense of 'patronage.' By becoming a technical writer, he found a way to support himself and his passion. Work wasn't a distraction, but rather the means to an end. Reading his post, I get the feeling that he feels very fortunate to have found a way to be his own patron and doesn't consider himself a 'sell-out' like so many other artists think when they find something close but not quite what they thought to do for a living.

That's pretty much my story, and my current job does afford me both the opportunity to use my editing and writing skills everyday. About half my skills go to work that my job requires, but the paycheck allows me the time to do the passion-work too. I too have become my own arts patron, and that's pretty cool, especially when I remember to be supportive of myself materially, emotionally, and intellectually. It's a definitely shift in perspective and energy, and I'm looking forward to seeing where that shift takes me next.

Mastery

2010-11-23T22:24:00.000-08:00

A master in his art. An artist in his mastery.

Boggles my mind to think how this came together, the hours of practice, the falls, and fortunate discovery of something unseen before.

Simply magic.

I believe we all have this ability to achieve mastery in something. Might seem small. Might seem big. Doesn't matter. Just like my earlier post about how life isn't about Fair, but about what a person believes and dreams and loves, that Soemthing we are made to master matters more than size or scope, because by its very expression it changes the world.

Really. Even if a person is master of one thing, works at it, and it only changes their own life, then it changes their interactions with others, and by extension changes the world into something better. Expression of a gift is still a gift. Witholding a gift, is still witholding even out of fear. If we push our fears on others and keep them from expressing their gift then we are closing the world to change. If we push our fears on ourselves then the world is poorer for the lack.

But back to Mastery. This juggler/hooper has practiced his art countless hours. There was a moment when he saw a piece of steel bent into a hoop as big around as he was tall and thought, hey, I can do something with that. And maybe that hoop was just in his mind. Doesn't matter, because eventually he found it, made it, worked with it. Likely fell more than a dozen times that first day with it. What could it teach him? What physics problems did he work out with his body that most theorists work out on paper? And most importantly, why didn't he give up?

I see him in flight, hanging, spinning, but to my eyes flying across the floor, a metal wing clutched in his hands. Did it feel like flying when he threw his body just right, pushed off with his toes, tucked his feet and spun? Did he wonder that first time how he would land? Did he wonder if he could repeat a trick he did by accident?

Mastery is about love, I think. Being in love, in sync with one's gift, and moving with it, letting it teach you what it can do, what you can do that you never imagined before. For some like my friend Swil Kanim, the gift of love is the violin. For others like Barbara Jane Reyes and Oliver de La Paz, it's poetry. I suspect it was that way for Georgia O'Keefe with her paintings and Michelangelo with marble. Doing things with stuff that could be practical in practical hands, but art in the artist's hands.

I love words, but more than that, I love stories. Stories aren't one dimensional to me, don't just get from A to B with a crisis someplace in the middle. They're layered. The Story. The Legend. The Myth. And those layers talk to each other.

So I figure that's what I'm doing these days, figuring out the practice so I can practice Mastery, love rather than fear, follow the Art where it takes me. And like the physical artist, I am tired today, worn out from practice, but I'm also hopeful that one day, my words and stories will flow and move in unexpected ways just like a man juggling a 7 foot hoop and flying over a concrete floor.

Stormy Weather

2010-11-22T22:42:00.000-08:00

Nor'Easter came through today, freezing the ice and snow that had fallen over the weekend. The uncertainty it stirred was palpable, making decisions difficult to resolve and doubts doubling in size.

The first snow of the season always sets me back and this one has been particularly difficult, just like it's difficult for me to navigate slippery sidewalks and even slicker parking lots. After work today, though, I picked up a pair of YakTrax for my shoes. There's a good chance I won't be wearing them long, but even having them for the short walk from the store to my car made them worth the cost. Their unique combination of bungee cord and spring makes walking in ice just a little more sure. I admit, I'm a ninny on the ice, looking very much like an old woman, hunched over her feet, mincing each step. I had a man 20 years older than me help me across the street the other day. I definitely haven't been able to walk with my chin parallel to the ground like my chiropractor recommends to keep my neck in shape.

So this has gotten me thinking about the stories we tell ourselves and each other during rough times. What shape are the stories that we rarely tell, but hook onto our souls to navigate slippery territory? There are the parables of Jesus and observations of Rumi. There are the old tales of how the world works, why the weather changes and what we can do to appease angered spirits who send harshness to our lives. There are the newer tales of survival we pass to each other, cautionary tales of slipping on the ice, finding new tools, and trying again.

Because that's what the stories do for us, give us hope to keep on going, to not give up to despair. That's the power of stories to heal and to strengthen ourselves and our community. When we find ourselves in difficult times, we can look to the tales and parables we've heard to help us through. We can also make new stories, tell of our experiences in mythic ways, stretching them into heroic tales. We do it all the time, but when we do it consciously, with intent to survive and thrive the challenges we're faced with, our lives can be transformed into the lives we hope to experience and share.

Dignity of Difference

2010-11-21T21:48:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago I was invited to tell a story at the Dignity of Difference Interfaith event in Seattle and today we, The Bellingham Storyteller's Guild, fielded four Tellers there: Doug Banner, Kelvin Saxton, Cindy Minkler, and myself. I'm always so honored to perform with the Guild and it was great to have the opportunity to be with the Interfaith Community that gathers annually to celebrate Gratitude and spiritual diversity.

Held at St. Patrick's Church on Eastside of Lake Washington, the audience of about 200 witnessed a diverse group of performers, activists, and religious leaders from around the Puget Sound. Representatives from the Christian, Islamic, and Judaic traditions were present as well as leaders from the Bahai Faith, Buddhist, and Sanaatan Dharma communities. Among us in the Guild, we represented the communities of the Lakota-Sioux, Celtic, Hermetic, and Babaylan-inspired communities. All of us gathered to share our stories and expressions of faith with each other in a spirit of gratitude for the gifts we have been given and the hope that peoples of all communities would find peace in diversity. We also blessed and offered scarves and hats to the local homeless community along with prayers that they find the shelter and support they need in the coming cold months.

For my part, I offered my story "Langaw and the Sky King," explaining the T'boli garb I wore and the inspiration I have gained from Mendung Sabal, a T'boli babaylan, whose words I read in Grace Nono's wonderful book The Shared Voice. Since part of dignity is being confident in and being willing to share one's gifts and abilities, I felt that the story fit the theme. I ran a bit long (we were only given 3 minutes for our stories, and I think I went about 5) but I felt that the audience was both entertained and given a different perspective on those times when we feel too small to make a difference.

Each leader and Teller gifted us with their insights based on their traditions - a gospel reading about an encounter between Jesus and a tax collector was performed by a group of children using interpretive dance; another group of dancers moved to a song of praising the Mystery; religious leaders recited prayers and lead us in chant, while Guild members performed their stories about humility, community, and connection with the spirit. Woven through it all was a refrain by the parishes choir and musicians that requested that Mystery always dwell with us.

It was a beautiful afternoon spent with people who genuinely believed in hope and worked toward social justice, not just from their particular perspective but also embracing other perspectives. The event has been held annually for 24 years and I look forward to joining them again, if not on stage, at least in the audience, celebrating in thanksgiving the gift of dignity and diversity.

With Gratitude for Kapwa

2010-11-20T22:43:00.000-08:00

Shared stories with a good friend today about the authors I've met over the years and the ones who are on my radar now. She pointed out to me that they were all part of my community, that they were not separate from me but that I was among them. This sorta boggled my mind since many, if not all are people I admire and learn so much from. She wisely pointed out the possibility that they admired and learned something from me. Still working on that concept.

But I also know she's right, that when we see ourselves in others or see others within ourselves, then that is Kapwa. Community. Mutual positive regard. Respect. Love. Honor. All those things happen because of a resonance we have toward someone else, and for Kapwa, it's a positive resonance, an uplifting resonance that enriches the lives of both people.

After our leisurely breakfast, my friend dropped me off in Fairhaven, a small neighborhood on the south side of Bellingham. I'd volunteered to help put up decorations there as part of a service project set up by the company I work for. The service project came from me poking around to discover the details of a discount program that the Fairhaven Merchant Association had. The company I work for doesn't technically provide anything a merchant or retailer would want, really, but they allowed us to participate in the program if we agreed to help with projects for the neighborhood. So, that's why I was up on a ladder for awhile this afternoon, apologizing to sleeping trees as we wound strings of white lights through their branches.

The temperature dropped overnight and there was snow and ice on the sidewalks where we parked our ladders. I worked with the group about two hours and felt a part of the community of Fairhaven. I'd always enjoyed the lights that the merchants put up for the season and so getting to know how much work it took to get the lights up made me even more grateful for their effort.

The neighborhood wasn't overly crowded but there was a steady stream of visitors getting out and around despite the snow. The shops looked pretty busy which, considering the economics these days, was a really good thing to see. A few stopped and watched us but for the most part, we hooked up power, clicked outlets together to connect the strings of lights and climbed ladders.

At one point, we weren't sure where we were going to draw the power for the lights. Many of the businesses had outside outlets for lighting, and our organizer was familiar with all the spots. One business, though, was new, not even open yet and the owner was very reluctant to allow the lights to be hooked into his outside outlet. He was planning a renovation to the exterior of his new shop and thought the lighting would interfere with the work. We were stymied and searched for another outlet while he went on to explain that he didn't want to pay for the increase in electricity. He asked if we could chip in on the cost, but we're volunteers and couldn't do that.

There was a distinct shift in the energy of the conversation. It went from community concern to individual concern very quickly. Our organizer pointed out all the other merchants who provided power for the lighting and noted that it made things more festive for customers. The new shop owner remained reluctant, saying that his shop wasn't likely to be open by Christmas. We couldn't make him agree and so, we moved up the street and thankfully found a different outlet.

The wind started coming up while we worked and it was the coldest it had been all day. I worked with the organizer, him up on the ladder, me running back and forth between the box of lights and the ladder. My two co-workers had a similar arrangement and they worked on stringing lights uphill, while we worked downhill. As we worked, I realized how much I enjoy being in Fairhaven, how it works very hard to be unique and the merchants are a close knit group. I know at one point the city needed to do repairs on the main street of the neighborhood and the plan included changing the parking slots. At one point it looked like the number of new slots would be fewer than the number previous and didn't solve the problem of congestion along the street due to the parked cars. So the merchants got together and figured out a new way to fix the road and create more parking. That's a kind of Kapwa, working together for the mutual good of all.

We were just about done with our light stringing when a merchant came out of her shop with a tray of hot cocoas for us. "I've been watching you work all afternoon," she said. "Thank you." We were all very surprised but grateful for the warmth. Shoppers came by to thank us too, some mentioning that they loved the lights just like I do. That's a kind of Kapwa too, recognizing the gifts that others give freely without any regard for reward. The work is its own reward, but the community steps up with gratitude.

I hope the new merchant can see the community that's there in Fairhaven, not just the chance to make a new business go during difficult times. I hope he gets to know the other merchants and slowly starts learning the names of his customers. I hope he'll tell people about the cool kids toys our organizer sells in his shop and the great place down the street to get a barber's cut. I hope he's kind to the buskers who ply their talent on the street corners nearby and I hope mostly that he feels as much a part of the community as he gains from being in such a strong community.

And I hope I never forget to be grateful for the things that are done to make the place I live in just a little more liveable, that hands and hearts go into creating strong communities, and that sharing stories is the best community glue there is.

Friday Night at the Colophon Cafe

2010-11-19T19:46:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite places to write is the Colophon Cafe in Fairhaven. It's the quietest I've ever seen it, though, but then again, it's Friday night and the weather has turned cold. I'm at a table by myself and a barista tidies the counters to keep herself occupied. Folkish-Country sort of music is on the speakers, a love song about a guy who's missing a girl. The decor is retro 50's, chrome stools line a short bar on my left, green upholstery adorns the bench seat across from me. The table itself is yellow formica and there's an aluminum napkin holder to match. A pair of salt-and-pepper shakers sit in a handled wire basket along with packets of sugar and sugar substitutes.

I'm taking up the whole table with my bag from last Summer's RWW residency, my husband's iPad attached to my keyboard, his iPad bag, my purse, a few notes on the Hawaii story, a pencil and a cup of hot lemonade.

We've been expecting snow and/or cold weather for a few days, now. A few of the towns north of us have gotten dustings, just enough to show that the winter will likely be long this year. Our summer was short, starting somewhere around mid-July and Fall arrived pretty much on time, but Winter... my friend who lives up in the mountains said he saw deer coming down off the foothills earlier this year than in years past. I haven't taken the time to see if the seagulls are really white this year, but considering the chill, I'd say Winter is well on it's way.

So there was no putting off getting the car looked at and winterized. We dropped it off this morning after dropping the kidlets at school, then took the bus to work. I'd forgotten how much I enjoy taking the bus, the personalities, the ability to just rest and take in the scenery. Students on their way to the university joined us as well as a few elders on their way to do their errands. Kel and I talked about storytelling and things tangential to stories, and I wished I could describe these nothing-time talks we have. They really do carry weight - I think we even talked about his Hermetic research and I mentioned something about Indigenous Thought. Before we had the kidlets we'd talk like that all the time, just long and deep about things we were researching and thinking about. It's different on a bus, somehow, more relaxed, more like we used to talk on long road trips together.

We walked the couple of blocks from the bus stop to our office and started our days. He was in and out of meetings all day and I was busy with deadlines. My neck is better today, but I was glad to get another appointment in today. With the car in the shop, I walked down to my doc's office. I walked differently than usual, though. My doc recommended that I walk more upright, trust that the ground was there at my feet and just keep my chin parallel to the ground. I was dubious, but I gave it a try and though my pace slowed, I comfortably walked down the long hill to Fairhaven and to my doctor's office.

On the way I did a bit of banking and listened to a street busker work out an Irish jig on his violin. He was a friendly sort and though I'm sure my tip wouldn't get him far, maybe a hot coffee and a small cookie, it was nice to just be able to do that instead of moving on quickly toward my destination. Down the hill I walked and ran into a local author I had met through mutual friends. I'm reading one of his books now about the Hero of African culture. I told him of my similar interest in Filipino heroes and myths and he sparked up. He gave me some ideas on how to approach the material I've found so far through my Babaylan studies and asked me to email him more about it. It was one of those lucky encounters I think, a sign of something new coming to the front, or perhaps something unattended that will be important over the next few months.

I took the bus again to pick up my car and chatted up a dad with a guitar case and two young boys. He was dropping them off somewhere to be looked after while he played at a local bar for the evening. So many interesting things happen in this town - the Guild is telling stories now at Fairhaven Library. An acoustic band called Vibram Souls is playing a free concert at the Public Market and this dad is playing somewhere with friends. Pretty cool all in all.

Tonight it's supposed to snow and tomorrow, I'm supposed to come back to Fairhaven to put up holiday decorations as part of a service project for my workplace. Hopefully I'll keep busy enough to stay warm! Or even better, they might cancel the work party. **grin**

At any rate, I'm feeling quiet, like this cafe, which really isn't quiet with the hum of the refrigerator case and the freezer of ice cream, the music over the speakers, and the occasional sniffle from the barista who's sketching in a notebook now. Outside a yellow taxi saunters down the road and woman laughs at something I can't see or hear. We're waiting, I think, waiting for something familiar that's coming, something familiar but unseen for a few months. Then Winter will be with us for a few months, keeping us quieter than in the Summer, perhaps looking inward for our ancestors or their stories or perhaps their heroes. Maybe we'll sing songs together and tell jokes. At the very least, we'll do our best to share it all with the ones we love and that's the best part of the season after all.

Life Is Not Fair

2010-11-18T22:38:00.000-08:00

DH introduced me to an awesome webseries last night: The Legion of Extraordinary Dancers

I love not only the incredible choreography and dance talent, but also the concept behind the series. Jon M. Chu "discovered" all the dance talent in the series by watching videos people posted showing what they could do and dance. All the moves are physically possible - no wires or special effects are used in the episodes. Chu chose all the talent with one premise: the belief and understanding that there are extra-ordinary dancers in the world with power as yet untapped and believed. He wanted to bring them together to do what they did best, what my friend Swil Kanim calls The Thing They Were Made To Do. Didn't matter if they were famous or not, a working dancer or not. What mattered is what Chu saw in the videos and the stories that could be created from those dance talents.

I watched the first epi tonight and although the dancers I've seen so far have been in that sweet 16-25 age range, The Tale of Trevor Drift featured a young boy of about age 7 doing a back flip from the height of a chair, and a man around my age (I think) who could do the hip-hop moves of a younger generation. The cast is mixed in race, gender, and physical appearance. Not all are dancers, but the dancers are exemplary. The episode writing reminds me of graphic novels, the heightened tension, camera angles, tight and helicopter shots, and above all, a nod to Kung Fu theater.

My favorite quote so far, though, comes from the third epi in the series, Robot Lovestory.

"Life is not fair, but fair has nothing to do with who you are inside, what you dream about, who you love, what you stand for. Life cannot touch that. War cannot touch that."

I often think that if I just do things right then everything will work out in my favor, but I lose sight of that sense of what's inside, the thing I was made to do, the story I'm made to tell. It's there. I lose sight of it, though, in worry and the pressure to please. Because I want to be noticed, want to be acknowledged and I realized after hearing this quote, that what I'm really trying to do is express what's inside, my dreams, who I love, what I stand for.

And life won't be fair about it, but that doesn't matter. Because it's about love and love is timeless and endless.

I still have to put my butt to the chair to do the work, but the work matters because I finally figured out who my audience is. It's me. I'm telling this story to myself because no one else can and no one else will and it's a story that I need to hear.

Writer's Cramp

2010-11-17T23:51:00.000-08:00

Threw my neck out today while I was washing my hair this morning, of all things. Bad enough I went to my chiropractor for an adjustment and admonition to stop curling my shoulders over like a gnome.

It's really tough to write with my chin parallel to the floor. I'm actually typing this kind of blind, since I can't look down at my laptop screen without spasming.

I know it's all the writing I've been doing lately, the morning pages and such. There's no stopping with that, though, so I'll be icing it and having it adjusted until I can catch up on the stretching. Seems all that hunched over stuff so easy to do when writing or reading has foreshortened my neck muscles.

O'course Day 2: Return of the Zombie Choreographer probably didn't help matters, but we added another person to the dance troupe and lost one from temporary illness, so there was a lot of work to do. They're doing great though, and I'm hopeful they'll have it all put together in time.

Wrote a tad on the Hawaii project, but still the momentum is slow. The next week will be very busy and yah, I'm worried about getting my next packet done in time, especially now that I'm winged.

In the meantime, I've had lots of time to think about this Heightened Security thing that's happening now - more aggressive patdowns and backscattering scans that can penetrate skin. I'm planning travel at least twice next year, once with a group of kids and it's one thing for me to get all up in security, but the kids?

Here's Teller of Penn and Teller talking about his experience. He's willing to go to bat for the rest of us, create a test case to see how far the Feds really can go with their intimidation tactics. Is it too much to hope that traveling will become sane again by Jan. 2011?

Bookshelf

2010-11-16T21:48:00.000-08:00

Thought it might be interesting to write about my bookshelf. Okay, maybe not all the books on my shelves, or even the books I can see right now, but the ones I'm sorta mostly reading 'cause their helping me with writing and living.

I picked up The Writing Diet by Julia Cameron first because I loved working with The Artist's Way in 1997 and because I was surprised to find a book that combined writing and dieting that wasn't... all hype... for lack of a better phrase. I've been smaller than I am now and with certain genetic predispositions to long-term debilitating diseases running in my family tree, I thought the book would be a good way to look at both my writing and my diet in a new way.

The basics are similar to The Artist's Way - Morning Pages, Journaling, making writing a practice - but Cameron includes anecdotes about how non-writers have used the method to drop weight. Basically, writing gave each of them a chance to have a voice and to face their dilemmas with open eyes, instead of chewing jaws. She notes that "Very often you will find that you are eating instead of taking a creative action." (p. 16) So what would happen if instead of snacking or stress eating, I could realize that I need to do something creative. Not sure how this will play out during my work day when whipping out my journal might be bit conspicuos, but just the idea that I'm eating to stifle a creative moment opens up a whole new way of thinking.

I'm taking the book slow, a chapter at a time and only moving on if I do the habit/practice she recommends for at least a few days.

This seems to be working too for the other book on my desk, The Writer's Portable Mentor by Priscilla Long. I resisted picking up this book for a few weeks because I figured between school and the ... let's not get into exactly how many self-help writing books I own... books I already have on the topic, I really didn't need one more book. What I'm liking about Long's book, though is how she approaches writing as a whole craft, not just Here's how to write a memoir, or Here's how to write a short story. More plot arc! Less abstraction! Here's an exercise and you'll figure out what it means later!

Instead, she's a very practical writer who also begins like Cameron - write every day. That's the basic, and the reason why I'm here back on the blog. Next, she suggests creating a lexicon of cool words, ways of being concrete with descriptions. I gather from her examples (I mean who outside of Washington State knows what the Duwamish is?) that she's local to me, but instead of being compelled to take every class she offers so I can learn at the feet of the master, I'm again, taking it a chapter at a time, seeing where it takes me. So far, so good.

Other titles on my desk:

The Best American Essays 2009 and 2005
THe Power of Memoir by Linda Myers
Fearless Confessions by Sue William Silverman
Now Write! Nonfiction, Sherry Ellis, Ed.
The Weekend Novelist by Robert J. Ray and Bret Norris (who I gather are also local to me)
Living to Tell the Tale by Jane Taylor McDonnel
Leaving a Trace by Alexandrea Johnson
The Situation and the Story by Vivian Gornick
Writing the Sacred Journey by Elizabeth J. Andrew
An Introduction to Babayin by Christian Cabuay
The Girl Who Fell from the Sky and Other Classic Philippine Legends retold by Maria Elena Paterno
Lores and Myths of Mindoro by Florante D. Villarica (a friend of my father's)

They're on my desk because I'm either using them now, or find them comforting to have close. A little farther away but still in my peripheral vision:

Writing Past Dark by Bonnie Friedman
Relief, Vol. 4, Iss. 1
Kapwa: The Self in the Other by Katrin De Guia
A manual for a Canon PowerShot G6

Yep, my desk is crowded, but it all comes into play with the tabs I have open on my computer:

Facebook
Top 10 Must Have Apps for the iPad
9 Chickweed Lane
Yahoo Mail
Blogger
Comet Hale-Bopp
Edwelda's Universe (open to a passage on Hale-Bopp)
Deep Impact (also about Hale-Bopp)
You Who Stand at the Doorway Come In
Blockbuster Plots: Scene Tracker Template

I guess I shouldn't be surprised to find evidence again that I'm a data hound. The stuck part is getting all that data arranged into something I think is creative and self-expressive. This is just one arrangement, I suspect, but a way to be on the page, thinking about the Now.

Writing with Sound and Scent

2010-11-15T21:56:00.000-08:00

A friend posted this video on Facebook today:

Besides the sweet plot and wonderful visuals, I realized that this is the way to write.

You start with a sound and the pawprints appear. Then the dog. Then the footsteps of the child leads to the child herself.

As writers we have a magic wand we can use to paint the world, but the best writing begins in sound and scent. There's very little dialogue in this piece, yet the narration is incredibly strong. We know what the girl is feeling because the world she's inhabiting is slowly revealed as she touches the wand and makes the sound of a metal fence or the glass from a bakery store window.

We scent the bread, the woman's perfume, and the man's pipe. We're stunned by the sudden sound of the bus and the jet overhead. She imagines a whale swimming, beating the air with it's flippers.

The plot moves because she is searching for her dog, but she continually engages with her world through the stick she has found. She is a self-contained child, frightened but determined to find Coco.

So much to learn from this video. What a great way to end a blustery night at home, the lights flickering, just threatening to fail completely, the sound of small branches and pine cones striking the roof, the distant roar of wind moving through the trees farther up the hedge. The room is warm and I think about needing to find batteries for the flashlights just in case. I wonder what the night will bring, but I realize that if I can hear and smell, I'll know nearly as much, or perhaps more, than my eyes would tell me.

Smallness and Impermanence

2010-11-14T21:55:00.000-08:00

In 2005, Nick Joaquin wrote an essay titled A Heritage of Smallness This was the first piece I've read by Joaquin, though from his biography and what I have heard from others about his work, I realize that he is an influential writer, especially for Filipinos who write in English.

I found his essay on Smallness disturbing. His stance is strident yet firmly based in material evidence.

Society for the Filipino is a small rowboat: the barangay. Geography for the Filipino is a small locality: the barrio. History for the Filipino is a small vague saying: matanda pa kay mahoma; noong peacetime. Enterprise for the Filipino is a small stall: the sari-sari. Industry and production for the Filipino are the small immediate searchings of each day: isang kahig, isang tuka. And commerce for the Filipino is the smallest degree of retail: the tingi....

We work more but make less. Why? Because we act on such a pygmy scale. Abroad they would think you mad if you went in a store and tried to buy just one stick of cigarette. They don't operate on the scale. The difference is greater than between having and not having; the difference is in the way of thinking. They are accustomed to thinking dynamically. We have the habit, whatever our individual resources, of thinking poor, of thinking petty.

In a phrase, Joaquin posits that Filipinos have given up on their country. Forget about the ravages of wars and colonization. Dismiss the toil of overseas workers who go months, perhaps years without seeing family. Overlook the greed of other nations who prey upon fear of hunger and exploit the natural resources of the country without even a nod to the environmental impact.

After reading the article, I thought two things - where is the hope in this piece? Is there nothing that can be done except to feel the double shame of being poor and being blamed for being poor? The tacit "Well, you're getting what you deserve, so stop whining." attitude disturbs me the most.

Then I went back to the beginning, to the sense of 'smallness.' What Joaquin lists are evidence of a people who live in the moment, who are less concerned with material permanence than with what is happening in the here and now. He writes "Many little efforts, however perfect each in itself, still cannot equal one single epic creation. A galleryful of even the most charming statuettes is bound to look scant beside a Pieta or Moses by Michelangelo; and you could stack up the best short stories you can think of and still not have enough to outweigh a mountain like War and Peace."

Joaquin is looking for cultural permanence, masterworks which hold up to the test of time in a very solid way. But his list made me think of all the people in Ashrams and meditation rooms across the West, people who are trying to limit their carbon footprint and live sustainably. These are not people looking for permanence. They strive for a sense of presence, Nowness, something that is apparently woven into the fabric of the Filipino psyche. They, and I often mean just Me, are looking to free ourselves from the Stuff of our Lives, to live authentically for the sense of experience. If the product of the expression of that authentic living creates something worthwhile for others, then that's fine, but it isn't the goal.

And why is that? What has undone the West and is undoing the Philippines? I'd argue it's the particular mentality of More for the sake of More, for denial of the passage of time and the impermanence of all things.

There's this:

The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us

And also this:

10 Centuries in 5 Minutes

Why do we measure success in material things when we know they do not last? That the material does not do anything more than sustain our bodies and provide us tools to create? That all things change and that what really matters are Purpose, Autonomy, and Mastery?

Yes, I understand that money gains us food and shelter and that sometimes the Purpose of work is money in order to have more autonomy and the chance to increase Mastery. But does it? What if the Purpose of the work is creating food from the earth? What if we had communities that made fair trade a way of life? What if specialization wasn't emphasized, but rather the wholeness of a community experience? It would all look very normal, not very Epic, and maybe really Small.

But so what? If we are happy not striving to create the Epic, but creating the Authentic, then why not be Small? To whom are we trying to prove our worth?

Joaquin ends his essay by invoking the Parable of the Talents, where the one who invested and increased his coins was considered more worthy than the man who buried his coin in fear. I'm sure Joaquin is trying to say that the parable shows we must increase always, but I always saw the parable as cautionary - do not bury what you have been created to be because fear will limit you and prevent others from benefiting from your gifts.

I'm reminded of a folktale where a man fishes just enough to sustain his family and trade for the things he does not have time to make himself. A foreigner praises his ability to fish and encourages him to expand his operations. "Why?" the man asks. "Then you'll have more money to buy things," says the foreigner. "But I'm happy," the man says. "I fish in the morning, trade during mid day and enjoy my family." "But don't you see," the foreigner replies. "If you made more money you could take care of your family better, have a bigger house, better status in the village, become important." "And then what?" the man asks. "Then you can make even more money and have more houses, more status, more power." "But why?" "So you can retire, and fish and be with your family." "But I have that already," says the man. "Why would I want to work and do things that take me away from what I already have?"

What's Your Aim?

2010-11-13T12:12:00.000-08:00

Had breakfast with a writer friend of mine this morning. Always wonderful to spend time with her because she's a working writer with a big spiritual heart and a very real sense of her humanness, meaning that she knows that she doesn't always know the answers but that she can find them if she looks for them. She has a wonderful sense of quirky humility that I don't often find with either 'spiritual' folks or 'literary' folks.

She asked me how my writing was going and unlike my encounters with other writers, I don't have to put on a brave face for her, don't have to worry about 'putting the negative' out there for the universe to fulfill in some strange teachable moment. She helps me practice honesty and hope at the same time, to experience frustration without letting the frustration take away from the experience of living. She lives her life this way and I'm really glad I can learn from her bravery.

So she asked about my writing and I told it straight - I'm improving, writing everyday for the past four days, but the Hawaii project is stalled. There's a lot of working things out happening during my writing practice and it's taught me a few things - like how I'm afraid that my younger self will seem whiney and incapable on the page, how I really want to tell her story and see what transformed her into the me now. How I doubt that there has been any significant change. How I'm having trouble finding that particular tonality of voice that is the voice of my younger self. How just writing isn't working (you know, that old saw of "just keep writing and it will all work out" Polyanna stuff that just makes me nuts).

I told her about drawing comparisons between how I prepare my stories for performance and how I write, and how my preparations yield me the most creative stuff and if that's true, how can I bring that mastery to the page? What I discovered this week is that I really do need to know how a piece ends, the theme I'm pointing at before I start filling in the scenes or the writing just falls apart. She and other writer's all look at me like I'm really dense - Write it out and it will reveal itself to you, they say. And my jaw sets and I felt unlistened to.

I found a quote today that sums it up really well "The odds of hitting your target go up dramatically when you aim at it." - Mal Pancoast. The target is the theme and the ending and as we talked, she also helped me see that it's also the audience, the community I want to engage.

There's two kinds of audiences I've encountered so far - ones that just love a good story and ones that want to hear a story that fit a particular theme that they are passionate about. I can tell to both kinds of audiences, but I have to 'read' them first. That's what I do just before I go on stage, I read the audience - are they tired? bored? wanting to sit back? want to be engaged? Where are they coming apart, feeling isolated? How can I bring them together into a singular experience? My story is the vehicle for creating a community, a shared experience that hopefully they'll come away with feeling more hopeful, lighter, more able to handle the challenges they face, and maybe, just maybe they'll come back and the same people will be there and we'll have a continuity of community.

So I'm realizing that I might not know exactly what my audience is - moms, FilAms, writers - but they are there, because they are part of me and I am part of them. True Kapwa. So they need validation in the midst of tragedy, they need to know they can survive, that their little triumphs are incredibly important, that their story doesn't have to isolate them, even as I am talking about isolation and fear and despair and anxiety. That you can find love even after the fact.

To fall in love again, to finally fall in love with being a Mom. That would be cool. To recognize the importance of writing as integral to that journey of falling in love. That by not being able to write for so long has robbed me of having that experience.

So I guess that's what I'm aiming for and yep, the writing revealed it, but not exactly as others would think. And that's okay, because above all, I'm all about making sure people do what's right for them, so they can be the wonderfully unique people they are.

Spirals

2010-11-12T22:17:00.000-08:00

I've been on Facebook about a year now, maybe 18 months, I think, and it's hit a phase where the tech geeks I knew before the Internet was easy to navigate are now starting to appear. Maybe they've always been there, but until recently I didn't know that they were bothering with this new tech.

I read recently too, that the New York Times will be putting out its first eBook Bestseller list next year, showing that eBooks have finally become a 'legitimate' form of... well, if not literature, at least commercial success. Indy publishers and writers are no longer content to wait for New York to decide whether they are 'hot', they are getting out there with their material, their thoughts and hopes, and connecting with their audiences. The transom is only as high as they are willing to believe it to be and they can create audiences with a variety of social networking tools.

So it's a kind of convergence, 'old' techies from the mid-90's seeing social networks as something of value, even if they aren't as homegrown as the old bulletin boards and forums from 10+ years ago. The mainstream is perceiving social networking as the opportunity many of us knew it would be back when it was just forums and LiveJournal. Facebook, Twitter, Blogger aren't just flash in the pan, trendy, faddish things. They're tools people are using in creative ways to get their word out.

But back to reconnecting - I reconnected with a writer, recently, who encouraged me to write my stories back during those forum/bulletin board days. He had written a memoir that had just gone into remainders and we corresponded for awhile. We lost touch as life moved us in different directions and only recently I stumbled upon his FB profile. I know I saved our correspondence at one time (I may even have it, gasp, on /paper/) but if I do have the files, I imagine they're on 3.5 inch floppies and I don't think I'd have a way to retrieve them. He says he vaguely remembers me, and since I can't remember how we met online or what we talked about other than writing, it's a bit strange to connect on Facebook.

But there's a part of me that's really excited to have found him and really curious about what we wrote about 'back in the day.' I'll be digging around a bit more in my archives and I hope to find something.

Cause it really is about connecting - the tech of today does what letters did 100 years ago, what drumbeats did 5000 years ago. It's cool, though, when you can reach across time and find a bit of the past in the present, and maybe even learn something you knew then that you'd forgotten since then.

So You Think You Can Zombie Dance?

2010-11-11T22:09:00.000-08:00

Spend the day being a mom since the kidlets were off school for the day. We talked about Veteran's Day early on, and my older one knew it was originally Armistice Day, the end of the War to End All Wars. The irony of it wasn't lost on her, unfortunately. I hope our servicemen and servicewomen all come home soon and that we're here to do the right thing - take care of their hearts and souls, the collateral damage for the policies we voters can't seem to change.

Along with the usual errands for bigger shoes and other necessary things for the winter (like hot cocoa and dried mangoes... no, we don't eat them together, but they can both be found cheap at Costco), I helped choreograph a Zombie Dance.

Seems my younger one and two of her friends thought it would be cool to do something with Ramalama Bang Bang, and since the hot thing to do in Season 2 of SYTYCD was Zombie dancing, well, there you go. A plan.

The gals had their part started. Lots of cartwheels and horsekicks (yep, Zombies can do that when they're young and spry), but the one guy of the group wasn't sure what to do. He wanted to be there and tried gamely to show me his splits (side ones were decent, not so much on the forward ones), but choreography is about contrasts, so we did work on creating different levels and shapes for him than for the gals. It was... not quite chaos, but definitely not exactly organized.

Organic, more like it, which is how I like things created. Let the music move your body, I told them, what does it tell you to do? The guy was on the floor doing a cross between a soldier crawling along the ground and a zombie crawling out of a grave. The gals were cartwheeling and somehow not colliding with each other or the walls or the bookshelves or me. Lots of counting out loud and going back to the beginning.

I still think it's terribly funny that they want to do a Zombie dance for a talent show in January, but they have their hearts set on it. Who cares if it's not Halloween any more, or that the performance is for a Catholic school audience? Keep those movements jerky and off kilter!

I've got the song running through my head now, the deep beat and the synthesized waa-waa's. I see their bodies moving to the beat, trying to lift their legs and arms at just the right time, switching directions, circling and moving in formation back and front again. They're all very serious about it, but working it out creatively too. Everything is possible and it's one of those lessons in creativity.

So you've got an idea and you think you've got it figured out, but out on the dance floor it's not quite together. Your body can't quite move the way you imagined. Doesn't matter. Just keep to the beat, keep moving, keep looking like a zombie, because that's what you want to bring to the world, right now, something quirky and unexpected. Creativity isn't about knowing how to do it ahead of time, it's about having faith in the vision, faith in the tools and skills you've got, faith in the very act of creating.

We'll be rehearsing for a few more weeks before tryouts in December. They've got about half down pat, and I imagine that our next rehearsal will be getting past the overthinking that invariably happens the second time around a performance. I wonder if that's the way it is with second drafts, if they're hard because their like a second performance - lots of second guessing and second thoughts about whether the darned project is going to work.

I hope to get to a second draft sooner than later, but dern it, I gotta get that first draft done first! In the meantime, I'm feeling like a Zombie-2-3-4, turn-2-3-4, circle...

Now Online - Guest Post at Philippine American Writer's and Artist's Inc.

2010-11-10T19:43:00.000-08:00

Soon after Pause Mid-Flight was released, Barbara Jane Reyes asked me to share with the readers of the Philippine American Writer's and Artist's, Inc. blog about the process of creating the chapbook and CD set.

The post is now available and writing it helped me understand a bit better my process of writing. Although writing is a solitary act, I do best when I bring that writing into a community. Having talented musicians respond to my writing was profound and humbling, an experience I dare hope to repeat again in the future.

Here's an excerpt:

"Pause Mid-Flight is a compilation, a gathering of my poetry from the last decade or so, some published in small journals, others not at all, and one 'published' on a t-shirt worn by someone running around Greenlake, WA. I had no specific thematic concern as I put the collection together, but I did try to listen to each piece to see where it wanted to sit relative to the other pieces. I constantly looked at the themes and images of one poem to see if the next supported it or contrasted it in some way. The central poem “Pause Mid-Flight” was not originally the title of the chapbook. I thought perhaps to set a more popular poem in this spot, one that several readers thought was the strongest of the collection. The title, though felt right, reflecting how the chapbook was a pause for me as I work the journey of the writer. Pausing and reflecting is a necessary part of being a writer and linking this action to a Filipino origin story appealed to me."

The full text appearson the PAWA, Inc blogsite.

I'm happy to say that I only have 5 copies of the chapbook/CD set available, and there are no plans for reprints at this time.

Of Books and Birthing

2010-11-09T12:42:00.000-08:00

Been thinking a lot about pregnancy and birthing and prematurity recently, likely because these are the topics of my current project, but still it's surprising how the metaphors keep happening.

Being stuck in research was like a difficult labor transition that I wasn't sure I'd break through, but with the help of another I did and found the links I needed to take the next step on the path.

Being anxious about things not happening quickly enough is a familiar birthing thing too - except I really don't know about that. My first child was born prematurely and I was only aware of being in labor when the ER nurse said I was 9 cm dilated (yes, I'm one of those unfortunate women who thought her contractions were gas cramps). But this writing has made me anxious, wanting the story to birthed quickly and as painlessly as possible.

I've learned that this is something we women in the US have been trained to think. The movie The Business of Being Born was very eye-opening. I knew bits and pieces already - how birthing on the back was supposedly introduced by Henry the VIII who wanted to see the birth process, how it's easier on the doctor for a woman to lay on her back during labor for 'easy access and observation.' I knew bits about the increased use of anesthesia and other pain medications and the complications that have come from the lack of sensation as a result. But it wasn't until watching the movie that I could see how the trend for doctor's ease, fear of litigation, and need for speed stripped women of their power to do the thing they were built to do - birth babies.

So that's got me thinking about the way we birth books and essays and stories, how the publishing machine and the fame/fortune that sometimes comes to writers has created circumstances similiar to the way we birth children. Journalistic deadlines spill over into publication deadlines. Audience demand for faster, more timely material crashes into the demand for more robust, more personal accounts. More authenticity and More presence creates conditions where material gets out into the world before, perhaps, it's ready. Or in my case, not at all because I can't manage to live up to the pace set by these demands.

Then I end up with still-born manuscripts, never given a chance to develop. Move on, I'm told. The next will be better. But when to grieve what did not happen? When to make things right and take the time to create that needs to be on the timetable it naturally has?

I'm thinking about what strangles manuscripts like an umbilical cord wrapped around the neck, how things like helpful suggestions or encouragements to include more detail, more theme, more looping back on images can strangle a manuscript just trying to float in supportive liquid.

I'm thinking about how pregnancies and births are not solitary affairs, not really. We're born into communities, nurtured by them and sometimes restricted by them, and that writing communities are no different. They can nurture and constrict and this is neither bad nor good, just something to understand as a factor in the writing.

I'm thinking about the generosity and stinginess of us human beings, how our hopes and excitement create generosity and our fears make us stingy, and how that strains and pushes against and with the birthing of a child or a book. I'm grateful for both, because the first makes the work worthwhile and the second can push me to look deeper, face my own fears.

And sometimes I can face my own fears and see sensation of fear as actually excitement and flow with that. Expand instead of contract. Why do we call it contractions, anyway? Why not call the moments of release between contractions Expansions? Wouldn't our labors be easier? What if we no longer called it labor, but something more joyous?

Or perhaps we need to reframe labor as something joyful and not something to be avoided in our instant soup culture. Slow food. Slow being. There is nothing lazy about relaxing into a process. Ask a Buddhist if you doubt.

This is something of a lumpy post and perhaps not really publishable, but it says some things on my mind and I think about those babies that come through too soon, the ones like my daughter who look emaciated at birth but who manage to survive and thrive. This will all go into something else, I'm sure, and it's a good post for now, a start of a conversation here.

Celebrating Filipino American History Month

2010-10-09T13:09:00.000-07:00

October is Filipino American History Month! Let's celebrate together at a special Words and Works Expressed Show on October 15 at the Filipino Community Center, Seattle, WA.

The Filipino Community of Seattle Kultura Arts has prepared a lexus level "ALAY SA BELOVED COMMUNITY" show. The evening starts at 6:30 with an FCS Arts Gallery opening of photographic art by James Ardena, Joysha Fajardo, Melissa Noledo, Carina del Rosario and Joseph Songco followed by a no host dinner at 7 p.m.

At 8 p.m. the WORDS AND WORKS EXPRESSED reading will feature award winning poets and writers Rick Barot, Rebecca Mabanglo-Mayor, Oliver de la Paz, Michelle Penaloza and Geronimo Tagatac. The show will be opened by Bengie Santos performing an original work "Bayan" choreographed to Vincent Noriega's jazz piano piece with Katrina Pestano rapping with Tawa Sa Lahat. True to form, the celebration continues at 9 p.m. with a dance with DJ Spinja.

I have about a dozen copies of Pause Mid-Flight and I'll have them available at the reading. Hope to see you there!

Now Available: Pause Mid-Flight Chapbook/CD Set

2010-06-22T21:15:00.000-07:00

Pause Mid-Flight
Poetry Chapbook and CD set
Surrounding Sky Studio
44 pages; 35 minutes
$15 plus shipping

In her first chapbook, Pause Mid-Flight, Rebecca Mabanglo-Mayor gathers together poetry inspired by the communities in which she has lived. Drawing upon images as diverse as the Palouse Hills and the rice terraces of Northern Luzon, Mabanglo-Mayor weaves themes of struggle and celebration with issues of identity, gender, and heritage.

The included CD features musicians who perform as the author recites, creating a unique community experience that resonates with the social intimacy woven into the fabric of her verse.

Excerpt from "Pause Mid-Flight"

The kite-eagle was really the wind
tired of moving between sky and sea.
Sie was the one who started the argument,
who made the sky hail stones upon the sea,
and the sea to throw forth mountains
toward the sky. Sie did not know jealousy
could be so strong even in those First Times.

Excerpt from "Market Song"

Isn't it strange
to hear your father's language fall
around you, the sing-song phrases
drawing you in? You struggle not
to hear the secrets, the bargains
of other Tagalogs laughing
behind your back.

Featured performers: Gene Tagaban, Swil Kanim, Travis Jordan, Francisco Owens, Damon Dimitri Jones, Doug Banner, Robert Kikuchi-Yngojo, Lia and Kelvin Saxton.

Community

2010-06-04T23:22:00.000-07:00

As Pause Mid-Flight started coming together a few weeks ago and I began letting people know about its release, a few enthusiastic souls asked me for a book blurb to help promote the chapbook/CD set during events. I was stymied - even after looking at several examples online and on my shelf, I couldn't wrap my mind around creating a simple paragraph describing the chapbook.

It's a compilation, really, a gathering of my poetry from the last decade or so, some published in small journal, others not at all, and one 'published' on a t-shirt worn by someone running around Greenlake, WA. I first heard about chapbooks from my favorite urban fantasy author, Charles de Lint. In his early writing days (and perhaps still), he publishes a story as gifts to friends and family once a year. His chapbooks were special bonuses, something he created himself to share with the people he loved. That sounded like a good idea to me - bring all my best poetry together and share it.

The idea reflected what I've learned from violinist Swil Kanim - whatever it is inside you to share and give, express it. Be generous. Because what you have is a gift from God, and it's not supposed to stay hidden, even if you think it's very small. Friends and family helped encourage me too, read my poems and said they wanted to read more. So the chapbook came together. I sent it out to a couple of contests last year, but honestly, my heart wasn't in it. When I didn't win the contests, I figured the poems weren't all that anyway and I shelved the project.

Briefly. Because there it was again, that idea of self-expression. So what if I didn't get picked up for publication? I know how to put a book together. I know how to layout and choose the right fonts and such. The chapbook creation process itself became an act of self-expression. The creative energy was back with me, not in the hands of another. (Mind, I'm not saying that seeking a publisher is a bad thing, it's just a different kind of energy.)

Now, the project could have stopped there with layout and design, but then I thought, hey, I know some cool musicians and there's this place called the Urban Longhouse where my friends jam and make stuff up. I wonder if they'd let me read some of my poetry at the same time? Then the project gained a whole new community. There was the community that supported me, encouraged me to write and publish the chapbook, even when my poetry was only semi-pro in quality. Then there was the community of artists and storytellers who saw in the project an opportunity for self-expression of their own.

Most of the tracks on the chapbook CD are improv pieces or riffs off of original music unique to each musician. They'd play, I'd pick a poem, and just start reciting. We'd do that a couple or three times, then we'd eat and chat and just be together. We recorded what we could, and my husband mastered the tracks, completed the final design of the chapbook and CD label. In the end we created a 44 page chapbook and a 12 track CD.

My name is on the cover and on the labels, but really, the project was a community effort. The communities who supported me are generous and I'm very grateful to them all. Tonight I did a pre-release reading at Swil Kanim's First Friday concert (and sold 4 books!) and the skeleton of a book blurb emerged.

My chapbook is about community - the communities I've lived in, the communities I've resisted, the community of my heritage and the community of the land I live on. The poems reflect my thoughts and feelings about those communities and how they interact with other communities for better or worse. Even in the Before Times, there was a community - Sky, Sea, and Wind.

I'm very grateful for the gift of community tonight, for without community, this project would have remained a burden on my brain and heart, instead of a beautiful book and CD that I'm very proud of.

Listening

2010-06-03T22:47:00.000-07:00

Puttered most of the evening. Played Plants vs. Zombies (if you don't know this game, for your sanity, don't get started). Ate dinner. Surfed Facebook. And listened.

Listened to the master tracks for the CD created by hanging out with cool musicians and stepping up to a microphone once or twice.

I've never done post-production audio work before and technically still haven't. The tracking, volume control, and general engineering were all in the capable hands of my DH. Still, I listened to what he'd produced over the last few weeks of tweaking and listening and recording and repeating over and over. Listened as words weaved with music, most improv, most live. It's a kind of magic I've not known before.

It started as a lark, a theory of sorts, a Wouldn't It Be Cool If...? I tested the theory at a couple of jam sessions with friends who let me recite my poems while they played whatever came to mind at the time. I watched my words flex and shift with the notes. Didn't know that would happen. Light-hearted poems took on deeper meanings, dark poems became tinged with irony. Ironic poems became light-hearted and jazzy.

I listened too for the fear, the fear I'd held for so long, the fear of being recorded. Too many years being photographed, video-taped, and generally fixed on slices of magnetic tape without consent, displayed for others to hear and judge. I allowed the recording of my poems this year because I wanted to hear what the moments of music would do to my poems and what my poems would do to music. I dropped my gaze when it happened to move past the black microphone near the ceiling. I reminded myself I had a choice, always a choice to move forward or not even after the recordings were done.

After the jam, I was hooked on the energy of the moment, and wanted more. My friends, all incredibly generous with their time and talent, hoofed it to my house to record, sent tracks via email to layer in with my recitations. I was hardest on myself during the sessions, stumbling over words and generally being annoyed that I'd put words together that were nearly impossible to pronounce. Slow down, they told me, those seasoned musicians, take your time. You sound fine. They listened and because of that, I listened.

Cross your fingers and toes, we'll have a chapbook and CD ready for release tomorrow. Pause Mid-Flight: poems by Rebecca Mabanglo-Mayor, music by Swil Kanim, Gene Tagaban, A.R. Mayor, Damon Dimitri Jones, Robert Kikuchi-Yngojo, Lia Saxton, Doug Banner, Francisco Owens, Travis Jordan, and Kelvin Saxton.

Listen. Can you hear that? That's the sound of gratitude.

Journaling

2010-06-02T22:38:00.000-07:00

Created a list today of potential markets for essays I'm working on now. I didn't think I was ready for this step until I had conversations with a couple students in my program and they convinced me that it was better to try than to wait until I was totally ready.

Of the 20 journals featured in the 2009 Best American Essays, I found guidelines for 10 that indicated that I'd be eligible to submit (the others, larger, only took agented or requested submissions). I found a few more tonight and I'll be sorting through them to see who will receive my first round of submissions.

I'm used to submissions - from the other side. Being a production editor, I see the manuscripts that make the final cut after peer review. Being on the submitting side of things, I'm conscious of wanting to be a 'good author' one that doesn't badger or stoop to obsequiousness. I hope that even when I get a few publications under my belt I won't assume that I know as much or more than any editor I work for. I do, however, reserve the right to kibbitz about online submission platforms. There are some really poorly made ones out there and some really good ones. I do tend to judge markets as 'better' if they have a decent online submission system. If they take the time to make things easy on authors at that stage, then they're more likely to be careful and thoughtful all the way through.

My 'little' chapbook project is nearly complete - the books are at the printer and the CD is being mastered as I type tonight. There's a thin window, but I think we'll have books available by Friday, where I hope to at least let folks know about the books at the next Swil Kanim concert. If you're in Bellingham, come 'round the Public Market at 8pm to see the show. Bring socks for the homeless as usual.

The other thing cooking is a show on Sat to launch Damon Dimitri Jones newest CD. I'll be helping to narrate the show and it's going to be cool, I'm sure. Show starts at 6pm at Bloom, Downtown Bellingham. Great macrobiotic food there.

Gathering and Gleaning

2010-06-01T23:26:00.001-07:00

Now that my first year at the Rainier Writing Workshop MFA program is complete, I'm taking a look at what I've written and what might be interesting to send out. I was surprised to see I had gathered over 100 pages of creative work since last September, comprised of 5 new essays, a revision of an older piece, and the first 30 pages of a book-length project.

Add to that two more pieces I had workshopped last August and I have 7 pieces that could be revised and sent out into the world to find proper homes at journals. One is ready now after some revision this weekend, one I know could be ready to go after a brief revision this week. The other five will mostly be exercises in getting out of my own way, to let the stories tell themselves instead of over-explaining them.

This has been my problem all along, and no great surprise to those who know me - I tend to over-think, over-explain, and in general over-correct my pieces until they're sort of like over-worked pie crust, crumbly, hard, and generally not very tasty to consume.

In an effort to be clear and thorough, I end up sounding distant and pedantic. The last piece I wrote, though, was better, lighter in texture and I'm trying to learn from that experience, letting my imagination take me where it wants to go next without wondering much about what a reader might need to follow along. The question is still there, but answered only in the sparest way. A hint, a name, a detail, but no lengthy exposition. I'm hoping that I can meld this lightness with lyricism while not overworking the text in the process. I like descriptive passages, the feel of them, the way they create an overall feeling. But weaving that in with the lightness of simple imagined narrative will be the next thing to master.

I've been nervous to look at my work from the past year, imagining that there's very little to speak of. There's work to be done, but that's okay, because there's substance in the 100 pages laying on my cedar chest now. I didn't imagine or hope that I had 100 pages to work with. It's there. Waiting and I even have a few ideas on how to revise the pieces.

Thanks to a couple of friends in the RWW program I also have a plan for sending out submissions, a nice deliberate plan instead of the haphazard way I've been sending stuff out previously. The Plan entails detailed record-keeping and research, two things that keep my nervous mind at bay while I get things done.

In the meantime, my chapbook waits to be printed this week and the CD tracks finalized. There's a very slim but distinct possibility that I'll have a few copies available on Friday. Later this month, I'll have a chapbook release nested nicely inside a jam session with my bestest musical friends.

Oh, and there's a gig on Saturday to launch the CD of one of my bestest musical friends where I get to be a Narrator on stage and everything.

So life is good now and I'm grateful, even when I'm tired and nervous about life. I used to worry that I worry, but I'm beginning to understand, as geeks are wont to say, that's just the way I roll.

Old Texts, New Tech

2010-04-22T11:30:00.000-07:00

When I was working on the first draft of my novel Maganda's Comb (in progress), I tried to find pre-Hispanic folktales from the Philippines to include. The foundation of the story is structured as an urban fantasy - a story told in a modern setting but intersecting with characters and beliefs from another place and time. I quickly found that it's not very easy to find good documentation on Filipino myths, but did find a few titles on Project Gutenberg. Since the books were out of copyright, I downloaded the PDFs and even printed off a copy for myself at home. The pages worked well enough, but they were cumbersome to store and heaven help me if I ever dropped the manuscript and scattered pages in the process. I had a hard time absorbing and sorting through the data on the pages, something that frustrated me until I realized it was because the pages weren't bound. Somehow my mind translates bound things differently than loose leaf. **shrug**

Trying to find old copies of the books proved expensive, difficult or both. I kept dreaming I would 'accidentally' stumble across copies of Fansler's Filipino Popular Tales at Powell's Books in Portland or some out of the way Goodwill store for 50 cents. No such luck. I resigned myself with the bulky printouts I jammed into my file drawer, mercilessly festooned with sticky notes to keep track of key passages and bound with a large black spring clip.

Then a couple of months ago, the bright and wonderful folks at Village Books unveiled their Espresso Book Machine, a wonderful invention that can print bound books right there in the store. You can pick from current titles as well as out of print titles. I was so astounded at the possibilities of obtaining difficult, out of print books, that I waited for weeks before looking into getting bound versions of my favorite folklore books! (Yah, procrastination roxors.)

Today, in addition to Fansler's Filipino Popular Tales, I picked up Mabel Cole's Philippine Folk Tales and Clara Kern Bayliss' title by the same name all for less than $50. The production value is excellent for the price - clean printing, tight binding, color covers, and readable format. The only title left on my list to print is Philippine Folklore Stories by John Maurier Miller. Apparently though the book is out of copyright, no one has formatted the book for reprinting. Thankfully manipulating PDFs isn't that hard for someone who's a production editor by day. :) So I'm looking forward to having that title on my shelf in a few weeks (allowing for the normal procrastination period, of course).

Since all thought-threads lead back to the Babaylan Conference these days, I'm reminded that the work we did and shared this past weekend is a lot like these books - knowledge from a different age brought forward and made relevant in current times. We may have had PowerPoint presentations (albeit also the usual tech issues associated with, well, tech), snapped pictures on 3G phones, and Tweeted between sessions, we were still a community gathered to a single purpose - to share a common desire to integrate our heritage with our personal quests for spiritual wholeness. We spoke and listened, danced and sang, cried and laughed, but most of all, were present with each other, tangible beings we could finally touch without the need for keyboards and screens. We were actively creating an oral history together, one we all want to share now that we're back in our usual spaces.

Some would criticize that our conference is an anachronism, the dredging up of a past out of touch with the realities of the present. But there are some things too precious to lose, and when you find the way to bring them forward to hold in your hand and share with others, you take the chance and become transformed by that tangible thing you only thought could exist in your dreams.

Kapwa Tao

2010-04-20T21:03:00.000-07:00

It's been about 5 years since I first came across the term "babaylan" and the work of Leny Strobel. I found both soon after making contact with FilAm prose and poetry artists - I was looking for a piece of my heritage that resonated with what I'd learned from studying the indigenous practices of Europe, the Americas, and Australia. I remember being worried that after almost 500 years of colonization, there was little information about pre-Spanish spiritual practices in what we know commonly as the Philippines, let alone any current practitioners of those systems.

Throughout my search, Leny has been a touchstone, a mentor who does not give easy, concrete, this-is-the-way-it-is answers. Rather she has been a person I could count on to help me form my own questions then provide the resources and contacts to find my own answers. A deeply spiritual woman, Leny is also an excellent academic who struggles between the tacit and the explicit, the intuitive and the logical, and who most of all, is willing to share that struggle with others, thereby creating a community through her blog, events, and travels with students. Until this past weekend, Leny was a person on the other side of the internet, a woman shaped of pixels on the screen who's able to reach into the heart of another by revealing her own heart. If that's not the definition of kapwa - the self in other - I don't know what is.

The First International Babaylan Conference was her brainchild and it flourished under her leadership, but like the rest of her work, it came about because of the community she created, the core planning group of women with the vision, skills, and dedication to turn a small corner of the Sonoma State University into a sacred place where FilAms and Filipinos could blink away the grime of not quite fitting in anywhere, could shed the cloak of nearly-passing-in-order-to-survive, and raise their open palms to the sky to say Tao Po! I am a human being, as I am now, as I was, as my ancestors were, as we all shall be.

When I came back from the California the first question my friends and family ask is the expected "How was the conference?" And there's only one way to describe it. Before the conference, the different parts of myself and my previous experiences were like the jumbled tumblers inside a combination lock. From the moment I stepped into my suite and joined a small group of women who I would live with the next few nights, a tumbler would turn and fall into place. Then another. Then another. A song would be sung. Thunk. A passing prayer whispered. Thunk. A term, a chant, and passing conversation. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. Pieces fell into place that I thought were forever separated because of time and circumstance. Instead I learned that I just needed a reflection in someone else's experience to affirm all that I'd known before. I stopped second guessing myself. I stopped feeling outside my own culture. I stopped holding back "just in case" it wasn't safe to be myself.

And the lock just kept turning. Two pieces at the very end fell into place, two pieces I didn't think would be even up for discussion. But there on Sunday afternoon and then late into Sunday evening - thunk, thunk. It's natural to think that if the metaphor is a lock, then something was opened, but that's not quite the sensation. It's more a feeling of being whole. After all the labyrinthine travels of the past 10-15-20 years where I would come close enough to understanding but never completely Becoming the understanding, finally, it's all there. I'm all there. Here.

So what's next? Well, besides diving back into this blog, I need to plant a tree. Preferably a cedar tree, perhaps as part of a larger reclamation project. Perfect timing considering Earth Day tomorrow. And I need to touch the sea, to let the local spirits know there was a healing offering made in California on their behalf yesterday.

On Literary Diversity

2010-01-28T21:15:00.000-08:00

Barbara Jane asks: Why is diversity important, and to whom, and how? Who can answer these questions in ways that are not abstract and large beyond practicality? What does “diversity” mean?

Maybe this is something of a left turn, but her post reminded me of a post Rick Steves wrote recently in which he talks about the necessity of travel for the sake of the survival of humanity, noting "The people who need to travel the most are the ones whose worldview is shaped not by actually going places, but by 24/7 news coverage."

And I'm thinking this sort of logic applies to diversity too - non-majority writers provide a view of the world different from the Fox spin. The people who need to understand diversity the most, who need to experience the writing she writes about are the ones whose worldview is shaped not by reading across a diverse field, but by... what? what's easily snatched from shelves at the checkout stand, the stuff as substantive as a pack of Bubblicious?

As always, Barbara Jane asks a lot of good questions, but they're ones I can only answer by what I do. I look for books by Filipinos, Moms, Spiritual Seekers, and Bisexuals. I read picture books, middle grade/YA, SFF, and contemporary lit. I try to write from all my different spaces in whatever form the piece lends itself to. I try to get to events and support folks of like-mind and maybe that's too narrow, not really diverse at all.

Once a month, sometimes more, I tell stories shaped around Filipino folktales I've researched. I do this because I want to know the stories, and because Robert of EthNohTec said he hadn't met anyone telling just Filipino stories out there. I tell stories to folks who drop by the library instead of the movies, who drink organic coffee and know that macrobiotics has very little to do with antibiotics, and who create unique art/performing spaces in order to keep historic buildings alive with people. My audiences get what diversity is all about, even if we've all been known to slip into one sense of privilege or another.

Does it matter to the guy at the bank that just got sold that I write? Does it matter to the president of the nearby university that I tell stories with a bunch of Native Americans, a Scottish woman, and white guy who's great grandfather was a slave from Africa? Probably not. Does to me, though, seems to matter to the folks that matter to me.

I told a story based on a Manobo tale a couple of weeks ago at a Solstice event. The story was about the moon having no light and because of this, was jealous of the sun because it shone all the time. Afterward an elder Lummi came up to me an introduced three teenaged girls to me, ranging in age from about 13-19. She told me they were part Filipino and had never heard a Filipino folktale before. I was astonished, not because it was their first time hearing a Filipino story, but because I suddenly found myself on the other side of the fence - for years I was the one always searching, searching for the stories, the old stories that were not tinged by a sense of second-class citizenship, stories that didn't apologize for being dark or exotic, stories as rooted in the earth as any other indigenous story I had heard. Stories that were stories, rich and full, not stripped down, over-analyzed, politically-spun, fetishized artifacts. Good yarns worth telling again and again.

And there, in those teens, I saw myself in triplicate, eyes shy but eager, curious but uncertain of the questions, and then I saw myself as the Teller who'd just been given a gift of seeing the past and future all at the same time. Last night I met an Indo-Pinoy family, another group of people who had the same sort of DNA arrangement, same sort of post-immigration experience I did, but with a little bit extra, another layer of experience I could only imagine. And they got to hear the story of the little fly who became a firefly because of her wit and skilled observation, a story they never knew existed before I stepped on stage.

I hope to bring some of that same sense of connection to the page, but it's a longer process, so I won't likely know for awhile if it comes together. I donated a copy of Growing Up Filipino II to our local library and I'm hoping someone of Filipino heritage stumbles across it, rubs their hands over it in amazement of its existence, and reads it cover to cover. I try to connect where I can when I can, but sometimes it does feel like it's just a drop of water into a forgotten lake. But it's what I am and what I do, so I'll just keep on doing and being all that.

That's why diversity matters to me, how I go about it, and to whom it matters. I guess I had something of an answer after all.

2009 Retrospective / 2010 Resolutions

2009-12-30T11:02:00.000-08:00

2009 was a year of making peace, making space, and taking risks for me. 2008 landed with a decided *thud* with my own difficulty juggling school and work ending with leaving the Vermont MFA program and rethinking this whole writer thing - two balls on the ground lolling away and one ball in hand - I had my editorial job at least.

Among the changes this year though was a heightened sense of abundance and gratitude. I've got a lot of stuff going on, a lot of stuff in my life, and just a lot of stuff - and that's a good thing from a prosperity viewpoint. I'm grateful that my family and I still have a house to live in, fairly good health, and jobs to support it all. But I also realized that more 'stuff' on top of existing 'stuff' makes for more stress than I'd realized.

So first, the Good Stuff with thoughts on how they might pan out again in 2010:

1) Gave writing workshops at WSU's Women of Color Conference in February, met incredible visionaries and visionary-apprentices. This was a repeat gig of one I did four years ago. I was invited back by students who had attended my workshops as freshmen and were seniors ready to step into the world. It was great to see them and reconnect. I hope they'll bring me back for another conference, but likely it won't be for a couple of years;

2) Re-opened my application to the Rainier Writing Workshop, the MFA program based at Pacific Lutheran University. Stan Rubin was incredibly generous and allowed me to reopen my application after I told him that I had left VCFA program. I was nervous but very pleased when he found me a place in this year's workshop. In 2010... see #5 below.

3) Discovered Improv. It was a lark, really. Something to still the tension of returning to school and take a second shot at a dream. I went to a free drop-in class and fell in love with Yes, And!, Again!, and StorySpine. It will be good for my performance storytelling, I said to myself. Myself said, it's good for your heart. I'm in the middle of my second round of classes and so happy I stayed. I'll admit, though, I'm not sure if classes will fit in my 2010 schedule. Handling my schedule in a more realistic manner will definitely be a challenge.

4) StageTime. Well, if you're gonna study improv, then you may as well practice it too. Monthly storytelling at the library and the occasional set at First Friday Concerts with Swil Kanim gave me opportunity to see what improv could do for my Telling. They tell me I look much more animated on stage and I have to believe them, cause from the inside the stories are definitely more alive. There's definitely the possibility of more gigs in 2010, but I'll have to carefully plan them so they don't completely take over my schedule.

5) Ten days of writing wonderfulness. The Rainier Writing Workshop in a word: Bliss. Getting up for 8 am lectures, honing pieces during critiques, lunch with new friends, afternoon classes, dinner with the whole program, and evening readings created the most satisfying, healing, challenging experience I've ever had. I feel incredibly blessed to have worked with so many good writers, students and faculty both. Really looking forward to the 2010 RWW workshop. Is it August yet?

6) Speaking of good writers, Brenda Miller as my writing mentor this first year of RWW? Perfection. She knows when to be gentle and when to call me on my insecurities. She knows my writing can be strong and believes in me. And I get to work with her for an entire year! It will be really interesting to see who I matched with the second half of 2010.

7) Publication of "Yellow is for Luck." See entry below. Nuff said. Oh, except that I hope to get out and do some readings to promote the book.

8) Events, Events, Events - Tao Po! Online Writer's Workshop (promotion and facilitation), House Concert w/Swil Kanim (management), Elements of Honor Workshop with Swil Kanim (promotion and management), Ladders to the Moon Concert (performer), Raven Dances - Invite the Light with Gene Tagaban (performer), Guild Tells (performer), Christmas Improv (performer). Honestly, each event deserves it's own entry, but they all represent connections with the storytelling community and deepening relationships with visionaries. In 2010, I plan on attending the First International Babaylan Conference in Sonoma, CA and organizing additional Elements of Honor Workshops.

9) Finishing and submitting "Pause Midflight" a poetry chapbook. Compiling all my published and unpublished poetry into one chapbook was nerve-wracking and satisfying all at once. Sending it out to contests definitely put me back into nerve-wracking territory. Having it rejected by one contest, devastating. Yes, I know this means I'm still a thin-skinned writer, but I do know that it will be published in 2010 and I'll probably add book design to my list of skills.

10) Older and hopefully wiser. This year I really tried to pay attention to what works for me, what supports my passion, what's hindering my progress, and generally trying to be more optimistic about my life. I've learned to tap into some old practices (beading! so good to be back to that) and revisited some concepts that have been refined since I practiced them 20 years ago. In 2010, I'll continue to refine the practices with a view to living smarter not harder.

Lots of Good Stuff in 2009 plus meeting and getting to know people like Lori Marshall, Felix Solomon, Karen Murphy and many others. There was stuff though that didn't get accomplished, or got sorta accomplished but fell a bit short.

1) Get healthy. I have a WiiFit. I have a pedometer on my iTouch. I listened to subliminal MP3s. I went to Starbucks alot. I discovered I like big breakfasts on writing days. I didn't get very healthy. *sigh* So in 2010, less Starbucks, more WiiFit.

2) Write online more consistently. Twitter and Facebook have been fun to join, but the games on FB... and the constant Tweets... my blog hasn't been updated very often and I haven't figured out what to do with my WordPress account. I also have a Ning account, a LinkedIn account, and a Ch.mp site. Nothing is synched and it's all very time consuming. 2010 will be about refocusing on this blog and getting Twitter and FB to play nice. The other accounts? Gonna be interesting to see if they survive.

3) Write daily, at least in my 5 year calendar. Been pretty good about keeping my daily calendar up. I had gaps that I filled later, and gaps now that need to be filled. I think the 5 year diary is a good practice so it's a keeper in 2010.

4) Write new stuff, write new stuff, write new stuff. This one I beat myself up about daily 'cause I haven't been writing much new stuff. I've been going weeks without writing much at all and that's only made it worse. So in 2010 I'll be looking for ways to turn my anxiety into words on the page.

5) Secure multiple streams of income. This one has been on the backburner but also in the back of my mind the entire year. With the economy unsteady and the layoffs at work, it only makes sense. But it's also time consuming. I'm open to alternate income streams, but how to devote the time to build new business with family, school, and work? It's a question I'll need to settle in my mind in 2010.

My theme for 2010 will be gentleness. I am enthusiastic about a lot of different projects and people right now and I need to allow the space for reflection and that will require being gentle with myself. To not push too hard and to not use busy-ness to get in the way of taking care of my health and my soul. Building 2010 on the experiences of 2009. I'm cautiously optimistic.

Growing Up Filipino II

2009-12-28T09:07:00.000-08:00

I love books. The weight. The smell. The deliberate slowness of reading and turning a page and reading some more.

The screen just isn't the same and that's good and bad. Good for scanning and absorbing information quickly. Bad for reflection and immersion.

I get lost in the process of reading books, lost in new worlds and new people.

Escapism doesn't begin to cover the sensation of unfolding a completely different universe with the flick of the wrist as each page turns.

My author copies of Growing Up Filipino II: More Stories for Young Adults arrived a couple of weeks ago.

In the run-up to Christmas, I had just enough time to show it off to a few friends and family, but very little time to really absorb what I held in my hands.

My first in-book publication.

Don't misunderstand - I'm grateful to the print and online magazines that have published my poetry and reviews. Each byline meant that I became less a could-be writer and more a in-fact writer.

But to hold my story in my hands, all printed and bound up with fabulous work by authors I admire as really-real writers, I stepped into a whole new world I knew existed, but didn't think I had the key to open.

With a flick of my wrist, I was there, in the book, a story peering back at me the reader, a reader peering into a writer's world and that writer was me.

And by 'was' I mean a past me, the one who wrote the snippet of the story over 5 years ago, polished it and submitted it 2 years ago, received an acceptance and proofed my galley last year, and proofed it again this year.

I'd been told that the birthing of a story takes a long time, and I thought that only meant the creation of it. I understand now that there's also the production of it, the long steps from one universe to the next. Who knew that the the distance from the front of the wardrobe to the back was so long, Lucy?

So, there's writing, then there's book-making, and now comes the book promoting.

The hardcover version Growing Up Filipino II: More Stories for Young Adults is now available at Amazon and the soft and hardcopy versions can be ordered from your local brick and mortar store. Just tell them that they can get them from Ingram or Baker & Taylor.

If you know any of the contributors (Dean Francis Alfar, Katrina Ramos Atienza, Maria Victoria Beltran, M.G. Bertulfo, Cecilia Manguerra Brainard, Amalia B. Bueno, Max Gutierrez, Leslieann Hobayan, Jaime An Lim, Paulino Lim Jr., Rebecca Mabanglo-Mayor, Dolores de Manuel, Rashaan Alexis Meneses, Veronica Montes, Charlson Ong, Marily Ysip Orosa, Kannika Claudine D. Peña, Oscar Peñaranda, Edgar Poma, Tony Robles, Brian Ascalon Roley, Jonathan Jimena Siason, Aileen Suzara, Geronimo G. Tagatac, Marianne Villanueva) ask your bookstore owner if they'll set up a reading to promo the book, then let your friends, family, and total strangers you meet at the coffee shop or grocery store know.

Step into the stories imagined in a post-9/11 world, written from the perspective of the young adult but accessible to anyone who has struggled with issues of family, love, sexuality, home, and social change in the current modern age.

Tuloy! Come share our world.

Salamat Po

2009-11-26T06:48:00.000-08:00

My father tried to teach me his dialect, Tagalog, off and on when I was a child and young teen. Some words were round and made my mouth feel like it was full of marbles. Others sat in the back of my mouth, buzzed against the my hard palate. Mostly I couldn't figure out how to change my tongue and throat to match the sounds that slipped so easily past his lips.

They tell me I had a better time of it when we visited the Philippines when I was six. I followed my cousins around the neighborhood and they pointed at things, giving me the name of each thing - the word for grass, the word for house, the word for tree.

I don't remember the words. I can count to 8 successfully - isa, dalawa, tatlo, apat, lima, anim, pito, walu - and I remember a few lines of "Bahay Kubo" which lists a few vegetables being grown behind a house, "bahay." I'm more comfortable saying "hindi na" - Nope - than "o-o" - Yes. I sometimes remember that "Mabuhay" means long life and good fortune.

My ear recognizes it when it's spoken, and my husband tells me that I've responded in English without thinking to questions and conversations in Tagalog. I guess I've lived in translation for so long that it's become second nature.

"Salamat Po" - thank you very much, honored one - is a strange phrase. The ssss rises up my spine and I feel my shoulders hunch as the "ahhh" blends to "lahhh." I want to shorten it to just "Salamat" but to say that, one must start with "Ai" as in "Ai Salamat!" - oh thank you! "Salamat" by itself sounds terse, the kind of thing you'd say at the grocery store when the butcher hands you your order, a thoughtless thing, really, something that lacks a certain connection to gratitude. "Po" is the honorific, the recognition that the person you are thanking is higher in status, or better said, the recognition that you are lower in status because you're the one thanking, instead of being thanked.

Perhaps that's why it trips me up, this idea of status tied up with gratitude, a sense of beholden. My parents would probably say it's from being brought up "in this country" that being beholden is a bad thing. Independence, the ability to fend for myself, to provide all my own needs without needing anyone else is something opposite of "po" perhaps. I don't know if it's from being brought up in the US or not, but I do have a hard time with feeling beholden.

I want to feel grateful and I certainly don't think I feel entitled to anything I've been granted - is there something between beholden and entitlement, a middle ground where both parties retain their sense of honor and wholeness?

When someone thanks me for something, gives thanks in a "salamat po" sort of way, I don't feel entitled - I usually feel grateful for the opportunity to give and that it made someone else feel special. I don't need anything else, and I don't feel entitled to something from them in the future. But when I'm on the other side of the counter, I feel a tension in my gut and it's all bound up in questions - what do they want? what will they want? do I need to give something of equal or better value later? what should I say on my thank you card? how long do I have before I have to send that card? if I give in return, will they give again, when I just would rather not continue this relationship any more?

Today, it's hard /not/ to think of all those grade school stories of Pilgrims starving their first winter, of gracious, noble Indians (note: no Eastern Seaboard tribes were ever taught to me, much to my chagrin now) who gave them food to eat and taught them the principles of nitrogen fixing for better crops, and in return, our country stole or murdered for their land. Embarrassment and shame co-mingle with our Thanksgiving feasts here in the US, so much so that some of our friends protest the holiday yearly, fleeing to Canada for the day. Maybe my knee jerk reaction to "salamat po" or even the concept of gratitude comes from knowing that even the celebration of Thanksgiving is tainted by something very opposite to being thankful.

I don't know the word for "I" in Tagalog - if "po" means the 'honored/honorable you' is there a word which recognizes my own nobility? A quick google search reveals "ako" which covers both "I" and "me" depending on placement relative to the verb. I remember hearing my mother say "Ako na" which felt like "I will" and usually meant she was volunteering to do something, setting aside a personal priority to help someone else. "You" translates to "ikaw" which I remember was usually a question "ikaw?" or "How about you?"

The online Tagalog dictionary reveals that "po" emphasizes respect and politeness, often falling in combination with "Oo" an for "O'po" or "Yes sir/ma'am!" And I think about all the houseboys and servants of US servicemen and their wives and how often they said "O'po!" to the most routine and undignified tasks more suitable for a "little brown brother" than for anyone hoping to advance in the world.

But then there is this "Tao Po" - I am a human being. "Tao" - person/people - is linked with the honorific "Po" revealing that not only can I claim being human but can claim being a Person of Nobility. And when you respond "Tuloy!" - come share my world - you not only recognize me as a fellow human being but invite me to share in your Noble Personage.

That's the space I want to inhabit when I say "Salamat Po" - I am grateful for your continued human nobility, and I believe you can be noble, and make noble choices now and in the future. Why? Not because you've given me something, but because I can already see (always already) my own nobility, believe I can make noble choices when I interact with others and not shrink away from community out of fear of becoming beholden. Level playing field for all concerned.

Salamat Po - I am grateful for the potential of nobility in humanity. I am grateful for the attempt to be a person of honor and hope for my own growth as a person of "Po"

A Writing Practice of Sorts

2009-10-26T21:42:00.000-07:00

Kel and I did a short Telling performance tonight for the Edge Group at our church. Edge is the middle school youth program that meets once a month. Tonight was a 'fun night' with a theme of All Souls Day. A bit tricky since a lot of good stories for Hallows are not, shall we say, necessarily Vatican friendly.

But Kel found two from Europe and I pulled two from my usual bag of Filipino stories. I even got gussied up in my T'boli garb and thrummed my brass gong. The kids were great and seemed to enjoy the performance.

I'd hoped to write a bit tonight, get the world caught up on what's been up the last month, but I'm blasted, the adrenaline of performance having worn off about a half hour ago. I wanted to post /something/, restart the habit of writing here.

The coolest thing of the last few weeks was coming around to a writing practice of sorts, or at least the formulation of one that has proven out as workable. Saturday is my writing day, mostly in long-hand, then the week is for typing it up and refining it for review by my writing mentor. When I get stuck I either read or game, but always there's a blank page or the page where I left off waiting on the screen for that moment when I get past my block and can write a bit.

Last month I took a few days off after turning in my packet. A few days turned into almost three weeks. Not good. I was hard pressed this past week or so to finish the work. But finish it I did, three critical papers and 14 pages of new work. I tried out a few new narrative forms. I'll meet with my mentor next week to see if they panned out.

This week I had the Tell tonight, then double Tell on Saturday for Halloween - kids in the afternoon and adults in the evening. Tomorrow I hopefully will have enough brain to do a better blog post and work on more new material. Weds is Improv night. Seems like there's more to this week, but I think I can pretty much count on most nights for more writing and reading. That's pretty cool.

Today a friend read Becoming a Woman of Color and said there was much more to be said and that's true. I'm hoping that there are whole essays and maybe books-worth of stuff still to be said about growing up FilAm, Catholic, Palouse-dweller, Motherhood, etc. Right now I'm trying not to tailor the pieces in any one direction. I'm just hoping to get it a lot of it down and then maybe later, I'll spread all of it out and see what I've got.

I'll say this, though, a month ago I wasn't sure I'd be able to get a writing practice put together, and it's been a really tough month, but I'd say I'm well on my way and that makes for happy.

Again!

2009-09-28T20:34:00.000-07:00

Performing impromptu in front of friends and family has never been one of those things I enjoyed. Like a lot of FilAm kids (and likely kids from all parts of the world) my parents and relatives expected me to be able to perform at the drop of a hat. There was a certain prestige to having a child who could knock out Fur Elise perfectly at age 9 or be able to sing and sway to the old standards as well as put on the attitude for the newer songs. "Pressure to perform" took on a whole new meaning as child after child was called forward to do their best act for visitors.

My cousins and I balked at the repeated requests to perform for our grandparents and soon, the requests ended all together. Around middle school, my cousin discovered stage magic and I watched in horror as my father picked apart the performance, guessing how things were done even before the tricks were complete. I don't remember my cousin performing for us ever again even though I know he loved to juggle and do close tricks. I do remember being at my father's brother's house and being prodded to play something on the piano. Even though we didn't know each other well, I knew instinctively that my latest memorization of a Bach piece wasn't going to go over well with my hip-cool cousins and when they tried to sing one of the top hits of the time together, we felt embarrassment for each other.

The worst moment was trying to cajole my cousins on my mother's side to sing "Rainbow Connection" at our grandparent's 50th anniversary. We didn't want to be on display, didn't choose the song, or hated that we were never asked if we wanted to perform, it was just assumed we would. Didn't matter. It had to be done and we did it. A few cousins threw in songs of their own and we were a hit. We vowed never to do it again. We've all resisted at one point or another, and oddly, we've all volunteered to play or sing at family events. Well, most of us... actually, not me.

I freeze up in front of my family of origin. I feel the iciness of reproach on my shoulders, hear every wrong note played or sung, and most of all, I feel judged before I can even attempt to play. Performance anxiety doesn't even come close to describing the feeling. It's a combination of being on display, vulnerable to the insecurities of others who must criticize in order to feel important, vulnerable to other's fears that they didn't raise me right=bright=prodigy, and ultimately that I would, once again fail to meet the expectations and worst of all hear "Well, it was okay. Really. Good try," delivered with a distant look betraying a desire to high-tail it out of the hall before anyone else noticed all the flaws and trumpeted their children's triumphs instead.

Bitter? Not really. It's what it was. It still hurts and I flinch at the thought of performing in front of family. When the potential for stage time opens, I have to remind myself that I can choose to perform or not at any given moment, that I can give into the urge to unreel a tale for anyone willing to listen and it will be okay. Storytelling - that's easy. Singing, a little bit more difficult, but after singing show tunes two hours straight at the RWW residency last August after not singing for .... a couple of decades... I can say that it's easier than it was, but still harder than Telling.

But playing the piano, with all that piano playing straight-A-Asian-girl garbage and the fact I haven't touched keys, really practiced since before I stopped singing in church choirs. Just a little on my mom's piano... when I knew everyone was watching TV and I just had to feel the smoothness of the ivory, the resonance of the notes through the wood, the softening of tones with the press of a pedal... but nothing much more.

Until last night. My husband and daughters were there. My friends were there. The piano was there. And like we say in Improv, the moment became "Yes, and..."

I didn't plan it, which is good because then I didn't stress about it. The moment flowed from all beautiful music and stories Swil Kanim shared with my friends and family. My husband and daughters had each taken a turn playing tunes on their instruments, spur of the moment performances they chose because they wanted to share their gifts too. And the piano was open, keys white and smooth, and I thought, why not? SK had told us the story of the watershed moment in his life when he realized that he needed to play his own music to feel fulfilled. And I have this one song I wrote a long time ago...

So I started. I almost didn't. But I wanted him to hear my song, wanted to give back a little of the gift he'd given me. My hands shook and I couldn't remember where to put my hands. I stumbled within five or six notes. I rubbed my hands on my jeans and thought "Again!" - that Improv permission to start over. Again, I placed my hands on the keys and I got a little farther in the song. Again I faltered. I thought I should stop and give an apologetic shake of my head. Too rusty, I'd explain. It had been too long. But I didn't want to. I asked myself, do you want to do this? Keep going? Yes, I said, and I rubbed my palms on my jeans, put my hands back up and started again. Got a little farther. Shifted the song to account for the unexpected key change, shook my head when I hit a wrong note, muttered an apology and then kept on going.

There's a point in every performance, no matter how long or short that a performer realizes it's not going to get any better, but it's not going to get any worse. Swil Kanim came and sat next to me. I stifled a flinch, my reactions of yesteryear, but then I allowed his curiosity and openness to create a positive space, because I knew that was what he wanted to do. I breathed and chose Yes, Again. And again, and again, until the very last chord.

When I finished, I realized I played the best I could, didn't give up, and existed in a space where I was totally safe even though I trembled at the core of myself. I was repatterning my past, choosing a new future.

I don't know if I could play the piano again in front of others, but I give myself a better than good chance I might. Ultimately, though, I brought choice into something that was so painful before and that's started a change and healing within me.

All for the feel of the keys, for the song needing to be shared, and wonderfulness that is friends and family gathered in unconditional love.

Story Bag

2009-09-19T10:59:00.000-07:00

Every Teller has a story-bag, a list of stories they know and can Tell at the drop of a hat. I've been performance storytelling about 3-4 years now, but my bag is still pretty small.

There's my favorite - Alitaptap and the Sky King, The Thimble/The Axe, Marcella's Three Tests, Penduko and the Snails, Heron and the Hummingbird, The First Woman, Pina and the Pineapple, The Sea, Sky, and Wind, Bathala and the Coconut Tree, Juan Tamad and the Market Horse, the Battle of the Wind and Rain.

There's the ones I think I've only ever told one time - The Golden Rooster and the Greedy King, Seven Silly Brothers, the Hummingbird and the Carabao, The Three Brothers and the Princess, the Rainbow Princess, The woman who left her jewels in the sky - the endings of a couple of these are really vague in my mind.

That's over a dozen. Hrm. Not bad actually. More than I thought.

Last night's Tell at the Library was pretty cool - I wore my T'boli garb, played my gong, and told the Bathala story for the first time. The garb really set the tone and the rhythms on the gong I used seemed to work well. I discovered, though, that my vocal pitch drops when I'm thinking too much. That's good to know for next time. One little boy, though, said the story was sad, and I guess it was - I was thinking about Silversong, had dedicated the performance to her memory. And the story is about the death of a friend. I'll rework it to bring out the caretaking more.

There was time for me to tell two, so I did Alitaptap which got a few laughs. The surprises of the night were the presence of SheilaG, my improv teacher, and Jason Quick, a local juggling performer and motivational speaker. Jason had seen my FB notice about the event and yep, I got all fan girl on him a bit too. He's a one-armed juggler, for goodness sake, and a terrific speaker. I'm hoping he comes back and joins the Guild. It would be great to have him on board.

So, between the garb (gonna have to figure out how to secure my malong better), SheilaG, and JasonQ being there, I was more than a bit nervous, but it seemed to go well. Kel and Doug were the other Tellers and it's always fun to share the stage with them.

I've been thinking about meaning lately, how to bring a story full round to a meaning, how to hint at it in the beginning without overplaying the hand, or overstating the obvious. In improv, though, we're supposed to be obvious and trust that the connections and meanderings will just happen.

Maybe this entry is about how I under-regard myself because my progress is slow, at least to my thinking. There have been artists who talk about each moment they perform is the culmination of their lives up to that moment, they say "People ask me how long it took for me to write this book/poem/song and I tell them, all my life, up to that moment." And I think I look at myself when I'm at the page and I think "I've lived my whole life up to now to make /this/?" Implying that what art I've made isn't worth all that life, or maybe that my life hasn't been all that much if the results are so poor on the page.

An artist once told me never to write about weakness in my blog, to be overly self-conscious. I've tried to do that, but it's a sort of censorship that today, I guess I just can't buy into. I'm hard on myself, I get that, but what's hard is that I can't see anything different, even after realizing I look at my work and my 'career' so pessimistically.

But I look to the start of the entry to find the ending - my story bag /is/ small, but I've given 3 dozen performances over the last three years and that's pretty cool. I even remember people telling me they liked my stories, gotten high-fives from tellers I respect and learn from. And I'm not likely to stop Telling anytime soon. There's always next month's third Friday tell, and a Scary Stories Tell sometime around Hallows (I'm thinking an awsang story might be in order... gotta brush up on my scary screetches and old women poses...), plus I think a Tell near Winter's Solstice where I'll try my hand at the Bathala story once more... or something about the return of the sun... seasonal stuff is hard with Filipino stories since the seasons are so different there than here.

I think my writing is the same. I got a collection of poems out to a couple of contests this week. I've got the start of a couple of pieces for my packet due in a few days. I've got work to do, more than enough ideas.

So maybe for me, it's not a matter of figuring out why I'm overly pessimistic, but to just keep following my art, see where it takes me, set some small, reasonable goals, and to just remember to have fun.

Something Something

2009-09-08T23:41:00.000-07:00

These are the things you should know.

The house on 10th Avenue was once green with white trim, but I remember it as yellow with brown trim. Yellow because it was Father's favorite color. Yellow because he was born in November. Yellow because it was his color.

The shag carpet was gold because topaz is gold, because topaz is the birthstone for November, because his birthday is in November. Even Mother's Singer was a Gold Touch, best on the market, because that's what was best for our house.

They told me, though, that they covered the hardwood floors with carpet because my knees got cold when I crawled on them. They told me that my father quit smoking when my mother was pregnant with me, that he tore a pack of cigarettes in his hands, that he craved tobacco so bad, he dug cigarette butts out of the ashtray for one last hit.

But these were things before I was born, before I had memory, and all that was left were the yellow birch leaves in Fall, shimmering in the wind, falling, cluttering up the green, green lawn.

Meeting Felix Solomon

2009-09-07T19:55:00.000-07:00

Like all good moments, I didn't go looking to meet Felix Solomon the other day. I meant only to reward myself with a gourmet mini-cupcake after a good writing session at the local cafe.

Woods Coffee sits on the corner of Railroad and Chestnut, a half block down from the Saturday Market. As I wrote, Market patrons milled between stalls of fresh basil and mushrooms, handcrafted baskets and lotions, and food booths boasting everything from Hawaiian Shave Ice to Indian curry to Mexican tacos. A late summer wind whipped through intermittently, a sure sign of rain later in the evening. I sat in an overstuffed leather chair and wrote about encountering a Euro-American, a blond-haired, blue-eyed slip of a woman sporting a white t-shirt with "Got white privilege?" printed in black letters. It was almost too easy to write that draft.

So it didn't take much self-convincing to take a stroll around the long way to the cupcake stand, then circle back to my car. Along the way, I tipped a bagpipe player (just returned from a festival in Scotland where he placed 6th overall) and a young violinist (bound for his first out-of-state competition) both busking for the day. After rewarding myself with a dark chocolate cupcake with vanilla buttercream frosting, I merged with the crowd picking up a basket of golden chanterelles for orange sauce later, carrots for lunches and a half dozen of my favorite Wenatchee peaches as I walked along. Turning from the fruit stand, I glanced over a small card table burdened with Salish wood carvings and small fliers I recognized from the night previous. At his First Friday concert, Swil Kanim handed out the small bookmark fliers advertising an event benefitting Felix Solomon's latest project for Maritime Park. I slowed my steps, fascinated by the model of the proposed carving that sat on the table. Shaped like a fisherman's gaffe, figures rode a longboat seaward, the prow of the boat bearing the traditional marking of the Lummi tribe.

A woman behind the table offered me a flier and knowing the cost of promo materials, I shook my head. Her face clouded with perceived rejection.

"I have one," I explained. "I'll be there." (Sunday, Sep. 13, 2pm Maritime Park)

She smiled and a man beside me started telling me about the raffle they would have to support the carving and maintenance of the finished pole. He showed me pictures of more carvings and a talking stick topped with image of a man's head, his flat cone shaped hat indicating he was a Keeper, a spirit who watches and protects.

My heartbeat quickened - it occurred to me that this couple might know Felix Solomon and maybe even how I might talk to him in person. I've been searching for a local Native carver since writing my novel draft three years ago. One pivotal character is a Salish carver and I could only glean so much about native carving from books and museum excursions. If I could actually /meet/ a carver, then I thought I'd begin to understand what makes a carver do the art they way s/he does, and make the character come alive on the page.

The man and I chatted about Swil Kanim (who'll be performing at the benefit) a bit and I looked at the table again. Near the photo album was a copy of a local magazine featuring Felix Solomon, his face and studio right on the cover. I'd read the article when it first came out, tried to find contact information about him on the 'net, but came up empty handed.

I glanced at the man talking to me, blinked, and looked back at the magazine.

"Wait," I said, looking at the man closely, recognition uncovering my eyes. "Are you... Felix Solomon?"

He chuckled. "I am."

I was floored. After years of start-stop research and dead-end leads, here was a Salish carver standing right there talking to me, trying to convince me to come out and support his work, when I had only hoped to maybe see him in the distance at the forthcoming event.

I'd like say I was smooth, explaining my project eloquently, speaking in humble, unobtrusive tones. Nope. Fangirl to the last, complete with "WOW! You're /him/! You're the guy from the magazine article I've been looking for! WOW!"

He grinned with bemusement at my enthusiasm. I, on the other hand grinned stupidly at the gift Grace was providing.

You'd think there'd be no coming back from that sort of... expressiveness, but I figured, if this was my one shot at talking with a contemporary Salish carver, I was going to ask for more.

"I was hoping to talk with you about your work for a book I'm writing," I said. He gave me his card and I promised to email him, then I noticed that his studio address was listed there too.

"Could I visit you---?" "You can come by the studio---" Came at the same moment.

Finally, after months of self doubt about the novel, one of my characters was there, in the flesh, or at least the flesh and blood carver who's personality and experience would influence my character's development was there, giving me a hug, promising to show me his work personally.

Better than a chocolate mini-cupcake with buttercream frosting, I left the Market with a true treasure, the hope of a story saved.

Frog and Heron

2009-08-30T22:17:00.000-07:00

"Why?" asked Frog, and Heron shuffled with discomfort.

"Self-doubt," said Heron, and the Frog smiled kindly, understanding.

"I know that feeling," said Frog. "I think sometimes that people will figure out that I can't play the violin."

Heron was amazed. She'd heard him play, seen people change from dark creatures to Creatures of Light because of his music.

"It's the same for you," Frog went on.

"But I can't play the violin," Heron replied, knowing he wasn't talking about her playing the violin.

"There's only one thing self-doubt it good for," said Frog. "Dodging responsibility."

Heron blinked. She thought about all the people waiting for the stories in her heart, the ones she had trouble getting on the page.

"I say this to you, because I need to hear it too," said Frog. "You are who you are made to be. I know you are a Writer. And responsibility is the ability to respond. And when you're ready, you *will* be able to respond."

Later Heron heard the Elder in God's House say, "It is the Holy Spirit who equips us and calls us to do His work in the world."

And on these things, the Heron meditated, grateful for their words.

No One Trick Pony

2009-08-28T13:53:00.000-07:00

A little accounting of the week's purchases:

Village Books:

I Was Told There Was Cake (Sloane Crosley)
The Language of Balkava (Diana Abu-Jaber)
Born Standing Up (Steve Martin)

i-Tunes:

Ellipse (Imogene Heap)
Let's Get Small (Steve Martin)

Amazon:

Safekeeping (Abigail Thomas)
A Three Dog Life (Abigail Thomas)
Thinking About Memoir (Abigail Thomas)
The Guild Seasons 1 & 2 (DVD)
Dr. Horrible's Sing-along-blog (DVD)

The Thomas material was three-fer bundle, as was the Guild/Dr. Horrible set.

Looking over the list, it occurs to me that the list accurate describes my personality.

I ain't no one trick pony. :)

Words of the Day in Practice

2009-08-26T15:52:00.001-07:00

Miri struggled against forgetfulness, her sense of agnosia so strong it was as if her memories were so much smalto, bits of fine glass glazed and shining, yet never coming together again as a whole.

Concert Benefits Artistic Development of Native Youth

2009-08-24T10:32:00.000-07:00

On Friday, August 28 at 7pm, a special group of Sudden Valley neighbors will sponsor a concert by Swil Kanim to benefit Native youth in the foster care system.

For many Sudden Valley residents, it’s the neighborly thing to provide the one next door with the missing ingredient for a dinner being prepared. It’s a neighborly thing to take your kids and the kids across the street to school and sports practices. Neighbors share barbeques in the summer and snow shovels in the winter, but for the neighbors living near the corner of Harborview Drive and the newly named Thunder Peak Way, being neighborly goes beyond their special ‘hood.’ They are gathering together and extending their neighborly ways to change the lives of Tribal children in the DCFS system.

The benefit concert is open to the public and will be held at the Sudden Valley Marina located at Gate 1. Community organizers suggest bringing lawn chairs or blankets for seating. Donations of $5 per person or $15 per family will support expressive art development for these children who are facing layers of challenges and Blue Skies for Children has agreed to handle the distribution of the funds.
Blue Skies for Children is a non-profit, 501(c) 3 corporation founded in 1997 by a task force, who enlisted local organizations including DCFS, Brigid Collins, Catholic Community Services, Whatcom Foster & Adoptive Parents Association, Northwest Youth Services, The Opportunity Council, WWU and Whatcom County Community Network. A continuous effort is underway to restore hope and self esteem to homeless, low income and foster children in Whatcom & Skagit Counties, by providing support and valuable enrichment opportunities. Concert donations are tax deductable.

Beautiful Lake Whatcom will be a stunning backdrop to Swil Kanim’s haunting melodies. Swil Kanim, himself a member of the Lummi Nation, travels nationally and internationally as musician and inspirational speaker. He is a recent recipient of the Whatcom Dispute Resolution Center Peace Builders Award and Whatcom Family & Community Network Community Builders Award.

A world class virtuoso violinist, Swil Kanim advocates self-expression to create stronger community. He intertwines his music with storytelling, poetry, and audience interaction. His original compositions are mesmerizing and inspiring to all ages alike. While quickly becoming the most popular Native American Violinist, Swil Kanim is also a keynote speaker and notable actor; he starred as "Mouse" in Sherman Alexie’s highly acclaimed movie The Business of FancyDancing.

Sudden Valley resident organizers offer a range of volunteer, donation, and sponsorship opportunities to support this event. "It takes a village to raise a child" goes the old African proverb. In the case of this special group of Sudden Valley residents, supporting a child in need is just the neighborly thing to do.

***

Press Release by Rebecca Mabanglo-Mayor appeared in the August issue of Sudden Valley News and is available for general distribution.

Notes: Why We Write

2009-08-13T21:57:00.000-07:00

"I wrote my world and, in doing so, felt myself participate fully in its unfolding...my drive to write is the same--language, penned to paper binds the inner world to the outer, satisfying my desire to unite with creation." - Elizabeth Andrew, Writing the Sacred Journey

A few days ago, a fellow RWW participant (who's name fails me... I hope my memory returns when I've had more sleep) asked me about my email addy (word.binder) which bears little resemblance to my name (in any of it's iterations). She asked if I was into book arts, and I said No (although I really think book arts is cool and wouldn't it be great to have time for it?).

I told her about my blog and how my writing is about bringing all my many worlds/experiences into one space. ElizabethA resonates that idea while pointing out to me that the "one space" isn't really here at this blog, it's here in me. She goes on to say:

"When we write with the professed hope of helping others, I suspect that many of us are really writing for our former selves...what we are writing is the book we wish we had read during our own trying, formative experience...writing for oneself seems selfish, so we obscure our real motivation with the altruistic desire to help others. In fact, writing for one's self is noble. Each of us is worth of that generosity."

This goes back to what I think about "Tao Po!" the practice of declaring "I am a Human Being." Not a human been, past tense, but a human being, or better, human becoming. I write to say to myself, "these are the things that have happened to make me, me, in all my multiplicities." This sounds incredibly arrogant, to declare my story as somehow significant, but when I teach Tao Po!/Tuloy, I am also encouraging others to write their story because we all need to know our stories are important. We each make a difference, especially when we own, declare, and become better because of that owning and declaring of ourselves.

So what makes all this more than navel-gazing confessional? Jane Yolen notes:

"Every writer has three responsibilities: first to the story, second to yourself, and finally your audience."

To which ElizabethA expands to: "For writers of spiritual memoir, story is not something born of our imagination or of history; it's the very stuff of our lives. It is the aching and questing of our souls."

Heavy stuff, but again, something that resonates - while at RWW, I noted several times that writing non-fiction was a compulsion for me, something I'm driven to do in a way different from writing poetry or fiction. All the genres are about Story, but non-fiction is about claiming my own story without the shields poetry and fiction provide. Writing non-fiction makes me aware of the themes and questions I'm working through, allowing me to find the meanings I'm trying to learn and articulate.

JaneY's quote, though, points out one very important thing I need to remember when I write - Story First - because every understanding hinges on how fully engaged I can be with the story I'm telling/sharing/writing. I can't just say - I was 13 and on a road trip to Richland, WA when the sky opened up and felt totally connected to God and the world in that Dandelion Wine-Ray Bradbury way. Just stating the story short changes the experience for me and the reader, and we both need the story to unfold in a meaningful way in order to be in the place of honor provided by the well-told story.

"When memoir writer's are responsible to the story, they honor that which is vital and true - the spirit - within their experience." - Elizabeth Andrew

What greater reason is there to write than to honor that which is the human experience?

MFA Re-Entry

2009-08-12T22:44:00.000-07:00

Returned from PLU's Rainier Writing Workshop Residency tired but happy. Met so many incredible artists, faculty and participants both. Learned all sorts of new terms like Rhymed Scenes, Digression (as a good thing), and Braided Essays. My two workshop pieces aren't as far along as I had hoped, but I received really good feedback as well as a sense of where to go next with them. I'm going to let the drafts mellow, though, and start creating new stuff.

I feel very fortunate to be working with Brenda Miller in the the coming months. Her work in lyric essay and her gentle discipline has been inspiring to me for many years. She's having me read three books to start:

Fearless Confessions by Sue Silverman
Writing the Sacred Journey by Elizabeth J. Andrew
New and Selected Poems: Volume One by Mary Oliver

I went into the residency with as open a heart and mind as I could manage (given my terrible nervousness) and came to a space that has to do with the question "What is Tribal and How have these themes/ideas intersected my life?" I'm not planning to write specifically /to/ answer that question, so much as I know that "tribal" will be part of my consciousness as I work my writing paces.

Although I'm happy to be home, I already miss my PLU-RWW 'tribe' and hope we can find each other in the broad spaces of the Internet. It's always good to have traveling companions.

Two Weeks

2009-07-19T08:05:00.000-07:00

Two Weeks until the premier of "MFA II: Return of the Dream"

Sequels are usually not as interesting as the first movies, especially if they're mid-arc of a trilogy, so perhaps it's better to say "MFA II: Do Over!" but that just sounds like I'm ripping off Robin Hemley's new memoir.

The story thus far - last year I applied to three MFA programs, all low residency and was accepted into all three. Technically, I guess I applied for four MFAs, since last minute I decided to add to my VCFA non-fiction application by applying also to their Writing for Young Children and Adults program. I was wait-listed on two programs (word to the wise - apply early for the best possible slots), but VCFA had spots for me in both the non-fiction program and the children's writing program.

Since I needed to start somewhere at VCFA, I decided to enroll into the children's writing program. I don't know that much about writing for children, definitely not as much as I know about memoir, so it seemed logical at the time. I had a fabulous time at the residency, met lots of cool folks, got lined-up to work with a fantastic mentor. In fact, right now my cohort, the Thunder Badgers are just wrapping their third residency as I type this. I'll always have good memories of last summer.

I needed that residency badly. I hadn't been in a writing community for years and I was dry and crackly from the lack of contact. As I read more and more about Kapwa-tao, an indigenous Filipino term meaning community-self that describes the interaction and interdependency we all possess, I understand that my drive to be at residency has to do with kapwa-tao. Writing is solitary and often people think that once a piece is finished and has an audience, then the circle of giving and receiving is complete. In certain ways, I agree, but that's only from the perspective of the piece. For me as a writer, there is another circle completed when I'm around other artists doing the same things I'm doing, facing the same challenges, and looking at the world in a particular way.

I get close to that circle when I hang out with art-activist-performers, but there's a certain point I've found where writing departs from performance, especially the sort of improv-performing of Gene Tagaban and Swil Kanim. Performing is reflective, but the timing is incredibly fine, the moments fleeting. If you miss a cue long enough to realize you miss a cue, then you can only go back to that moment in a new performance, one you hope will give you that same space again. Most times, the missed cues are so quick that they don't register. Writing is different that way. You can miss a cue and go back to it in the exact same moment because it's there hovering on the page. The more you work the art, the more cues you can see to either fix or just delete. But that takes a different set of skills, a different way of looking at art, and a good community of writers can support that process, just because they know that's what the art is all about.

In some ways, what I've written isn't completely true - revision in workshop is a lot like performing in multiple spaces. The audience shifts, might have a different level of skill, might be looking for a particular voice - this is the same for both performance and writing. But there is something different between performers and writers, maybe having to do with the isolation part, the place where they work their art out. Or maybe it's just the way I roll. In any case, hanging out with performers has been close to what I'm looking/hoping for when I go to a writing workshop, but there's nothing like the energy of the writing workshop.

Two weeks from today, I'll step into the PLU Rainier Writing Program summer workshop, get my dorm room set up, fuss with my materials, feel lost in a new space, wonder if I'll make new friends, wonder if the faculty will like my work, wonder if I'll talk too much or talk too little. I'll likely push myself too hard for the first few days then ease into a pace. I'm hoping not to crash in the middle, but 10 days of writing is intense. I can only imagine what my friend Chie is experiencing with six weeks straight at Clarion West. Somewhere toward the end of the residency I'll be matched up with my mentor-for-a-year. I have an idea/hope of who I might work with. Just from looking at the faculty, I know a couple who I've worked with before and they would be great to work with again. That sort of takes the surprise out of it, but there's comfort in knowing who I might work with.

Today I begin the fussy stuff - getting my workshop commenting done, choosing my workshops (at least first blush), gathering up little comforts (small fan, first aid kit, pix of the family). I'm excited and nervous - many things went right with MFA I, many things went wrong. I'm overly worried about the 'many things wrong' but even that is easing and I'm hopeful for the many things right. I've got messages in my pocket from my performing mentors - Gene and Swil Kanim both speak about doing/being what we are made to do/be. I'm very grateful to Raven and Frog for their wisdom for it gives both an acknowledgment to a uniqueness as well as a reminder to be responsible, all wrapped up in the joy and fun of honor.

A few loose ends to wrap up today too - finishing up the Tao Po! writing workshop, posting to the Babaylan Files, and such. Busy busy summer, but all in all, it's going just grand.

Seventeen

2009-06-23T21:40:00.000-07:00

My blog got spammed about a week ago and I got hit with over 200 "Nice Blog" comments complete with links to a site in China. Still haven't figured out how the bot got past the word verification feature.

I was annoyed, to say the least, dreaded dredging through the entire blog just to delete all the spam. 200 posts! But it was a matter of pride /not/ to have the posts there even if they were relatively harmless. So, I started from the beginning of my blog and deleted them one at a time. Oddly, as time went on, I got to glance over thoughts I had four years ago, got to remember what it was like to be a new blogger transplanted from Livejournal, looking for a new place to think and connect. The Anonymous Spammer sent me back in time and I discovered poetry I'd written but never got past those first postings. This got me curious, so I started copying them into a separate document.

My published and 'unpublished' poems total 17. 32 pages. I'm amazed. I started my blog to connect with FilAm poets primarily, and I'll be darned if they didn't rub off on me.

I also discovered that I've had quite a few really cool conversations with FilAm artist/visionaries over the years. Online chats with folks trying to figure out this whole biculturality, heritage, spirituality, history, art thing that occupies my brain most of the time. These 'talks' are a bit harder to capture than the poems. They're sort of not-quite-essays, commentaries on current-at-the-time events, historic in the sense that they contribute to /my/ history and development over the past four years.

I noticed that many of the conversations dropped off just about the time folks started transitioning to Facebook and Twitter. These related but different social media spaces have a sense of immediacy which is cool, but lack the sort of reflective nature of blogs. Realizing that helps me feel a sense of focus for my blog for the future.

In the meantime, I've got 32 pages of poetry on my hands and I haven't even gone 'into the files' for other poems that might fit nicely with these. I know of at least one other poem that was published in 1998 that ought to be accounted for. Then I'll need to print them out and look at them, see if they play well together in the same space. I hope so. I think it would be cool to have them all together in a collection/chap of some sort.

After which, I'll have to go back and see about those conversations, figure out a way to put them altogether somehow.

About a month ago I got the wild idea to take all my old journals and start archiving them by entry date, so all the January 15th entries would be on the same page. See if I could sense some trends or something. The project got too unwieldy and I abandoned it, but obviously the notion of it stayed in my brain pan. After reviewing 4 years of posts, I'm seeing the themes that mean the most to me and even better, how I approach them.

All good things as I slowly approach my second attempt at an MFA program.

Filipina Writers Part 2 Broadcast

2009-06-16T12:47:00.000-07:00

PoetsWest on The Road Home from Everett, WA will broadcast tomorrow, Wednesday, June 17 at 4:30 p.m., PoetsWest #133 featuring Filipina Writers Part 2.

If you are out of range for this station, the broadcast is available worldwide via streaming by going to KSER and following the Listen Live links.

PoetsWest #133
Filipina WritersPart II (29.09 minutes)

How to Let the Dead Go — Toni Bajado
Phone Call from War Zone — Toni Bajado
Karaoke Diva — Angela Martinez-Dy
Philippine Experience — Angela Martinez-Dy
Mom’s Stuff — Nancy Calos-Nakano
Women Cradled — Melissa Nolledo
Migration — Melissa Nolledo
Take Flight — Melissa Nolledo
The Gift — Melissa Nolledo

The broadcast is archived at the AudioPort website under SERIES, but only to pacifica affiliate stations. Contact your local public radio station to encourage them to pick up the feed. PoetsWest will have the broadcasts available on their site at some time in the future, but only for a two week stretch.

Last year, I was priviledged to read with a group of incredible pinay writers at the Pagdiriwang 2009: Words Expressed event. Writers Workshop Co-chairs Maria Batayola, Robert Francis Flor and Dale Tiffany have put together a terrific program, and promoted it incredibly well. The event was recorded for future broadcast.

PoetsWest #132 Program:

Excerpt from When the Elephants Dance (novel) — Tess Uriza Holthe
Mail Order Bride (poem) —Rebecca Mabanglo-Mayor
Excerpt from Yellow is for Luck (short story) —Rebecca Mabanglo-Mayor
Manyan Child (poem) —Rebecca Mabanglo-Mayor
First Visit (poem) —Toni Bajado
Neighbor Child 17 (poem) —Toni Bajado

Filipina Writers Part 1 Broadcast

2009-06-10T12:43:00.000-07:00

Last year, I was priviledged to read with a group of incredible pinay writers at the Pagdiriwang 2009: Words Expressed event. Writers Workshop Co-chairs Maria Batayola, Robert Francis Flor and Dale Tiffany have put together a terrific program, and promoted it incredibly well. The event was recorded for future broadcast.

PoetsWest on The Road Home from Everett, WA will broadcast today, Wednesday, June 10 at 4:30 p.m., PoetsWest #132 featuring Filipina WritersPart I.

If you are out of range for this station, the broadcast is available worldwide via streaming by going to KSER and following the Listen Live links.

PoetsWest #132 Program:

Excerpt from When the Elephants Dance (novel) — Tess Uriza Holthe
Mail Order Bride (poem) —Rebecca Mabanglo-Mayor
Excerpt from Yellow is for Luck (short story) —Rebecca Mabanglo-Mayor
Manyan Child (poem) —Rebecca Mabanglo-Mayor
First Visit (poem) —Toni Bajado
Neighbor Child 17 (poem) —Toni Bajado

The broadcast may be archived at the AudioPort website under SERIES in the future. I'm unable to confirm. Edit - yes, it's available now, but only to pacifica affiliate stations.

Next week, the second part of the program will be broadcast.

PoetsWest #133
Filipina WritersPart II (29.09 minutes)

How to Let the Dead Go — Toni Bajado
Phone Call from War Zone — Toni Bajado
Karaoke Diva — Angela Martinez-Dy
Philippine Experience — Angela Martinez-Dy
Mom’s Stuff — Nancy Calos-Nakano
Women Cradled — Melissa Nolledo
Migration — Melissa Nolledo
Take Flight — Melissa Nolledo
The Gift — Melissa Nolledo

Re-Visioning

2009-06-02T22:17:00.000-07:00

You must always be intoxicated. It is the key to all: the one question. In order not to feel the horrible burden of Time breaking your breaking your back, and bending you to the earth, you must become drunk, without truce.

But on What? On wine, poetry, or virtue, as you wish. - Charles Baudelaire

I'm deep in the throes of revising a pair of essays.

By "deep in the throes" I mean to be dramatic. Really dramatic. As dramatic as a child with a tiny splinter in her finger watching her mother take her by the hand and bring a set of metal tweezers to the wound. Dramatic as the certainty that child has that it will hurt worse to have those metal tweezers burn her flesh (as she is certain they will) than to worry at the sliver with her teeth. As dramatic as a mother steeling herself against her child's pain and denial, sweating and cursing silently, and wishing it were over before it is even done. That level of drama.

Yah. I hate revising.

Maybe it's the storyteller in me - you never get a chance to go back and rewrite your words once their out your mouth and through the air. What's done is done and you just do your best as you perform, to give the clearest metaphors, the most dramatic plots, and complex, but relate-able characters possible. If you fail, well, there's next performance.

But you never get to do that same performance over again.

Not so with writing. In writing, you speak your mind, use the tidiest metaphors, develop those characters and plots over time. Then you look at it again. Or you have someone else look at it again. And you try to find the gaps in the story, look for the missing links to theme, correct for the upteenth time that pesky word that the spell checker always helpfully reverts to something completely unintended. Then you do the process again. And again. And again.

And the idea is that you're saving your manuscript, allowing it to grow and become better than it was before. Tighter, cleaner, leaner, and by extension, more brilliant and wonderful.

The trouble is, there was a rhythm set up to the words in the first draft and to enter that rhythm again is, in many ways as impossible as entering the same stream twice, as philosphers say. It's not the same stream. Those waters have moved on. The rhythm has moved on.

So there I stand on a rock in the middle of a revision stream, looking down-a-ways at the rapids tearing the stream apart and making a muddle of flotsam. There's a flat rock close by, a promise of a new way of looking at the essay, a promise that the vantage from this new rock will be a better one. Problem is that rock is not right next to where I'm standing.

I have to stretch to reach that new place of seeing, and anyone who knows me, knows I don't like getting wet. At all. Other than the purposes of hygeine, water is best watched from a distance in the form of the sea or drunk ice cold while sea-gazing. Perhaps it's about risk or perfectionism or failure, but it ultimately about uncertainty.

What if my current rock, my current vantage point is the best one? What if that other rock, that other way of looking at things isn't all that wonderful? What if I end up dropping the piece into the water where it flows downstream churns against the rocks never to come together again?

Here's the thing - I know revision is critical to writing. I get that I can't just hope that my talent and current skills can bring the essays alive. I've gotta keep letting my art teach me my art or my art will never grow.

So, here's to water of revision. May my drunkeness deliver me to a new way of seeing things and not drown in me in a stream of fearful 'what if's.'

What is art for?

2009-06-02T22:16:00.000-07:00

Deliver me from writers who say the way they live doesn't matter. I'm not sure a bad person can write a good book. If art doesn't make us better, then what on earth is it for? - Alice Walker

My parents are one of a hundred thousand, thousand other parents who have ever lived to see their child turn from a perfectly good life as a socially acceptable citizen into **shudder** an artist. Or worse, an apparently struggling artist. For my folks, coming to America was a way they could ensure that their children wouldn't suffer the hardships of war, poverty, and limited education. My brother and I were to be shining examples of success in America. Only trouble was we both believed in freedom so much, neither of us chose to become one of, as one FilAm put it, the Holy Trinity of Occupations: Engineer, Lawyer, Physician.

We've both struggled with the question of "what is art" and "how do we make a living in art." Sometimes we've gotten lucky and found venues for our work. Most of the time, we keep doing our best to give expression to what's inside aching to be something. Anything - a story, a song, a sketch, a performance. And along the way, it's easy to look back and wonder - did I make a bad decision to not try for that Ace-in-the-Hole job? Does this choice make me a bad person?

I guess that's why I keep looking for people who are creatives, ones who take what's inside themselves and make something truly unique, artful, heart-filled.

Steve Martin was one of those guys I wanted to be like as a kid. Funny, irreverent, fantastic juggler, comic with perfect timing, and oh yah, he was killer on the banjo. I'd never heard a banjo before hearing him on the record my cousin brought over to play on my folks console player. The banjo didn't sound like a guitar, didn't sound like much of anything I'd heard before, except maybe the bailalaika from the Dr. Zhivago soundtrack. Part strum, part twang, I was mesmerized by the intricate sound. You just don't get that from playing scales on a piano, let me tell you.

So somewhere after the release of King Tut, Martin turned from stage sensation to actor and along with leaving the stage, I thought the banjo music had ended. I was delighted to read recently that in fact, Martin had kept up his banjo playing and recently released his first CD of original songs.

He's been called a renaissance man for doing so many varied things with his career. He notes "Well, in a strange way, I don't have a job, so I have a lot of time on my hands. When I do work, it might be very concentrated, and it might be months where you're not really doing anything except maybe playing the banjo or writing something. You know, there's a lot of time in the day if you're not working 9 to 5."

The life of the artist isn't plotted out carefully, predictably, at least at the pace we associate with other occupations. It wends and winds and wanders, and as along as we keep letting the art teach us what to do, then we'll keep on making art and connections with people who feel the same way.

Time and Money

2009-06-02T20:35:00.001-07:00

Today a coworker of mine gathered a bunch of us together to talk about a new blog she'd been asked to create for a special group of constituents. We batted around ideas, tried to figure out what the special group needed, and attempted to set some goals. It's not an easy project - blogs are wonderful, open-ended things which means she could do almost anything, but the terrible, difficult thing about blogs is that they are open-ended things which can quickly lose focus.

At one point, I took over the driving of the web-browser, showing what I had done on this blog and Babaylan Files blog, then a little bit on how I used the Center's Facebook group to promote the content on the blog. We wrapped the meeting with a few suggestions for her to try out and she thanked me, saying something to the effect of "If I had the time and money, I would so do what you're doing, Rebecca." To which I blinked bemusedly. Time? Money? I just sort of do what needs to be done, and I've learned a bunch in the last few months through trial and error. Time and money didn't seem to be part of the organic nature of my approach.

But as I got to thinking about it, I could see why a person would think it took time and money to blog. Sure the platforms are free and sometimes the content is just aggregations of other content freely available, but it does take time to use the applications and keep the codes from falling apart. If I were to pay myself a wage for what I did as a professional web management specialist, then I could be making a bunch more than I do at my bread job. "If's" are not "nows" though and I realized that she was quantifying the work I'm doing right now in terms I hadn't before. It was something that for her would take away from the things she already enjoys doing - it would take time and money away from her lifestyle to create what I just sort of do on my own.

Like I hinted at in an earlier post, I blog for very practical reasons - to connect with other people and bring together information I'm interested in. The folks I follow on Facebook are pretty much literary writers and art-activists, but there are also a few entrepreneurs. My Twitter feed (@wordbinder) is heavier on the entrepreneurial types, because they are all so incredibly energetic about staying positive, finding ways to connect, and keeping hope in the wildest dreams. They've actually taught me the most about social networking, how to set up hashtags, how to retweet good content, how to keep in contact with their larger audience who don't necessarily reply to every tweet or post they create.

Keeping in contact through content became the lesson of the entrepreneurs. I want to not only connect with writers and activists, I want to offer something relevant to the communities. About six weeks ago I started hashtagging tweets I sent out on a thematic basis. Each workday, I have a focus point and a promise to myself that I would tweet something on the daily topic:

#MondayMuse - A simple writing prompt, something that could jump start a blog entry, essay, or poem.

#TechniqueTues - A simple revision strategy, some new way of looking at old work that might revitalize a sagging project.

#WiseWeds - A quote from an author, preferably a woman, about the craft of writing. Why just women writer's quotes? Because I don't know as many women writers as I do male writers. This gave me an excuse to look up famous women's writers and touch their work.

#ThoughtfulThurs - A new piece of technology that impacts publishing. I thought about renaming this #TechThurs but thought that name would conflict with the Tuesday tweets.

#FridayFind - A blog entry, new book release, cool video, anything that reflects a sense of creativity, possibility, and hopefully community.

I caught the hashtagging fever soon after creating this list and expanded to joining the #writers twibe , then creating the #memoirists twibe and the #babaylan twibe.

Hashtagging has kept me focused on mindcasting vs simple lifecasting, and Twitter/Facebook has given me practice on staying relevant to my goals.

The tricky part has been figuring out those goals - they have to do with writing, storytelling, community, but they're also about growing up FilAm, Philippine Scouts, indigenous/land-based spirituality, motherhood, and being Catholic. There's a touch of living in the 70's-80's in there too. This is the stuff I want to write about, the worlds all bound up in my experience.

Making the time and money to do just that is the journey for me, to create the space to do what only I can do - tell the stories in my heart.

All links appearing were accessed this same date.

Sunlight on a Far Shore

2009-05-28T21:02:00.000-07:00

I missed the silver anniversary reunion of the Philippine Scouts Heritage Society earlier this month, but our chapter president sent me a few highlights.

Even with Memorial Day 2009 officially over, I still think about my grandfather, Arcadio Mabanglo, his story of surviving the Bataan Death March and bringing his six daughters to the US in the mid-50's.

Lolo retired before I was born, but the US Army was in his blood. He believed in the Army as if it was his religion, and perhaps it was. I'm still trying to know who he was as a person, a dreamer, a father, a traveler. He's been gone... too long now, 15 years maybe? But his straightback, gud'dam, no-nonsense sensibility lingers like Aqua Velva aftershave tinged with Irish Spring soap.

I've got his discharge papers for every stint he finished from the time he enlisted in the Philippine Scouts to the day he retired, but no pictures of him during his service. I remember seeing a black and white picture of him and his buddies sitting in and around a jeep, taken I think during the Korean War. I've looked for the picture, but haven't found it. So much was lost when they moved from the house on Atlantic street to their condo.

Stories flash like sunlight on a far shore, snippets of memory - the roundness of his voice, his sharp pointed finger like a whip in the air when he spoke, his shoes all polished and in a line stretching from one side of his small room to another. He liked to sleep alone, he said of the bunk covered in a green Army blanket. Too used to sleeping alone even with Lola in the next room with her double bed. The blue ink of his signatures, the hand from an older time when penmanship was taught. The tall greeness of his corn crop, white twine strung in careful triangles to give pole beans a chance to climb. The rabbit my grandmother insisted he keep when it wandered into his garden. And how much he loved the color green. He said it was because he was born in May and the stone for May is the emerald.

I search for my grandfather still, the memory of him, the unspoken stories I didn't know to ask about when I was a teen. I find him among the stories I hear from veterans still alive and their children, and from people who research the Scouts in present day.

Here's Joe Calugas talking about his father, the only Filipino Medal of Honor recipient and I wonder, did Lolo know him?

I'm grateful to people like Victor Verano, history buff and reenactor, who take the time to interview folks like Felipe Fernandez and publish their conversations. I'm ordering Memoirs of a Philippine Scout Cavalryman to read Felipe's words and try to see how my grandfather lived those days before and during the Japanese occupation. They're not my grandfather's words, but Felipe remembers Arcadio and told me how hard he worked as a Scout.

I just remembered that my grandfather wrote letters often. I wonder where those letters went and what did they say?

It's too easy to get discouraged realizing that I'll never know the whole story of my grandfather, but I know I need to at least write what I do know, talk with my parents about him, keep searching for the photos and letters just on the off chance their in a box somewhere forgotten.

It's not just about honoring him, though, it's about recapturing the stories that were passing me by without my realizing it. That's the treasure for me, the finding of the stories, and weaving them with the memories I have of him still.

Listening and remembering, telling the story. Letting the ancestors live again.

Dancing on the 'Net

2009-05-27T20:37:00.000-07:00

It's been said that writing is a solitary art at it's core. Audience is important - writer's write for someone usually, even if that someone is themselves. But solitary is lonely and isolating, and I've discovered that community is something as needful as words for me.

I joined Twitter tentatively, shyly, and mostly to get my fix of Neil-Gaiman-Wil-Wheaton-isms. These guys are as entertaining in 140 characters as they are on blogposts and in books. Like the proverbial paperclip often used in visualization and manifestation practices, suddenly everyone I knew was on Twitter and had been for a while. So I friended them, finding that many posted more often to Twitter than to their blog. Makes sense, 140 characters is easier to bash out on the fly than a long, composed post.

Twitter became my gateway drug to Facebook (yah everyone was doing it anyway, right?) and, what started as an experiment in social networking designed to exercise my inner geek-fangrrl, rapidly became my way to find and connect with writers and entrepreneurs and visionary artists and social activists and just generally cool and interesting people. I got swept up in FB games for about a month, then when one crashed, I realized that what I really wanted from FB and Twitter was community, people who were doing stuff like I was doing, usually more successfully, but always with heart and humor.

I was getting comfy with my small circle (blob? network? web?) of friends, but then the The Center for Babaylan Studies started a FB group. I became one of the editors of the Babaylan Files a few months ago, but it didn't quite capture my attention right away. It seemed like a vast project for a very small group of people. With the FB group, though, I discovered hundreds of people interested in babaylan practices, who, like me, had trouble finding good resources for understanding babaylan concepts. I had a purpose as editor and thankfully at the same time, new material about babaylans was emerging - the 2010 conference was taking shape. Video and text conversations were happening. Books and CDs were being reviewed.

On top of that, there were people who I'd 'met' in passing through that babaylan Yahoo group who were actually online when I was online. I could chat with them about concepts I didn't understand, practices I wanted to explore, and how to live a spiritual heritage. I 'met' new people who wanted to know what I thought about babaylan practices and the response to my offering the Tao Po! writing workshop has been incredible. I found community. I found connection. I found a place opposite of isolation.

Ironically, this has lead me back to the core, back to the solitary nature of writing, back to creating and sharing the stories I've been given to share. Balancing community and self will be tricky -- wait, let's reframe that -- it will be a dance to a rhythm I'm hearing once more.

I've learned a lot about social networks these past few weeks, what I like about them, who I enjoy being connected with, what the strengths and weaknesses of each site. A person could spend all their time leveraging social networks to do amazing things, but I never want to lose sight of the fact that for me, it's a dance between self and community, offering and receiving, and making things that were never there before through the power of story.

Ira Glass on Storytelling

2009-04-29T21:23:00.000-07:00

I discovered This American Life right about the time I started Telling. I'm not a regular NPR listener but when a friend mentioned a story about The Rubber Room, I had to hunt the program down. I was intrigued not only about the story of suspended teachers held in limbo by the New York City Board of Education, but by the way the piece was put together, that unique combination of storytelling and interviews. There's a particular style to Ira Glass's pieces that makes them easy to get into and think about - the mastery of Telling.

So when Hubby mentioned that he had done vidcasts talking about Storytelling, I had to track them down. What he says about finding and telling stories, crafting and moving through the process of creativity, and ultimately being tenacious about one's art were all things I needed to hear tonight.

Although he says there are only two building blocks to good storytelling, he actually identifies three - sequence of actions, an unanswered but answerable question, and a moment of reflection. All three make up good narrative whether for broadcast, literature, or performance storytelling.

In part 2, he emphasizes that finding and creating a story will take as much or perhaps more time than the actual production of the story. This makes sense, but I often get caught up in the production of a piece before I really know and have the story sunk into me.

In part 3, Glass reminds creatives that our vision and our execution are often gapped, especially at the beginning, and that that gap is when most people quit. Of course he says, Don't Quit.

In part 4, he encourages us to be ourselves, to not try to be the people we admire who are doing the thing we want to be doing, but to also remember that stories are best told when they show how relationships affects the narrator.

A terrific group of vids I'm glad Hubby found. I've got lots of thought and soul food for the journey.

Slam Poetry and Saltlines

2009-04-05T20:15:00.000-07:00

One of the beauties of symposia and conferences is how it creates an immediate sense of community, of kapwa, in the sense of a shared experience and the sense of identification with the other participants. We all care deeply about women of color, care for each other, and care for our own experiences. We all moved to both support each other's work but to also express our experiences as succinctly and creatively as possible.

The four workshops gave participants a chance to learn and practice new skills. I wish I'd been able to see everyone's workshop! Mako Fitts of Seattle University provided a workshop on Organizing and Activism. Iolanda Palmer of the WSU Fine Arts department provided a workshop on Feminist Art. Hisami Yoshida of the Washington State Department of Corrections provided a workshop on Advocacy and Social Change. I had a few students in each of my workshops which gave me a chance to interact more closely with each participant and learned as much as I hope I gave.

Friday night of the symposium featured a poetry slam by WSU's GLBTA, mc'd by Alex Stefanova, founder of Q-Poetry. The slam was high energy and diverse, exactly what I'd hoped for a first slam poetry experience. The memorization amazed me. Long stanzas, repeated refrains, and emotive storytelling all wrapped up into incredible performances. The slam wound late into the night and I left before I got a chance to see Andrea Gibson's solo performance. Thankfully she and the others from Saltlines returned the next day and gave a performance and poetry workshop. From the exercise, I wrote this:

the old man and the young girl dressed in cloth beaten
from palm fronds strung White Privilege up on a clothesline
to hang damp and writing in the East wind

wind whipped across the plantation, brushed against
his uniform, lifting him hapless and helpless while
the people gathered to celebrate

celebrate the end of he with the cigarette whip,
he who paced on lion's paws, teeth gleaming
in moonlight, he who thundered like a thousand
brass gongs, holding one hand out to give
the measure of their oppression
holding one hand back tight as a fist, sharp bolo
knife to divide father from son from kinsman

he did not think he would be strung up so
tendrilled by telecom lines, game show lights,
and the relentless advertisements for things
untenable when work is measured
in centavos, or dollars paid beneath the table

he roars and gongs and flaps in the wind
but these are whispers, a distant drone
beneath the oralist's chant, the call
to remember that gathers the people into
a healing embrace

Flexing my on-the-spot writing muscles caused no small amount of brain-sprain, but it was good to workout again. I tried to remember my workshop exercises and the Slinky that helps me remember how connected all things are in our experiences.

Alex was the host of Saltline's workshop and filled in while the group was getting themselves coordinated. She introduced me to poet Staceyann Chin, a Jamaica immigrant whose use of haiku drills deeply into her heritage and complex family history.

Poetry eludes me still. It resonates with my sense of lyric memoir, but the discipline slips through my fingertips too easily. Slam poetry is incredibly powerful and political, slicing through social conventions to the heart of complex issues. I could not help but be inspired by Saltline's risk-taking and Alex's drive to express her art.

Lunch with the Speakers

2009-03-26T18:59:00.000-07:00

Before the Women of Color symposium officially launched, we gathered together at the Fireside Restaurant in the "new" part of town, wheatfields converted to strip malls and health care facilities in the last decade. I'd visited the Fireside in 2006 when it was only a few months old - my in-laws took me to dinner there to celebrate my first gig at WSU. It was a bit surreal for me since I had only related to them as their daughter-in-law for so many years. They were treating me like an out-of-town guest and I remember stumbling over small talk because of the shift.

I'm not a naturally gregarious person and I have to work hard to make small talk. I got lots of practice when I arrived at the Fireside this year when I arrived a bit early for the lunch and most everyone else arrived quite late. The restaurant had lost our reservation and so I sat in the lobby waiting for one of the organizers to arrive. I was feeling a displaced sort of otherness, untethered by my own nervousness heightened by the realization that I had left all my contact information back at my in-law's house.... along with my cel phone.

After about 10 minutes, a well-dressed woman came in who possessed an assurance that I recognized as someone who knew where she belonged. After confirming that the group she was with didn't have a reservation, she wandered toward me. I mustered the courage to introduce myself and ask if she was with the Women of Color Conference. She was kind and gracious, another Rebecca, and we tried to make small talk together. Our conversation was halting, but we learned about our children and our connections to WSU. She told me she was the senator from the Native American Women's Association and a returning student, and I think that's when I found myself recursively and self-consciously relating my connections with Swil Kanim and Gene Tagaban, performers she wasn't familiar with. I couldn't find much else to say and I sensed that I was making more of them and her heritage than she felt comfortable with. I'd fallen into that reductionist trap of race and I didn't know how to get myself out of it.

My closest ties to the realm of the indigenous is through the Native American culture - I still know so little about the Mangyan and T'boli cultures and they are not tied to the land on which I walk. It was awkward, and I became increasingly aware of my pushing for connection with her. She was kind and patient, thankfully, and after a few long pauses, the rest of the group arrived.

I found myself at the end of the table with Turea Erwin, the director of the Women's Center and Kimberly McLaughlin-Smith of UNCW. I studied my menu, searching for something vegetarian, nothing expensive, but perhaps different from what I'd usually order. The room was charged by hunger, a feeling of lateness, and a sense of not belonging. The restaurant never did find our reservation but by the time we were seated, there was enough space to accommodate the eight of us. The sweet potato fries were wonderful as was the portabello mushroom burger I had. Conversation varied from complaining about the weather, talking about the isolation inherent in the Palouse, and activism. We were slowly getting to know each other, but in a tired sort of way. We hadn't picked up on the energy of the conference and I think each of us was feeling a responsibility to create that energy, travel-lagged and hungry as we were.

I learned about Kimberly's work as a diversity trainer as she told us about how the African American's in her constituency were forced out by whites in the early part of the 20th century, relegated to the periphery, yet still a part of the economy. Making the majority aware of the black population was the first task - history had erased the memory of those early people, the first non-slaves in the area. The awareness had to come for both sides of the fence, black and white, for the African American's had forgotten their history too, and accepted complacently their second-citizen status in the area. Her frustration was evident and we were all amazed at the revisionist memory of her area.

I jotted down these notes:

Activism and Advocacy ==>> awareness, "being aware," "bringing awareness," "acting on awareness," stating the problem and telling the story.

We might not always know how to relate to each other in those first awkward moments of relationships, but when we tell the story of what we're passionate about, then we begin to create community, deeper community.

The speaker's lunch was a start, and over the next 24 hours I would find myself transformed by the community.

Online Writing Workshop Begins April 1

2009-03-24T09:15:00.000-07:00

Although I haven't finished blogging about the WSU Coalition for Women Students Women of Color symposium, I've had interest in extending the workshop I presented to an online environment and thought I would open up the workshop to the greater community.

The workshop begins April 1st and will run initially for six weeks. It's open to all levels of writers and all genres of writing. I see myself as a facilitator rather than an instructor and I'll be working with the participants to create a safe, energetic, and supportive environment where writers can be in community with each other.

Here's the description:

Tao Po! Sharing Ourselves, Changing the World

Our lives are stories made of stories: ancestor stories, environment stories, relationship stories, role stories. Many of these stories are given to us without our awareness, while others are built from our experiences.

Using the babaylan concepts of kapwa, loob, and Tao Po! this workshop will focus on creatively expressing our stories throught the written word to help us find and create meaning in our experiences. We will reflect on small and big events, tease out the stories that have been given to us, and share our writing with each other. Our stories exist in the details of our lives and sharing requires a belief that our stories matter to not just ourselves but to others.

By writing down and sharing our experiences, we pass on the gift of our lives to others. Even if we are not physically with the reader, our writing can provide a new perspective and new information they would not otherwise know. Bringing our experiences to the page, even if they are cloaked with metaphors or changed slightly to protect the innocent and the guilty, a kernel of truth can be revealed. Isolation divides, but community can heal if approached with honesty and integrity. That's the beauty and wonder of writing.

Each of us has a story to tell; that's what makes each of us storytellers.
If you are a storyteller, you can write.
If you can write, you can change the world.

Leave a comment here for more details or leave an email to find out how to sign up.

Mabuhay!

Rebecca Mabanglo-Mayor received her BA in Humanities from Washington State University in 1998 and her MA degree in English with honors from Western Washington University in 2003 for her thesis "Notes from the Margins," a mixed work of memoir and fiction. Her poetry and short fiction have appeared in the Byline Magazine, Katipunan Literary Magazine and the online magazine Haruah. In Spring 2008, her piece "Becoming a Woman of Color" was the First Place Winner in the Writing it Real Personal Essay Contest hosted by Sheila Bender. Her short story "Yellow is for Luck" is forthcoming in Growing Up Filipino II, edited by Cecilia Brainard, an anthology for young adults. Currently, she is a Senior Editor at a non-profit scientific publisher. She performs regularly as a storyteller, and her Twitter handle is "@wordbinder".

Kimberly McLaughlin-Smith

2009-03-10T21:15:00.000-07:00

The night before I left for WSU, we picked up the mail and I found that my godmother had sent me a copy of a a guest column written by WSU prof Alex Kuo. Although I I never had the chance to take a class from Dr. Kuo, I've read a few articles by him. I read the column in haste between packing bags for the trip. The tone of the letter disturbed me - it was apparent Kuo was angry and trying to cram more information into the piece than was easily comprehensible given the length. The copy came with just a sticky note from my godmother "an editorial in our Sunday paper. Hope all is well with you." I found it strangely timely that her letter arrived the night I was leaving for the symposium.

Although we don't communicate much with each other, I do get the occasional spam-meme-of-good-luck from my godmother as well as news that my alma mater hasn't been all that friendly to folks like us. As before, I was disturbed by the article, recalling the other articles she'd sent me about racial incidents on the WSU campus flaring up every few years. When I attended school, I conducted workshops in the dorms (er Residence Halls) on effective cross-cultural communication and helped organize cultural programs. Still, my activism was limited to these small events and I wasn't involved with any of the coalitions and student groups who sponsored my workshop last weekend. WSU is a college tucked in a small town surrounded by wheat fields. When I attended, there was a Filipino restaurant and a few Chinese restaurants, but these were like small rocks in a very large stream, and honestly I let myself get swept along quite often. It's wearing to think the worst in people, that at any given moment, someone might say or do something racist and/or sexist toward you. I just knew that there were certain places that I wasn't welcome and didn't try to change that.

My self-racism and sexism ran deep and rarely touched the surface for examination, but I think I knew that those things existed on campus and off. It was a given. I remember being followed around in stores as if I were a likely shoplifter. I remember the epithets shouted against my supposed Muslim heritage because I wore a particular scarf in winter. I remember when the black man was found hung in the UI (next county over) arboretum and the days after when we wondered if he'd been lynched by folks from Hayden Lake and the days after that when we breathed a sigh of relief when it was determined he'd killed himself. We were relieved about a suicide. Better than a hate crime, somehow.

Nearly 20 years later, I sat listening to Kim McLaughlin-Smith talkin' 'bout bein' ire, shakin' her dreadlocks, and makin' a case for better cross-cultural communication. Can't make assumptions, she say, can't be afraid o'aksin' questions. As it turns out, Kim haint no Jamaican born, but she uses the persona to emphasize how easy it can be to slide into assumptions even with the best of intentions. Kim was our keynote for the symposium, setting the tone of the event as one where we needed to extend our comfort zone a bit, see where we still harbored prejudice and experienced racism/sexism, then use our knowledge in a constructive, creative, and artistic way. Here's the notes I jotted down during her talk:

* Exposure to anything is Everything. Lack of or poor exposure can lead to poor relations and confusion among the masses.
* We hate some persons because we do not know them
* Understand your own cultural lenses. Apply this understanding to enhance relationship.
* Things that inhibit positive cross-communication: fear of the unknown; more differences than similarities; relying on "That's just the way they are."; don't say the wrong thing, mistakes can be irreparable; stick to what you know; don't ask dumb questions!
* See people how they see themselves.
* Poor cross-cultural communication is based on cross-cultural misinformation
* Limitations of US culture - arrogance, ignorance, and presumptuousness
* The historic inability of many majority Americans to view minorities as palatable unless they are repackaged, stems from a particular mindset that prefers to remain within a specific comfort zone. Any behavior or marker outside that zone creates tension.
* The racial struggle of black peoples in America is very often the first point of reference used in the argument to gain GBLTQ equity
* The women's sufferance movement was probably one of America's most exclusive (meaning designed to exclude women of color) civil rights initiatives in our country's history.
* "Life is not a playground, but a classroom." -- Susan Taylor
* "Be the change you want to see." -- Ghandi

Each night after the symposium, my in-laws would ask me how my sessions went. A harmless enough question, but there was a certain tension in the air that I couldn't place right away. I thought perhaps that they were uncomfortable with me leaving the girls behind and being the one out in the world doing things instead of DH. When I returned home, I started researching Dr. Kuo's article after reading the scathing comments to his column. One of the symposium organizers had mentioned that there had been a backlash online about his column, but no one knew if there was any sanctioning of him professionally because of his piece (but isn't it interesting that this was even a worry? Would we be concerned if it had been a member of the majority who spoke against the racial climate?).

As it turns out, Kuo's column was a response to a column in the International Examiner which painted a very rosy picture of life as an Asian student at WSU. In turn, this piece was a response to an even earlier letter sent to the Greater Seattle Chapter of the Organization of Chinese Americans which was quite the opposite. Given this thread of statements and rebuttals as well as the verbal attacks on Asian American women in 2005 and the more recent attacks on gay men on the WSU campus, no wonder my in-laws were concerned that I was turning into a radical activist bent on causing all sorts of headache for the WSU administration.

We protested in 2006 against one campus group's an untimely choice of using Chinese tokenism at a dinner hosted in the same building as the CAPTIVATE conference, but this year we were definitely focused on flexing our creativity and art to make space for positive dialogue. Ultimately, I was challenged by Kim's words and I began to ask myself if I really am doing all I can to eliminate racism and sexism in my own community. I realized that I still have much work on myself to do to heal the self-racism and sexism within me. But I was also inspired by the students I met who believed in making positive change and were looking for effective ways to do that. We created a community in a short time designed to support each other's work going forward. Truly an amazing symposium.

Next: Lunch with the Speakers

Putting It All Together

2009-03-09T21:54:00.000-07:00

To say the weekend was wonderful, inspiring, amazing, terrifying, fulfilling, and otherwise awesome would be an understatement.

The WSU Coalition for Women Students put on an awesome symposium this year and I felt so honored to be a part of it. There's a great write up in the Daily Evergreen: The journalist who came to my class was really sweet and asked good interview questions. I was caught off guard and feel like I stumbled over my words, but she made me sound really smart.

So, to backtrack a bit, I was scheduled to give four writing workshops at the symposium, two back-to-back on Friday and two back-to-back on Saturday morning. In the past I've given one workshop at an event, so the prospect of giving the same talk four times in a short period of time had me a bit concerned. I didn't want the material to go stale on me, but the participants were wonderful, laughing at all the right moments and digging into the work, even as I threw unfamiliar terms from babaylan practices at them. I was especially excited to see two students from Association of Pacific and Asian Women (APAW) whom I had met in 2006 when they were Freshmen and who asked me to come back this year. One even mentioned still having her special Slinky that I had given her (yes, Slinky. It is, after all, the Key to All Wisdom) and I was happy to add to her collection this year.

I used some of the slides from my previous presentation, but changed up the format to focus more on storytelling in the written word. Since the focus of the symposium was Art, Activism, and Advocacy, I wanted to provide ways for participants to bring awareness to their own lives and to the topics they felt were most important on an activism level.

Activism and Advocacy are such multi-dimensional topics covering a diversity of issues that it can sometimes be overwhelming to tackle in just a 45 minute talk. Thankfully the Coalition put together a strong program that brought together activists and artists from different backgrounds to share their take on the movement. Rather than try and mush the entire weekend into one post, I plan on talking about special moments from the symposium over the next few days to give myself time to digest and share the event. (I may even reveal the Secret of the Slinky...)

Getting to the symposium was a trick and a half, though. We had planned on taking off work/school on Thursday (the symposium started on Friday) so we would have the entire day to travel. By car, it takes about 8 hours on good roads to make the trip. We didn't have good roads on Thursday. We didn't have bad roads on Thursday. We had white-knuckle, chains-in-the-pass, ohmygosharewegoingtoditchit roads on Thursday. Did I mention how much I appreciate my DH for being such a good snow driver?

After weeks of no snow and relatively clear passes, we hit a late winter storm that caused the DOT to close the pass... right after we made it over (thankfully). Mid-state was pretty clear, but then right around dinnertime we hit whiteout conditions - about 80 miles of whiteout conditions. DH was exhausted by the time we arrived, but we got there after almost 11 hours on the road. My girls were troopers, watching lots of Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends (we loves iTunes, we do) and listening to everything from Imogen Heap to Shared Voice to Thomas Dolby.

DH's mom had chili all ready to warm our tummies and in general, it felt very much like being home again. After living in the Palouse for 14 some odd years, it was great to be back, even with the cold and the snow and the snow and the cold, all such typical weather for the region. I fussed over my workshop materials before I went to bed and made a few calls with one of the organizers to be sure I knew the schedule for the following day. Before falling asleep, I realized that I was coming full circle in a lot of different ways - returning to present after 3 years, returning to the campus where I went to school and worked for 5 years, returning to see DH's family in their town after over 2 years.

But most of all, coming full circle to a Woman of Color symposium, the same sort of event I went to in Vancouver in the Fall of 1999 when I discovered to my great surprise that I wasn't a white man after all the years of trying to pass as a member of the mainstream. That I was, quite distinctly, a Woman of Color and that perhaps the discovery might be something well worth writing about.

Next: Multicultural Communication with Kimberly McLaughlin-Smith

Ambahan and Babayin

2009-02-28T11:44:00.000-08:00

Next week, I'll be presenting writing workshops at the Woman of Color Symposium sponsored by the WSU Coalition of Women Students (here's the flyer. It's big, just to warn.)

I presented at the CAPTIVATE conference in 2006, and I'm very honored to be asked back for the annual event. As in 2006, I'll be focusing on babaylan concepts of Tao Po!, Loob, and Kapwa with a view to creating activist prose. This year, though, I'll be bringing in more examples of modern babaylan practices that I've come to know. Right now I'm listening to the chants of Mendung Sabal from the The Shared Voice cd for inspiration and guidance and as I'm putting together my notes, I'm constantly asking myself how can I help the conference participants bring awareness to the things they feel are most important now?

Here's the workshop blurb:

Tao Po! Sharing Ourselves, Changing the World

Our lives are stories made of stories: ancestor stories, environment stories, relationship stories, role stories. Many of these stories are given to us without our awareness, while others are built from our experiences.

Using the babaylan concepts of kapwa, loob, and Tao Po! this workshop will focus on creatively expressing our stories throught the written word to help us find and create meaning in our experiences. We will reflect on small and big events, tease out the stories that have been given to us, and share our writing with each other. Our stories exist in the details of our lives and sharing requires a belief that our stories matter to not just ourselves but to others.

By writing down and sharing our experiences, we pass on the gift of our lives to others. Even if we are not physically with the reader, our writing can provide a new perspective and new information they would not otherwise know. Bringing our experiences to the page, even if they are cloaked with metaphors or changed slightly to protect the innocent and the guilty, a kernel of truth can be revealed. Isolation divides, but community can heal if approached with honesty and integrity. That’s the beauty and wonder of writing.

Each of us has a story to tell; that’s what makes each of us storytellers.
If you are a storyteller, you can write.
If you can write, you can change the world.

* * * * *

Mendung's words will be included too:

My assignment is to heal and recount history; to teach how we must relate with our neighbors; how to handle conflicts and promote peace; to teach the values of bravery and the protection of our territory. I also teach how datu must deal with their wives...When people fight and kill and I sing to them, they start crying.

And I look forward to playing her chants during the conference.

My slides will have concepts in baybayin and English, thoughts from The Enduring Ma-Aram Tradition by Alicia P. Magos and examples of ambahan poetry from Mangyan Treasures by Antoon Postma.

The form will take after Nancy Canyon's writing exercises and Sheila Bender's callback method.

* * * * *

There's an aswang that hovers nearby holding a blade made of concerns about authenticity, claims of mastery, and use of methods from two different cultures. I'll need to make peace with her soon.

Father Tom McMichael

2009-01-21T23:05:00.000-08:00

I was introduced to Tom when he arrived at our parish as a seminarian a little over a year ago. I thought we were hosting a typical young man, who had nearly completed his studies and was getting some "field" experience under his belt. Now, when I say "introduced," I mean I was at a Mass where Fr. Scott announced his arrival and sort of saw Tom standing toward the middle of the church, far from where we usually sit.

Tom's not a "go-getter" in the classic gregarious sense - he's very quiet and unassuming, and I honestly forgot about him until he started serving as a Eucharistic Minister on the same Sundays I was a Lector. He was older than I expected a 'seminarian' to be and perhaps a bit more awkward with the routine of Mass. I put it down as an unfamiliarity with our parish; although the Mass has pretty much the same form all over the world, like the variation between households in the US, our parish has certain ways of doing things that I could see as possibly different from others.

Sometime around the summer of 2008, we heard he was going to become a deacon and his presence at Masses was more frequent. He tended to only serve the Eucharist, never lectoring or giving a homily, never really stepping into anything remotely considered limelight in the course of the Mass. Somewhere along there, I realized he was a family man although I never saw his wife with him, and sometime in there, I heard he had converted to Roman Catholicism. I do remember briefly wondering if they had perhaps broken up over his change of faith-form. Thankfully I was incorrect.

Later though, last Fall, Fr. Scott announced with great joy that Tom was being ordained as a deacon and mentioned that he and Tom's wife were both very excited about Tom's ordination. I missed the ceremony, unfortunately, and then it started to make more sense - Ah, yes, this married man would be like our other married deacon. That's good, we need the help - big parish, you know. Then Father went on to say they (he and Tom) had great hopes that soon Tom would be allowed into the priesthood.

Cool, I thought, Tom would make a great priest! I looked forward to hearing him lector the Gospel and wondered what his first homily would be like. In December, I got my chance, and his voice carried well, the homily was well-written, and he was obviously comfortable with speaking in front of others. It was only a few weeks after his deacon-ordination that we heard that Pope Benedict had sent word that Tom had been accepted for ordination. The Pope is the only one who can make that decision and in a very real sense, Tom was called by the Pope himself to be a priest in the Roman Catholic Church.

That's really when I realized I hadn't fully understood his story - Tom was a Lutheran pastor who served in a church not far from our town. He concelebrated with the more-local-to-his-church parish on several occasions and had great hopes in the 90's for the reunification of Lutherans with Roman Catholics. When that didn't happen, he started inquiry with the Archbishop and came in "full communion" along with his wife and two sons a few years ago. Still, there were no guarantees he would be able to return to the ministry he loved.

We attended his ordination in Seattle two weekends ago and he stood as deacon with his wife and grown sons at the beginning of Mass and by the end, he was standing as priest with all the other priests that had come to witness and celebrate.

The first married priest in the Archdiocese of Seattle and one of only about 100 in the US. I never thought I'd see the day and, like Obama's inauguration yesterday gave me hope for our nation, I have great hope again for the Church. Change comes slowly, painfully slow for many, including myself, but change *is* happening, *has* happened and I couldn't be prouder.

Fr. Tom doesn't want to be the poster child for the married priesthood. He emphasizes that he's the exception to the rule. His focus is on the opportunity to minister as he feels he's been called to do. The Archbishop acknowledged that Tom's first priority is God, but that his first responsibility is to his wife.

Tom's ministry will be complicated to manage but I imagine very fulfilling. Tom's story is a terrific example of integrity in action, of moving down a path that sometimes looks traditional but becomes something so much more because the focus is on the path, not the destination.

I hope he's able to stay with our parish awhile. It's possible we'll help him get his legs as a priest then he'll be assigned somewhere else. But we do need another priest in our parish and I know I'm not the only one making special requests at the foot of the altar.

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Next: Ambahan and Babayin

Memory Keepers

2009-01-20T11:08:00.000-08:00

Where were you when...

Barak Obama became the 44th President of the United States?

the Twin Towers came down?

the Berlin Wall crumbled?

the Challenger shuttle exploded?

Armstrong walked the moon?

I love blank books. From my first Nothing Book , a gift for my 9th or 10th birthday to my moleskine's, I have loved the potentiality of the blank page. All smooth, all ready for thoughts and experiences I had yet to have, to record the events great and small in the world.

I'm a compulsive, irratic, undisciplined journal-writer, apt to fill only journals part-way before abandoning them because...I simply stopped filling them. I think I create too much expectation on what should be written them and when that expectation no longer fits my experience, then I drop the journaling. Then later, I feel compelled by the shininess of a new journal, all fresh with possibility, to pick one up and try again. I have a full shelf of half-made journals, all testimony to great promise only partially fulfilled. I have dreams of organizing them, notions really and the skeleton of a plan which started with picking up a 5-Year Diary .

What in the world am I thinking, committing to a 5 year diary when I can hardly fill one? Each page is a day divided into sections for each year, five sections per page. The sections are small, only 5-6 lines, narrow in height. Hardly enough for musings. But it's not a musings book, it's a record book and at first I panicked wondering if I lead enough of a life to fill even just a few lines. Just writing about writing was depressing because I don't get to my writing everyday.

Then it occured to me - by buying this 5 year journal I was committing to not only live a life worth writing about but to write about my life because I'd view my life as worth writing about, even the seeming small things. So in goes the stuff about kid's basketball games, trips to Canada haberdasheries, and writing workshops.

A year from now, I'll get to see what I did in 2009 and maybe find the trends in my life, the low and high points, the cyclical nature of my living. And this thought lead me to look at those old journals again and think about how there might be a way to do the same over the course of several journals. Compile them all together, grouping according to days, see what comes of it. Someone, maybe Ver, mentioned in their blog once about journals that had pockets in the back cover so you could slip the cover of one book into the cover of the next, creating a stack of journals over time. I thought maybe if they were 32 pages in a journal or some other increment that would work well with a year, maybe I could still have the experience of handwriting my journals. I haven't found them since that post, though, and can't find the post unfortunately. The clerk at the fancy paper store in Vancouver hadn't heard of them either and Google searching for 'insertable journals' just brings up stuff not fit for viewing.

They only print 5-year diaries for the 20xx years - none for the 19xx years, so I'll have to record the days from my old journals differently, perhaps in Scrivener. I imagine it will be a sort of electronic cross-reference to the physical journals I've collected.

Life can't be reduced to the answers to a few questions, but the answers can point to meaningful connections, the stuff of memoirs and poems, folktales and novels.

...I was sitting on our gold shag carpet, sleepy and grumpy, trying to make out the images on our black and white TV that my parents were so excited about. That grey lined footprint in lunar sand...

...I was walking back to my hall after dinner and disbelieved on of my residents who told me they were gone, Christa McAuliffe and all the others. The light splashing on the counter was too soft, the hallway too loud with shuffling feet, the smell of sweat and dust too pungent for them to be gone...

...I caught the news after work that they had taken the Wall down themselves, the East Berliners. Saw them kick and shove that wall to stand on its ruins. I didn't see it go up, but I saw it come down. A few years later, my husband's family reconnected with their Yugoslavian relatives...

...I was sitting on the couch, breastfeeding my youngest daughter, watching TV instead of being present with her, seeing the planes and knowing that this was not a movie, this was not an accident, this was real too real much too real. I watched for two days then could not watch the news again for weeks, months, even now, I can't watch more than 5-10 minutes of the news...

...I sat with my coworkers in our lounge watching the streaming video on our presentation screen, then switched to listening on a transistor radio when the streaming stalled. I felt like someone from the last century tuning into hear Franklin D. on the radio. These are difficult times, but we have hope again...

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Next: Father Tom McMichael

Lynda Barry

2009-01-19T19:09:00.000-08:00

“I accept this award today with an abiding faith in America and an audacious faith in the future of mankind. I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history.” Martin Luther King Jr accepting the Nobel Peace prize in 1964

Poodle with a Mohawk was the first Lynda Barry cartoon I had ever seen. The original poster was published in 1982, but I probably saw it in our college newspaper around 1984. My friends loved the the comic and I remember feeling vaguely confused about it. The style was different than the Sunday Funnies fare and the message was sharp. I got the irony, I think, but revisiting it now, I find myself seeing another side of the "audacious faith" King mentions.

In Poodle, Barry deftly captures the conundrum of the minority - hedged by stereotypes yet bubbling with unexpressed rage - she creates a character who moves beyond the stereotype into a visceral sense of self-determination (which reminds me a lot of Edwin San Juan who manages to take on the self-racism of minorities with comedy).

I picked up Barry's book What It Is in December, then this month, I stumbled upon a copy of One! Hundred! Demons! at our favorite used bookstore. The back bears evidence that the book was used as a text for English 410 (wish I knew who the instructor was) and inside there's a chapter dedicated to the Aswang. The book is based on painting exercise inspired by Hakuin Ekaku's painting One Hundred Demons.

One! Hundred! Demons! is a memoir in graphic form, meaning that Barry writes and illustrates her memoir in vivid detail and with the sharpness of Poodle. Through the exercises, Barry shares her experiences as a hapa-pinay (3/4 Anglo, 1/4 Filipina), an artist, a child growing up 'different' due to economic class, a human being trying to find her place in the world. There are moments of clarity she reaches after trying to make sense of the ambiguities in her life. Sometimes she reaches a stronger place, while others she simply realizes she's not as strong as she wishes she could be. Her work is overall "human" to me, prickly and beautiful all at once.

To my delight, I found Come Over, Come Over at the same bookstore. In this book, sisters Maybonne and Marlys are usually not on each other's side, and Barry unfolds their stories by tapping deftly into the helpless feelings and emerging strength unique to the ages of each sister. Mixed up with trying to figure out how to be loyal to their emotionally abusive mother and loving toward their absent father are references to pop-culture hallmarks of the mid-60's including Car Bingo and vice-principals who think their hip. Barry's work emerges from confusion and anger to achieve a hopeful space for both the characters and the reader. There's no trace of sentimentality or easy answers at the end of her books, just that sense of choice - we all have a choice to believe the stories of our circumstances or to create a new story from which we can thrive.

The last line in Come Over, Come Over reads: "P.S. I still think life is magical."

Audacious Faith

Audacity of Hope

We may not be able to control the circumstances of our experiences, but we can choose whether to respond with despair or hope. Both require energy.

Only one choice will give us dignity.

Yes We Can!

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Next: Memory Keeping

Random Things

2008-12-30T08:41:00.000-08:00

Marianne tagged me earlier this month and I suspect by extension Ver also tagged me, so here's seventeen random things about me.

1. I love memes. I find them very addicting.

2. I try to avoid memes. They're very addicting.

3. I usually, eventually, do what I'm asked to do.

4. That comes from 10 years of Catholic school, I think.

5. Kindergarten at public school was pretty fun.

6. Middle public school was not very fun.

7. I've had hair down to my waist twice in my life.

8. I cut my hair about two months ago.

9. I'm on my second hairstyle.

10. I look like something out of an 80's hair band.

11. I can't decide whether to try another cut or call my current look my "growing out stage."

12. I thought Star Wars was the weirdest looking movie I'd ever seen a trailer for.

13. Star Wars is one of my favorite movies.

14. Return of the Jedi wasn't bad.

15. The rest of the franchise was obviously written by the few misinformed midichlorians flowing through Jar Jar Bink's slobber.

16. I am hoping to rent Clone Wars soon.

17. I think this makes me an optimist.

**stall**

Seventeen. That wasn't hard at all. I think I could have gone on for quite a few more random things...cause I can talk Star Wars for /days/.

Since my stats show I only get about an average of 6 hits a day, I think I'm hard pressed to find 17 people to tag. So instead, look to your right, scroll down, and check out someone from my blogroll. They're all really cool people.

Next: Lynda Barry

Wisdom from the Margins

2008-12-29T12:41:00.000-08:00

The thing about new routines is that they're like new plants - when the environment changes and becomes unstable, it's really hard to keep new things growing and deepening, and there's nothing more unstabling for me than 2 foot of snow over Christmas.

We've come through it all okay. We had a wonderful Christmas at home with new friends and did a bunch of house cleaning/sorting. We're all adjusting to the fact, though, that we weren't able to do the traveling that we wanted to and that for about 10 days we wondered "are we going to make it up/down the hill today or should we just stay put?" I feel like we've been in a holding pattern and just now landing and figuring out what can be done with the last few days of the year.

Spent most of the weekend dredging out my bookshelves which meant a lot of soul-searching. I realized that I have so many unread books on my shelf that even if I read a book a week for two years, I wouldn't finish them all. Yes, I'm a bookaholic. So then came the sorting, facing the fact that I wasn't going to be able to read all the books I had bought and setting new criteria for what I'd keep and what I'd pitch. It wasn't fun, but it wasn't as devestating as I thought it would be.

Ironically, it made me feel rather wealthy realizing I had more books than I could conceivably read, that life is quite abundant for me and that's a really nice feeling. I have more than enough resources to get done what I envision now, and those projects could take a few years to finish. It made it easier to let go of stuff.

It also allowed me a chance to group things together (exactly how many books on characterization does a writer need anyway?) and remember some texts I had started but not finished. Katrin DeGuia's Kapwa was among them and seeing it reminded me of the Four Agreements and a bunch of other books I've read over the years which talk about indigineous and traditional belief systems.

In all cases, it seems, there's this sense of 'going back,' of getting to the essential, the stuff that has been cluttered by modernity and politics and structuralism.

It always bothered me a bit, especially in the heigh-day of the New Age, where 'white folk' looked to 'colored folk' for wisdom. When did people of color become the keepers of wisdom tasked with teaching their 'masters' the error of their ways?

I realized recently that part of that search has to do with the lack of language in the dominant paradigm to adequately describe 'otherness' and 'difference.'

Here's the thing - if we need a system to address everybody's experience and everybody's longing and everybody's encounters with the sacred then that system is going to be pretty...generic. The system becomes complicated and convoluted because the system isn't designed to address difference - only sameness. The trouble comes from the fact that humans are all unique and that difference from sameness creates fear and fear mixed with power or lack of power creates conflict.

Trouble is, we forget that the system, the dominant paradigm isn't designed to handle difference. It's only able to handle sameness. So even if a person comes pretty close to having similiar attributes to the sameness established by the system, there will be times that person will feel outside and different. Could be a small thing, like a preference for cinnamon ice cream and the lack of that flavor at an ice cream shop, but still there's that shift to 'outside' and 'different.'

But there's no language in the system to account for this, other than words and stories about 'outside' and 'different' that calls for adjustment, usually on the part of the individual.

Being able to celebrate difference, having the supporting stories for difference, and seeing other differences supported and celebrated - these are the things we look for when we try encounter artistic expressions and explorations that are indigenous by nature.

Where I get troubled, though, in finding teachers and books who work in these spaces, is the idea of 'authenticity.' What makes an authentic FilAm experience? What is authentic indigenous Filipino art? Is there authentic North Puget Sound culture present in 2008? Who are the keepers of authenticity? What claims of authenticity can I make about what I do and the path I follow?

I think authenticity goes back to that generic sensibility, the imposition of the same cultural rules and regulations as those placed on the dominant. "Authenticity mavens" create an 'other,' a binary by saying "this is authentic, this is not," with no regard for intention, respect, or community.

I'm coming into a space where 'indigenous' means 'inclusion' - everyone contributing to an experience of art, everyone's story being part of the whole. This is a challenging place to be, because I know I'll encounter folks and art that I don't think 'belongs' to me, but I guess I have to remember that nothing belongs to me. I am a participant or not a participant - that's my point of choice.

Anyway, language - when I read the work of Katrin or Leny or Barbara Jane or Gaiman or DeLint or Bach or the Chatelaine or any of the others I list on my blogroll, I'm looking for resonant language.

Resonance. Language. Inclusion. Choice.

These are the bits of wisdom I find at the margins.

Next: Random Things

Exercise is Not a Four-Letter Word

2008-12-10T08:22:00.000-08:00

"Sit down as we relive our lives in what we tell you." - Genesis, Home by the Sea

Heard it on the way into work today. Haven't listened to the album in ages.

The lyric struck me - this is what happens when we gather oral history, get folks to sit down and tell stories on themselves, on each other.

This time of year is ripe for that sort of connection, that strengthening of kapwa-tao. Tao Po!/Tuloy! - I am a human being. Come share my world.

Can't say for sure what my ancestors from warmer islands gave for a reason to sit down this time of year, before the Spanish came, before the Muslim came, before the reckoning of a specific grouping of days as a cycle of life. I think it's rainy season in the Philippines - I was there once over Christmas/New Years, but I was six then and my memories are about green grass being pulled up as weeds and the fire that nearly leveled the town. I'm pretty sure, though, there would be times to do this, sit down and listen to each other tell the stories of our lives.

'Round here, cold times meant slowing down, bringing life from outdoors to indoors, gathering around a fire, doing the things to preserve life during winter, mend things that were broken, and most of all tell stories.

Reliving life, the time spent in the last few months, and reflecting.

Reflection isn't about /producing/ anything. It's not about /investigating/ or /questioning/ even. It's more about saying This is what happened. Look, we survived. I think I learned this. I think I want to do the same/different.

And most importantly, we /ask/ each other - How about you?

But it doesn't happen in a void, it happens in community - here's the thing you might not know about me, about this place, about how I'm connected to you and this patch of earth and this community and this memory/these memories.

An expansion/further meditation on Collaborative Storytelling, in a sense, but before, I'd only seen oral history as a one-way transmission, forgetting that in the act of Telling we have the opportunity to relive something lost/forgotten, to gain perspective and meaning from that. Giving and receiving all at once.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

So...this post was supposed to be on how Exercise is not a four-letter word.

It's a habit of mind, I realize, that the post above, the spontaneous meditation born of a significant moment (i.e. inspiration) is what I really love the most. Something strikes me, sends me to the keyboard, gives me a moment of panic that the feeling will slip away before I reach my computer, wait for it to fire up, and locate my blog. I write and think at the same time, no pausing, except to hear/listen to what the moment is doing to my brain, my body, changing my experience into something new. It's exhilarating.

As opposed to exercise.

I know it's really about the way I've approached exercise, in writing and in physical movement. It's not spontaneous - it has to be scheduled and planned in with everything else. It's usually rigorous so the body doesn't get lopsided and the mind stretches to new places without snapping back in painful brain cramps or emotional tailspins.

I know it's "good for me" which isn't really a good motivator for someone who tends to put themselves last on the list, who prefers signature hot chocolotes over say fruit-n-protein smoothies.

But I'm learning to exercise and finding that moving/writing for the sake of exercise is a good thing. Like reflection, exercise doesn't /produce/ anything, at least not right away, but it does /feel/ good (after the initial - ohmygoshIamsooutofshape). It's something to do just for myself.

So, I got a Wii last summer and I've been getting better about getting on the board and putting in the time. I signed up for a weekly writing exercise class -

- the last session, some weird stuff came out - everything from Aswangs talking with Silkies and other characters from nearly every Filipino folktale I know. It was a long sentence, kind of creepy in a Neil Gaiman-Coraline sort of way. But I also got a cool bead on a piece about my Lolo...still stalking that one carefully. Early work is so easily spooked.

The playshop/class (at Nancy Canyon Studios) is great for generating new material and that's what I think the next few months before I start into the MFA track again will be about - gathering as much new stuff as I can and practicing...sort of like the MFA is a marathon I'm training for. There's no instruction, per se, just three exercises - first, five minutes of short sentences; second, ten minutes of chained sentences; third, twenty minutes of a single, continuous sentence.

Anyway, been off the Wii for almost a week now due to sickishness, but maybe tonight I'll get on that board, just for today and that will be good.

Next: Wisdom from the Margins

The Miraculous Journey of BunBun the Bunny

2008-12-08T16:02:00.000-08:00

T-minus 4 days to The Tale of Despereaux. I have great hopes for the movie, although from the trailers, I can already see that they've added scenes that weren't in the book (I think...darn, I'll have to read it again. :) What I loved best about this story is how Despereaux fell in love with books and became a better creature because of them.

Kate DiCamillo is one of those marvelous authors who not only knows how to tell a good story for children but knows how to tell a good story for the child-within-us. She believes in courage and hope and all the things we wish life could be like, but at the same time recognizes that sometimes, oftentimes, it takes struggle to attain those jewels. Adventure is part and parcel of her work and recent events coupled with the release of the movie, puts another book of hers, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane.

Edward Tulane was a china bunny who learned how to love and be loved, and I imagine BunBun was much the same. She left us one post-Easter a few years back, finding herself out of favor momentarily, sent to live with another family via Goodwill. Sadly, her owner regretted sending BunBun away bitterly and often cried herself to sleep wondering where BunBun could be. We discovered Edward Tulane's story about a year after BunBun left our house and we often comforted ourselves with the knowledge that somewhere, BunBun was having adventures of her own, perhaps as a tramp on a train or as a companion to a sick child.

But the loss of BunBun was heavy on the heart of her original owner and many tears were shed both in sadness and worry. Three years, she was gone, then miraculously, just like in the book, BunBun returned home, but thankfully before her first owner had grown too old to hold her close at night, never to shed a tear over her again. The tale ends with great joy as BunBun reveals to her first owner the many places she's gone - Paris, France; Wisconsin, South Dakota - to name a few.

And much rejoicing was had in our house.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

A mother's addendum - if you ever find yourself needing to find a special stuffy, seek the many eyes and warm hearts of Plush Memories Lost Toys Search Service. They also found a 'younger brother' of another beloved companion whose worn ears and never-quite-clean cloth are the badges of 11 years of loving and comfort.

Next: Exercise is Not a Four Letter Word

Ladders to the Moon

2008-12-04T11:06:00.000-08:00

(* We pre-empt our regularly scheduled column for the following announcement. *)

Ladders to the Moon: Solstice Concert Series

What Does Compassion Sound Like

Through Music, Dance, and Stories from Around the World

December 21, 2008

4:30 to 6:00 Family Performance
7:00 to 9:00 General Performance

Firehouse Performing Arts Center
1314 Harris Avenue, Bellingham, WA

Suggested Donation $10.00 per Family Group: $5.00 per Individual Per performance at the Door

Featuring: Raven Dancer Gene Tagaban with

Cindy Minkler, Mockingbird, Bolor Smith, Rebecca Saxton,* Dudley and Dean Evenson, Gail and Becca Smeadley, Annilise Kamola, and Doug Banner

We will be creating the sense of the village coming together for the evening of storytelling. Bring your blankets and pillows as we will be sitting on the floor in a great circle around the performers.

Seating is limited (only 90 seats)

This event is sponsored as a collaboration of The Bellingham Compassion Movement, The Sound Essence Project, The Bellingham Storytellers Guild, Allied Arts of Whatcom County, Compassion Action Network, and other sponsors.

For more information contact: bhamstoryguild@comcast.net or 360-820-9631

* I'll be performing at the 4:30 event, but likely will stay for both.

*****************************************************************

Doug writes:

In East Africa, it is said, there is a certain tribal people who, when commemorating events of collective and communal importance, call for ‘a night of storytelling.’ The traditional opening formula ought to be enough to alert one to be ready for a magical evening.

The occasion might be a birth, a marriage or a funeral or perhaps a harvest or some other calendar, seasonal, solar, lunar or stellar event. For the sake of this story, let’s say it is the Winter Solstice. The event will begin at sundown – and is to happen in a special place such as the Firehouse Performing Arts center. Already the story is counseling us that storytelling can have a ritual aspect as well as a casual aspect.

The storytelling has already begun: it began on the way there, in fact it may even have begun when the announcement of the event was made.

SUNSET
When everyone is foregathered in the special place, then, as the sun bleeds into the west, someone commanding respect comes forward and utters the equivalent of : Friends we are gathered here this day to celebrate peace and compassion...’ And so, as the stars begin to shine through the dark cloth of dreams, the formalised storytelling commences.

First the stories of the ‘dear departed friend’: anecdotes about the mischief he or she got up to, reminiscences of the bold and generous deeds they did. As the moon rises, perhaps the stories move to his or her ancestors, ‘He was so like his father’ and ‘Do you remember the time when...?’ But then someone says, ‘Old George here, he’d hate to have us all moping around his coffin. Do you remember that joke he used to tell about the bloke who goes into the pub and sees a tiny feller playing a miniature piano on the shelf behind the bar...?’ And so traditional narratives – passed on, collectively owned and shared – make their presence felt. Jokes turn and spin, perhaps eventually clustering around a culture hero such as Duncan Williamson’s ‘Donald Archie Dougal Douglas McLean’, or Nasreddin Hoja, or Brudda Nancy. These become the stories of the folk – we, you, many and I: the rich and the poor; the wise and the foolish; the old and the young; men and women; rural and urban; and all those vain, conceited, hopeless hypocrites who meet their reflection in the owl glass...

The moon is rising high, and someone says, ‘But there are more things on heaven and earth than are dreamed of in your philosophies’ (Horatio). Then stories of ‘the otherworld’ begin: stories of spirits and ‘My Life in the Bush of Ghosts’, etc. All are ‘legends’ that have a toehold in the landscape of here and now.

Then someone starts ‘Once upon a time’ signalling that the toehold has gone: the stories are now ultimately metaphorical, their world is an inner one - the land where we stand, where North, South, West and East meet; where the false-mothers, ogres, weak kings, beggar-guides and middle brothers are all aspects of ourselves as we journey through inner landscapes of swamp and desert, dark pit and high mountain. These ‘wonder tales’, beloved of Freud and Jung (and, after them, so many other mythopoetical thinkers) aim to make us wonder about the nature of the energy dancing unobserved in our inner, subconscious, passion play.

The moon is at its zenith. Someone says, ‘...but we owe the fact that we are free to assemble here on such a night, in peace, to our ancestors: they who first brought our people to this valley.’ And then the tales of the legendary ancestors begin, they who achieved great things – with help from higher forces – their faith, the spirit world and the deities. These stories begin to suggest a bridge between this world and the manifest forces of fate and destiny that govern it. Yet, perhaps the ancestors are barely mentioned as the stories move now to Epic, fully fledged episodes in which larger-than-life heroes and heroines collide with each other and with the Gods, all driven by the chaos of an emotional life painted eternally loud and clear - and all too familiar.

And then, as the moon dips to the horizon and prepares to leave the skies, so the humans barely feature in the stories. The stories have become the exclusive domain of the gods: pure expressions of knowledge, passion, force and logos incarnate.

As the dawn breaks in the Eastern sky, the stories have become myths of creation, speaking of how-and-why the world was created, how-and-why humans were put into it, and how-and-why it is that we die. As the sun rises we find we have travelled during the night from stories detailing the incidents of our individual lives to vast stories that strive to understand the cosmic purpose of the humanity to which we belong. With the daybreak, we return to the quotidian, the everyday: a reality enhanced by imagined metaphors suggesting purpose, possibility and hope.

The Night of Stories makes a journey of ever increasing perspective. It is a little like those wonderful books of aerial photography that show someone sunbathing, and then someone sunbathing in a garden, and then a garden in a suburb, and then a suburb in a city and then a city in a county and then a county in a country, etc, until you are left drifting up there in a universe of tiny flecks of radiant and reflected light. Funnily enough such books are no more than the brilliant contemporary equivalent of the traditional cumulative form of a nursery tale such as, ‘The House that Jack Built’: ‘This is the sun that rose with the dawn, to call the cock to crow on the morn, to wake the master with horse, hound and horn, to summon the priest all shaven and shorn,’ etc. The individual perspective gradually yields to the cosmic perspective.

Collaborative Storytelling

2008-12-03T10:02:00.000-08:00

As Swil Kanim has been known to say a time or two...

A looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong time ago...

...there was a Teller who decided she wanted to focus on her writing, to commit herself so fully to her art that she would reduce her life to three things only - writing, family, and work.

Now this Teller had heard tales that if you do what you love, the money would follow, and she dreamed that once she started her MFA, the need for a bread job would fall away. She knew that focusing on school would mean giving up things like TV watching, leisurely weekends with the family, and other 'smaller' stuff. She figured Telling fell into that 'smaller' stuff category too, so hung up her Teller vest (just for a couple of years) and set to reading and writing.

For six months, she tried to balance the Three, compromising family and work where she could to carve out time for writing, new writing, old writing, any writing, and lots of reading. At first it seemed to all come together...then work needed more and family needed more, and the Teller realized that she liked the stability her bread job offered and liked spending leisurely weekends with her family and that when these two other things didn't quite happen, not matter how much time she carved out for writing, the writing didn't happen. Coursework deadlines loomed and there was nothing on the screen. Or on the page. Or in the brain.

So, like any good Teller, she shook her bag of tales and spread them out on her bed, looking for clues to what ailed her. Because stories are medicine too. And she picked up the time for walking downtown and she picked up the time to bring work home to finish and she picked up time for, of all things, Telling.

Now this Teller is shy. Uncertain, really, and often only Tells when asked. So she wasn't expecting to Tell that First Friday in November - she'd gone to support another Teller breaking new ground with original work. But then One Crazy Raven came hopping over for a hug and asked. "Have you got a story tonight?" And she said "Yes."

Alitaptap is the housefly who becomes the firefly, and that night the Teller remembered the part of her story she'd set aside, the part she realized she needed in order to /be/ a writer. She lived a dream, a story told in shadows of a moment in the light, sharing the stage with two of her heroes. The moment had nothing and everything to do with writing, and like the Skyking, the Teller plucked a star from the sky and lit up the night, remembering what Telling meant to her.

So the Teller and the Telling came back, both on the stage and in gaming. She carved a new path and wonder of wonders, things shifted and moved into familiar but well-supported spaces where work and family and writing and Telling could all exist together.

The rest became toilet paper

(and if you didn't get that last, you've gotta see Swil Kanim tell his Tree Story)

************************

Collaborative Storytelling

It's what we do everyday, the thing we live and experience without knowing it. We build stories with others at work, at home, at school, at play, even shopping. We tell ourselves stories, imagine other's stories, witness stories in progress, help stories move in new directions, hopefully better ones.

It's what good Tellers do when they perform together - That First Friday with Gene, we told stories about being different and celebrating our differences. We were still high from Obama's win and believed (still believe) that Yes We Can make change, change for the good, while knowing it will take work. Lots of work.

Two Friday's later at the Fireside doing our Tellebration Gig, we mixed personal stories with old tales, some true folktales, some true original stories. Didn't matter - with the drums and the dancing and the wild gestures - we were all making stories, drinking stories to make our lives richer and remind us what forgiveness and courage can do.

It's what on-line Role-Players do, gaming on MUSHs and MU's, creating and living as characters in made up worlds, using pixels and their imaginations to advance themes and tell stories to one another. We bring out the best in each other while we play and when we play well, the story grows and shifts as if there were only one narrator. We're all heroes and hero-makers.

The coolest, bestest thing about Telling these ways is that there's no rehearsal, no script, no set way that things have to be done. You know a story, you know a character, you gauge the audience, you assess your strength, you reach for what you think you need from the story (which invariably is the thing the audience needs from the story) and you go.

You unreel it, slowly at first, building momentum, getting feedback from the listeners, shifting the story, dropping a new gag here, covering a fumble there, and it comes out - maybe not perfect - but exactly what it needs to be. That's magic touching reality. Nothing more, nothing less.

Collaborative Storytelling

What story are you telling yourself today? Does it serve you or make you suffer? Does is bring the best out in others or oppress them? What story are you being told today? How can you change that story for the better, create the changes you dream, find the support you need? What story are you making with others? What theme are you all bringing forward, reinforcing, growing, bringing to light?

As Grandmother of One Crazy Raven once said -

Your life is a story, make it a good one.

Next: The Miraculous Journey of BunBun the Bunny

Happy New Year!

2008-12-02T08:36:00.000-08:00

A few days late, but things always get a bit busier this time of year, eh?

Sunday was the first day of Advent and technically the first day of the new liturgical year. In all my days at Catholic school plus the last few my gals have attended, I've not felt like Advent was the start of a new year. This year though, I really felt it, the Beginnings as the first child of the new year was baptised and the first purple candle of the wreath was lit.

Perhaps I needed to start over a bit earlier than the Gregorian reckoning. It's been a rough 6+ weeks with the rearrangement of a great many plans, not the least of which was/is my MFA.

I'm still pursuing my MFA, but I'm switching programs to one more local that has residencies only once a year instead of twice. Most of the last few weeks have been mourning and grieving (and gnashing of teeth early on, saying goodbye overly late), but I'm now looking forward as one usually does at the beginning of a year. The change will mean de-emphasizing some projects and dusting off others, but mostly creating *new* material.

I'm rolling around the idea of "writing for myself," something I've been encouraged to do by more than one mentor recently. I'm remaking the story behind that phrase - the old story has stuff like "write for yourself - cause no one else really cares" or "write for yourself - cause you'll never make a living off something so obscure/common-place" or "write for yourself - cause who else will listen to what you have to say?"

I picked up a copy of Lynda Barry's What It Is. Lynda is a hapa-pinay...I found her because of a post on one of my FilAm forums. I don't clearly remember the post, but what stuck was her name, her drawing, and her book. She questions a lot, questions, questions, questions, and I love that because it opens up rather than narrowing into a specific 'writer's intent.' By the time I got to the section "Writing the Unthinkable," I began to remember that "writing for myself" was what I used to do - I wrote to tell myself stories.

Fear and Doubt, they're always asking questions too, but ones that close down rather than open up, and Barry reveals the only answer that stops their questions:

I Don't Know.

I don't know if this is any good, or if the plot is all messed up, or if the character should be gay or straight, or if a theme is over-wrought even before it's finished.

But I want to find out - what happens, who are they, why do I care, what do they become?

I'm interested in failures and redemption, how communities heal and harm, where magic and reality meet and blur. I'm interested in telling my story, the stories I've heard, the stories I need to hear.

So this year, I'll be writing for myself, cause I don't know, but I want to find out what the stories are and where they go.

Next: Collaborative Storytelling

So, How are You?

2008-10-21T21:24:00.000-07:00

Really? Wow.

Me? I'm fine! Busy. Yep, with the whole working full time, two kids in school, MFA thing. Challenging and fulfilling describe, but don't fully encompass all that's happened since July. Torn my hair out in frustration (okay, actually had over a foot cut off and donated to Locks of love), nearly thrown in the towel more than once (but mostly just trying to keep laundry clean on a regular basis), and had a few reversals of fortune (economic downturn...need we say more?), but I'm still here, still plugging away, still living and believing the dream.

Just wanted to keep a quote from Wil Wheaton's blog that I found tonight:

This is something I tell actors all the time: you have to find ways to enjoy auditions, and as hard as it is, as counter intuitive as it is, you just can't make success or failure about booking the job. You have to make success or failure about enjoying yourself.

Substitute 'actors' for 'writers,' 'auditions' for 'manuscripts,' 'booking the job' with 'publishing the manuscript,' and you pretty much get my Ah Ha Moment. When I get tense about writing, stressed about 'making it,' I just have to remember to PLAY. Cause if it ain't fun, even when I'm struggling to find the right words, the right turn of events, the right nifty thing that must appear, then I've lost my perspective.

And as Richard Bach would say: Perspective, use it or lose it.

What It's All About

2008-08-08T22:03:00.001-07:00

You Want One, I Know

2008-07-24T20:52:00.000-07:00

The graduating class of the VCFA program gifted the first semester students (that would be me) with spiffy journals at the grad ceremony.

Not content to just give us Moleskines, they instead found journals at Ex Libris Anonymous, a purveyor of journals made of old hard bound books. Spiral bound, the journals contain ample numbers of blank pages interleaved with pages from the old book. Most of my cohort received journals made from Dr. Seuss books and Dick and Jane tomes. Me, I got a journal made from "Tom Swift and His Space Solatron"

As Ver would say, you're jealous. I know it.

Galatea Review: Beijing Background

2008-07-22T21:28:00.000-07:00

Now appearing in issue 10 of Galatea Resurrects:

Beijing Background by Bob Marcacci (Dis Press, Beijing, 2007)
Reviewed by Rebecca Mabanglo-Mayor

Beijing Background rolls and rollicks, hums and clatters with all the background noise inherent in a city over 17 million strong. Marcacci's eight poems bring our ears and attentiveness to the things unnoticed with the deft skill of the musician and the involved observer. ...more...

68 reviews grace the issue! A feast of poetry!

VCFA MFA WCYA

2008-07-10T04:02:00.000-07:00

Where am I these days? As the tagline shows I'm at a ten day residency for:

Vermont College of Fine Arts, Master of Fine Arts in Writing for Children and Young Adults

**big grin** Yep, I made it!

To read my adventures, please see the entries at What If?

In general, I'm still nervous and excited, but now I'm also tired, which they tell me is really, really normal.

Wordle dot Net

2008-06-30T19:37:00.000-07:00

Cloudtag of this blog

Recent (and not so recent) Events

2008-06-23T20:52:00.000-07:00

I know a great many of you have been waiting to hear about the Words Expressed event at Pagdiriwang this year. Unfortunately, my pictures didn't come out very well and I wasn't able to record any of the event since it will be broadcast on the radio soon. I do have this picture, though, of the wonderful emerging writers that also read:

The youngest reader, Jennalyn, is a poet currently in middle school and the eldest were Pauline and Myra who are undergraduates from Seattle University. The group was rounded out by Roxie who is a sophomore, but unfortunately Ciana was too ill to attend. In her place was her sister Shigeko (who's name I didn't write down but helpfully provided by Marianne). So much good energy and willingness to take risks in their work and I was very glad to hear them read.

Maria and Bob arranged an incredible line-up and a terrific venue marred only by having to compete with the larger Pagdiriwang Festival a floor above us. There were about 50 in the audience at any given time, but for me, the real joy was sitting and listening to the stories and poems the other writer's shared.

Nancy Calos-Nakano led us off with an excerpt from a monologue about her mother. A natural storyteller, she has the gift of memoir able to put humor into the most poignant moments. Angela Dy followed with her high-powered spoken word pieces that ran chills up my spine and made me hungry to see/experience more of her work. Then came Donna Miscolta's fiction piece which read like memoir, smooth and creamy as it revealed the story behind the loss of three fingers by a pensionado/featherweight boxer. Mimi Noledo read her poetry among her paintings giving visuals to words and words to her visuals. I went next reading two poems and an excerpt from Yellow is for Luck, a piece in the forthcoming Growing Up Filipino II anthology.

Then came Tess Uriza Holthe reading from her novel When Elephants Dance showing her skill in making history personal and evocative. Marianne Villanueva challenged us all with her reading of the Mayor of Roses, ever so gently apologizing for the violence depicted in the story, but never shirking from the realism of her work. The event wrapped with Toni Bajado's haunting poetry which resonated with all of us.

In one afternoon a community of women writers was formed, one we were all hopeful would continue, but even more so, we all left inspired to continue our own work while encouraging each other to keep working on our art.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Last year, I had a chance to attend part of the Philippine Scouts Heritage Society conference when it was held in Tacoma, WA. I met folk who gave me more information on what my grandfather likely experienced as a member of the 26th Cavalry. One of the people I met was a documentarian and he sent me this:

I'm not sure if it's his work, but I recognize some of the re-enactors that also came to the conference. I've been contacted by a couple of descendants of other Philippine Scouts, both looking for information I might have. I wish I had more, but it will be nice to revisit that research. I think it would make a good topic for a novel, maybe even a YA novel, but I think I need to do more research to pull it off.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Christina announced last spring that her new single Mango Man has been released and coincides with her poem of the same name published in the Fairfield Review.

Just as if the sky turned the colors
of burnt orange and the world smelled
of incense and my grandmother's coconut oil

Louisa has also released poetry recently including What We Ate After Passing the Cape of Eleven Thousand Virgins in qarrsiluni and "An empowered damsel" in poemeleon's Persona Poem issue.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Finally, ZenHabits recently published a guest post by chessmaster Josh Waitzkin who offers the following as a cure for the multitasking virus (which I seem to have an acute case):

1) Do what you love;
2) Do it in a way you love and connect to;
3) Give people a Choice and they become engaged;
4) Release a fear of failure;
5) Build positive routines;
6) Do one thing at a time;
7) Take breaks.

These are the principles I'll be applying as I continue to learn how to approach and succeed in grad school this time around.

Two Dozen Days

2008-06-13T09:31:00.000-07:00

...before I leave for Vermont College.

I'm having anxiety attacks. I can't put two words together that lead very far. I worry about the money to pay for school. I worry about my family and my job. I worry that my words won't be strong enough to carry the dream. But somehow, this quote helps me feel a bit better:

...words aren't cheap. They are very precious. They are like water, which gives life and growth and refreshment, but because it has always been abundant, we treat it cheaply. We waste it and pollute it and doctor it. Then, when we take a drink from a city faucet, we wrinkle our nose and say: "This is terrible water." And we blame the water because we have misused it. [Katherine Paterson]

Words might be a renewable resource, but like all renewable resources, it has to be treated with respect and reverence.

I've been working to clean my resevoir, and sometimes I've mistaken the gunk for life-giving, and the life-giving for gunk. But mostly, I've seen my words as cheap because of this abundance, and that is a terrible mistake.

Another quote, an aphorism really, one found in a book I just finished reading (Elijah of Buxton - excellent middle grade reader):

Familiarity breeds contempt.

Respecting my own words. That's what it's all about today.

Writing It Real

2008-05-24T09:33:00.000-07:00

Sheila Bender is one of those writers I've read off and on for years, mostly for her sound advice on the process of writing. I discovered A Year in the Life soon after the birth of my second child and it influenced the final edit of my MA thesis. Through her passion for poetry and essay, Sheila transmits a sense of capability and honor to the young writer - she believes that if a person wishes to write, then they have what it takes to not only begin but to succeed.

I was excited to read earlier this year about her essay contest and sent three pieces off in short measure. I was overjoyed to hear from her a few weeks later - Becoming a Woman of Color had won first prize!

"Becoming" is a piece that my close readers have enjoyed, but one that never seemed to quite fit the journals to which I submitted it. The form is a non-traditional essay written second person, and the piece was often criticized in workshop because of this. Male readers didn't feel comfortable being asked to read from a woman's point of view, folk-not-of-color didn't want to inhabit the ambivalent space between privilege and prejudice. I tried changing it several times to make it more 'accessible' only to return to the voice of it's original.

Sheila writes:

"Becoming a Woman of Color" by Rebecca Mabanglo-Mayor offers a satisfying and moving read. A lyric essay in structure, it is built in sections that each begin with a command: Imagine, Remember, Picture. The symmetry between beginning and ending the essay with the word imagine and the repeated commands of remember and picture sandwiched between the opening and closing of the essay carry both writer and reader through a rewarding emotional journey.

I am /so/ grateful that she responded so positively to the piece and grateful that she chose it as the winning entry for her contest. She and her co-publisher Kurt VanderSluis have published Becoming a Woman of Color in her online journal http://writingitreal.com/.

As part of my prize, Sheila looked over one of the other two essays I submitted. She gave me a very frank assessment which showed I still have far to go with my work. There were technical difficulties to the piece but what was most helpful to me was that she contrasted that piece with "Becoming." I learned that when I trust my voice, instead of trying to make a piece into what I think others will respond to, I do /much/ better. It's something I've read time and again in books on writing and something I've heard time and again from veteran writers.

The difference with Sheila, though, is that she /showed/ me what that meant for my own writing and as any writer will tell you Show Don't Tell is the first and last rule of good writing and good critique.

Pagdiriwang: Words Expressed

2008-05-11T21:41:00.001-07:00

(click image to embiggen)

Less than a month before the Pagdiriwang event! Writers Workshop Co-chairs Maria Batayola, Robert Francis Flor and Dale Tiffany have put together a terrific program, and promoted it incredibly well. I'm very excited to read, but even more excited to hear the work of all the fabulous pinay writers featured:

Melissa Nolledo
Nancy Calos-Nakano
Angela Martinez-Dy
Donna Miscolta
Tess Uriza Holthe
Toni Bajado
Marianne Villanueva
Rebecca Mabanglo-Mayor

The place to be:

Words Expressed: Filipina Women Writers Workshop

Saturday, June 7, 2008
Noon-4:00 pm
Seattle Center, Centerhouse Theater

****

(Aside - I'm very grateful to note that being at this event does not mean I'll miss my daughter's ballet recital on June 8 as I had previously thought!)

Synchronization

2008-05-08T19:39:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, oftentimes really, all the parts that make up my life seem to get out of sync. There's this project and that crisis and this conflict and that resolution. First a great tragedy, then great comfort mixed with writing challenges and travel. I found this the other day and somehow it made me feel much better:

See, the metronomes are all the different parts of my life now, often strumming along at different beats, tugging and pulling me every which way. But they're all there and they're all part of me, and when I allow them to share energy, allow the chaos of movement that is change, then I have great hope that soon, things will settle out, synchronize and all will be well again.

In the meantime, there's a new story brewing that I hope will take shape over the next few days. This is the part of writing I like best, I think, the plotting and planning and getting to know the characters. I'm hopeful it will turn into a YA novel, or perhaps a middle grade reader.

School starts in a couple of months, but I'll need to send in 20 pages by the 23rd. I'm reading picture books and children's novels at a rapid pace, but haven't been able to update my GoodReads blog yet. Writers for children carry a different sort of passion than I've seen in writers for adults. Neither worse nor better, just /different/ in the sense that they have a deep commitment to making a difference in children's lives, whether by telling the stories about their lives that children can't quite articulate or by giving children hope in the future by helping them make sense of their world. I'm not certain I could call myself a children's writer yet, but I'm looking forward to learning and growing through the experience.

Progress to Filipino Vets Equity

2008-04-25T09:11:00.000-07:00

Last November was the last I'd heard any movement on the movement to give back benefits promised to Filipinos fighting with the US during WWII.

Although I'm not sure what the status is of H.R. 760: Filipino Veterans Equity Act of 2007, yesterday I learned that S. 1315: Veteran's Benefits Enhancements Act of 2007 has passed the Senate.

Here's the press release:

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Daniel K. Akaka (D-HI), Chairman of the Veterans' Affairs Committee, elatedly applauded his colleagues in the Senate for passing S. 1315 , the Veterans Benefits Enhancement Act of 2007 by a vote of 96 to 1. Prior to voting on final passage of the bill, the Senate debated an amendment to remove a provision providing a limited pension for Filipino World War II veterans residing in the Philippines. This amendment was defeated by a vote of 56 to 41, with Akaka leading the charge for the Filipino veterans' pension.

"The Filipino veterans of World War II fought bravely under U.S. military command, helping us win the war only to lose their veteran status by an Act of Congress. I commend my colleagues for supporting those veterans who stood with us," said Akaka.

Akaka continued, "I am also very pleased that the Veterans Benefits Enhancement Act of 2007 can finally move forward. This bill makes needed improvements to veterans' benefits by expanding and increasing support for veterans, their families, and their survivors. I urge my colleagues in the House to act swiftly on this much needed bill."

This comprehensive, budget-neutral omnibus veterans' benefits bill was approved by the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs last June and reported to the full Senate last August.

The Veterans Benefits Enhancement Act of 2007 would provide a veterans' pension to Filipino veterans of World War II residing in the U.S. and in the Philippines. Under the proposed bill, veterans residing in the Philippines would receive a smaller pension than those residing in the U.S., to account for differences in cost-of-living in the two countries.

The Veterans Benefits Enhancement Act of 2007 also includes a multitude of improvements to veterans' benefits, including provisions to:

- Establish a new program of insurance for service-connected disabled veterans;
- Expand eligibility for retroactive benefits from traumatic injury protection coverage under Servicemembers' Group Life Insurance;
- Increase the maximum amount of Veterans' Mortgage Life Insurance that a service-connected disabled veteran may purchase;
- Provide individuals with severe burn injuries specially adapted housing benefits; and
- Extend for two years the monthly educational assistance allowance for apprenticeship or other on-the-job training

The bill now moves to the House of Representatives.

Why? It's a Meme... A Harry Potter Meme

2008-04-23T20:39:00.000-07:00

Harry Potter Personality Quiz by Pirate Monkeys Inc.

...Plus I think the MBTI is a cool thing... Yep, I'm a special kind of geek.

Run-up to SCBWI

2008-04-21T21:22:00.001-07:00

Headed out this weekend to attend SCBWI Western Washington Conference...which I see is sold out. Whoa. I'm glad I got my reg. in a few weeks back.

I want to pitch a couple of picture books, but I registered late and didn't get any pitch appointments with agents/eds. I feel like I need to bring /something/ though, so I'll bring copies of the manuscripts at least. I'm also trying to remember how to do a cold pitch letter. I learned about cold pitches the last time I was at a SCBWI conference... ten years ago in Honolulu... So to the Intertubes I go tonight.

Came across this terrific article on Query Letters by Nathan Bransford of the Curtis-Brown Agency. It's got the skinny on the hook-line-and-sinker of how to capture an agent's attention with a simple 8 1/2 x 11 piece of paper. If nothing else, I have a template to use when I send queries out after the conference.

I know publication isn't the focus for the MFA program at VC, but it's something I have/want to keep my feelers into while I'm in the program. It's a way to understand the audience you're approaching, I think. I don't want to become market driven, but knowing what's out there, what's worked, and what's being looked for will help me develop ideas more carefully, I think.

I've been updating my Goodreads Blog complete with a few annotations. So many books to read before the residency starts. Just counting the faculty books at one each is 17 books and in many cases of authors that are doing work I'm interesting in producing, I'm hoping to read at least two books, maybe three. In the meantime, I've been tagged by Dawn, one of my future classmates with the following meme:

Grab your WIP (work-in-progress)

Find page 30 of the MS or page 3 for PBs

Find the fifth sentence.

Post the next three sentences.

Tag five people

So, from my WIP which I may/may not work on during VC:

She eyed the other two again. "Well, I got corn fritters cooling on the table and hot coffee if you don't mind the burn."

She stepped out of the house and started shooing them in as if they were chickens. "No need to be hanging on my doorstop like a bunch of vagabonds," she muttered, then shut the door behind them once they'd all crossed the threshold.

Betty is such a cool character.

Alrighty - Not sure who's reading me anymore, so if you're here, consider yourself tagged.

Achiote Press Release Party and Reading

2008-04-18T20:18:00.000-07:00

Achiote Press will celebrate the release of our Spring issues with a party on Friday, April 25th at the Ethnic Studies Library on the UC Berkeley campus.

The event will feature special readings by former Achiote contributors Barbara Jane Reyes (Poeta en San Francisco) Truong Tran (Within The Margin), and Oscar Bermeo (Anywhere Avenue).

Maria Tuttle will read from her new Achiote chapbook, Saramé. This chapbook contains an excerpt from Tuttle's historical novel about the life of a Chicana in El Paso, Texas during the early 20th century. Gabriela Erandi Rico will read from her contributions to the new Achiote Seeds chapjournal.

Javier Huerta, author of Some Clarifications y otras poemas, will perform selections from the other contributors to the journal: Cristina García, Emmy Pérez and Brenda Cárdenas. Poet Oscar Bermeo will emcee the night.

We'll have food, drinks and music. The event is free, open to the public and we welcome families and children.

When: Friday, April 25th: 6pm--8pm
Where: Ethnic Studies Library, Stephens Hall, UC Berkeley Campus
(see a campus map here)

Sponsored by the Ethnic Studies Graduate Group, Asian American Studies Program, and Chicano Studies Program.

******

Such good memories of last years launch! I wish I could be there. So much good writing and community. Hope folks can make it there for me!

Philippine Speculative Fiction IV - Call

2008-04-15T12:30:00.001-07:00

Dean Alfar announces the call for subs for Philippine Speculative Fiction IV

He notes: Speculative fiction is the literature of wonder that spans the genres of fantasy, science fiction, horror and magic realism or falls into the cracks in-between.

Got Magic?

The Big Reveal

2008-04-14T21:22:00.000-07:00

I've hinted a bit about this in recent posts, but now I'm finally able to gleefully announce:

I've been accepted at Vermont College for their dual-MFA in Non-Fiction and Children's Writing.

This is my 'big project' that had me writing and nervous and writing some more since last Fall. My original thought was to apply to low-residency MFA programs that had strong non-fiction faculty. I started with the local ones near Seattle, WA, then asked the advice of colleagues and friends at Western. I narrowed the field to three, one of which was Vermont College.

I admit that Children’s Writing wasn’t on my radar right away, but when I was looking into VC, I discovered that they had a dual MFA program option that would enable me to work on my memoir project(s) and look into children’s writing again. When I was in Hawaii in ‘97-’98, I was involved with SCBWI a bit - went to their conference and won second prize in their writing contest. I have a couple of picture book manuscripts that I’m going to be circulating as soon as I get a bit more research done on agents and publishers, and put together a decent query letter for each. I’d like to write YA historic novels, along the lines of Christopher Paul Curtis or even Sherman Alexie (although I haven’t read The Absolute True Diary of a Part Time Indian yet to know for sure.) Picture books, though, are also a draw and I think I'll start with that first.

There’s a lot of Filipino American history not written about yet and with my focus on family relationships and empowerment/identity, I think there will be plenty of material to work with. I had the option to either start on the nonfiction track or the children’s and I opted for children’s as much because the opportunity was there to work on my current manuscripts as it was that I have found myself at various local SCBWI events. It seems obvious now that I am more drawn to children’s now than I realized, but it has taken me a bit to actually /realize/ it. It’s very gratifying, then that the opportunity was there for me to take.

I am a bit afraid of getting ‘locked in’ to a genre, but given my track record of publication in everything from trade magazines to poetry, plus a passion for performance storytelling, I doubt I will ’settle’ for anything else but a multigenre career ultimately. In the meantime, the MFA affords me the time (carved out of an already full life) and the mentorship I think I need to really move my writing to the next levels.

I've opened a new blog dedicated to just my adventures in the MFA journey: What If?. Feel free to drop by!

66 Years Ago

2008-04-09T08:42:00.001-07:00

My grandfather heard the words he never thought he would hear.

Never imagined that after becoming a Philippine Scout and learning all he could about being a good soldier in the US Army, he would be asked to do the unimaginable.

Never thought that the people he admired most in the world for their intelligence, bravery, and honor, would ask him to do the unthinkable.

Although he never had a chance to tell me himself, I heard the story from other Scouts, how they held the line so MacArthur could escape. Rationed food and bullets while giving their all to fight a battle already deemed unwinnable. To hear that final word from a commanding officer --

Surrender.

The Bataan Death March and the 66-Year Struggle for Justice

We don't know exactly when Lolo escaped the March, but it was sometime early in the march, perhaps April 11 or 12th. They came to an artesian well, the story goes, and there was a rush to the clean water. In the confusion, Lolo and two others slipped into the jungle, ran as long as they could and when safe, headed in three different directions. I don't know if Lolo ever saw the other two again. Lolo headed to his mother's province where he found his young wife and their three girls. My mother, the oldest, was seven years old and she tells of how Lolo stumbled into the nipa hut, tears streaming down his wan face, grabbed my grandmother and simply said:

We lost.

He struggled through malaria, then struggled against becoming part of the resistance. He believed MacArthur would return and he had no orders to be part of the resistance, so lived as a farmer, moving upland when the Japanese did their patrols. The villagers kept him and themselves safe with a series of codes tapped in rice pounders. Mom tells of Japanese soldiers who left them alone because they prayed out loud as they hid beneath their hut, and also of collaborators who stole food from them even when the Japanese did not.

Lolo waited for word of MacArthur's return and when it came, he reported for duty, coordinated the Scouts who also reported and went on to retire from a full career in the US Army in the mid-60s.

My Lolo believed. Even when they told him to surrender, even when he knew they had lost. I can't fault him that faith, even with all it's colonial and post-colonial implications.

All I can do is witness and remember.

Gift of Collaboration

2008-04-04T23:28:00.000-07:00

Came home late tonight after working all day, taking the family out for dinner and catching the First Friday Concert by Swil Kanim.

Swil is a musician, storyteller, and philosopher who's name is Richard Marshall but who /is/ Swil Kanim – Works for the People.

I've seen Swil perform off an on for years, ever since seeing him in the Business of Fancydancing and finding out he played not only locally, but monthly at a local coffeeshop. He plays for free and liberates his CDs for free, and folks donate what they can, when they can to help he and his wife keep being who they are – artists and ardent supporters of human beings.

I always learn something from Swil, even if the set pieces are the similar. I learn about how to be a better artist, be a more excellent person, live with failure, and live with passion. Tonight, I learned about the importance of collaboration between artists, how we need to encourage each other to honor our gifts, support each other, give each other a safe place to be the artists we are. I also offered my own gift to him, offered my experience as a writer to get one of his stories made into a children's picture book. It might be in the works already, but it was important for me to connect and offer what I had after he had given so much of who he was to me and to others.

That's the medicine of Swil Kanim, the ability to create connections, heart to heart and keep that going, performance after performance. To witness to gift giving and gift receiving, and call our attention to it so we can all be grateful together.

Hopeful Progress

2008-04-03T23:05:00.000-07:00

Last October, I wrote about the unfortunate choice of characterization in an episode of Desperate Housewives.

I'm happy to see that the outcry has become something tangible and I hopeful that it means change for the good:

An outreach project by
Disney/ABC Television Group
in collaboration with
The National Federation of
Filipino American Associations (NaFFAA)

The Disney·ABC Television Group has the most comprehensive and diverse talent development programs in the industry. ABC discovers and nurtures the finest talent, preparing them for careers in acting, writing and directing.

You are cordially invited to participate and learn more about ABC’s programs. Please note that due to the capacity of the venue, we will only be able to accommodate a first come first serve basis.

RSVP by April 15th
Jon Melegrito, NaFFAA Communications Director, jonmele@aol.com

When Opportunity knocks, be there to open the door!

April 24, 2007
6:00-9:00PM
Washington D.C. Capitol Hilton
Pan-American Meeting Room
16th and K St. NW, METRO STOP: Farragut West

COME AND TALK WITH
The Disney·ABC Television Group

Bob Mendez, Sr. Vice President, Diversity
Disney·ABC Television Group

Tim McNeal, Vice President,
Talent Development & Diversity
Disney·ABC Television Group

Frank Bennett Gonzalez, Director
Talent Development
Disney·ABC Television Group

Tracey Waecker, HR Recruiting
Disney·ABC Media Networks

Words Expressed

2008-04-02T22:44:00.000-07:00

Pagdiriwang Festival

Words Expressed: Filipina Women Writers Workshop

Saturday, June 7, 2008
Noon-4:00 pm
Seattle Center, Centerhouse Theater

Filipinos and Filipino Americans have a long rich tradition of written expression which is etched in our souls. We have brought these expressions to the United States as poems, novels, essays and political analysis. Yet where is our literature? Why are our writers unknown?

Let us honor our Pinay poets and writers, listen to their moving and challenging pieces, learn from them and celebrate as we pass on this wonderful tradition of …words expressed

Featuring the work of:

Melissa Nolledo
Nancy Calos-Nakano
Angela Martinez-Dy
Donna Miscolta
Tess Uriza Holthe
Toni Bajado
Rebecca Mabanglo-Mayor
Marianne Villanueva

Writers Workshop Co-chairs
Maria Batayola, Robert Francis Flor and Dale Tiffany

Supporting Agencies:

Washington Poets Association
Seattle University Wismer Center for Gender and Diversity Studies
Seattle Central Community College
Filipino American City Employees
PoetsWest
Elliott Bay Bookstore
Artists Trust

Sponsored by the Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs, City of Seattle

Riding the Wave

2008-03-31T21:06:00.000-07:00

Writing begets writing.

I'm going to have that printed and framed, I think.

So riding the crest of my work last night, I took three unpublished pieces from my files and sent them off to an essay contest. When I sat down to work, I thought I had a month to get the pieces ready, but a quick check of the submission guidelines revealed that the contest would end on the 30th of April... and the submissions are due tomorrow.

Again, it would have been easier to give up and look for another contest, but my 'big project' including shaping these three pieces into the best state I thought they could be. So, I took them out, dusted them a bit, and sent them off. Thankfully the contest had a terrific submission system that allowed me to pay the reading fee via PayPal.

I lurv the Intertubes.

I also got an update on a reading I'm giving in early June. The program is shaping up nicely and I'm looking forward to meeting all the other writers. I'll post details once I receive the official blurb.

Reaching Out

2008-03-30T22:50:00.001-07:00

**looks around** Where did March go? I distinctly remember celebrating Leap Year and suddenly it's past Easter and nearly April Fools... It's the snow, I'm sure of it. Who heard of snow after Spring Equinox? Snow is /so/ out of context for me this time of year.

Seriously, though, between the getting ready for Easter and the family crises big and small, plus the project I'm working on (that sadly, I can't share much about here...yet) it's been a crazy month. I've gotten some good work done - rewrites of older material but new possible venues, so that makes for happy.

It was good to work on material for submission again, having a definite goal in mind, selecting the pieces, shaping them into things I thought would match their aesthetic. I hit that place, though, where it all looks close to being finished, but not really /feeling/ finished. It seemed easier to walk away, but I know I need to get into that practice of shaping and submitting material so it seems as natural as breathing.

I'm learning to be comfortable with risk. I'm reading “Take the Risk: Learning to Identify, Choose, and Live with Acceptable Risk” by Ben Carson and its helping me know that there are different kinds of risk and that avoiding risk doesn't guarantee safety. Carson speaks of how in the US we've created a culture afraid of risks and therefore are unaccustomed to evaluating risks with a measure of wisdom. Avoidance seems 'safer' than failure.

A friend recently said to me, in a completely different context: "There (comes) a time that we wish to be more than who we are. To realize that we *can* be (what we aspire to become)." While another quipped: "...the risk is probably worth the taking--if you know who it is you want to be."

I know I want to be a successful writer – paid, published, and prolific – and I know that my big project will help me reach that goal by challenging me to expand my writing and take more risks. I can't afford any longer to let the fear of failure continue to hold me back. Who I 'be' is a writer and everything I do must reflect that commitment.

Kaya Mong Maging Dakila!

2008-03-01T21:51:00.000-08:00

Attended the WWU Bond Children's Lit Conference today. A single day event, but to say it was inspiring would be to understate the experience. Incredibly moving, would come closer to describing the event. I laughed, cried, scribbled notes, saw new things in my writing, remembered old things I wanted to see with my writing.

I remembered being in Hawaii and being asked by a book seller to tell the stories of FilAms, not the folktales and history books for kids, but the fiction stories so obliquitous in other cultures which filled shelf after shelf in bookstores and libraries. I didn't know any FilAm writers then. Didn't even know about Carlos Bulosan or Jessica Hagedorn. I just wanted to write and be read. But then the stories started coming, the possibilities of stories meant to reveal the history of plantation life in Hawaii, farm worker strikes in California, escaped slaves in Louisiana, Alaskeros in Seattle. Too many stories all at once, but at the same time, I wrote my first two picture books, one based on a folktale and the other on a boy coping with his grandfather's stroke.

That same year, I published my first poems and drafted the skeleton of a memoir. I dreamed of the Oprah Book Club, attended three writing conferences, each in different genres, and finished my BA by correspondence. It was about the writing - didn't matter what I was writing, just so I /was/ writing. And I survived one of the worst, one of the best years of my life.

Circling back on Children's Lit is sort of like coming home for me and at the same time walking toward a future I'd set aside to work on other projects. I used to see this as a flaw, the coming around, the never really settling, the always beginning and never finishing. Something shifted today, though, maybe not quite a healing, but definitely a stitching together of lost pieces. The drive to tell stories about surviving grief and betrayal, to give voice to lost/buried history, to find the humor and love that always surrounds us, and celebrate independence and belonging all at the same time.

Aileen Ibardaloza of the FLIPS listserve sent me the link to a collaborative song called Kaya Mong Maging Dakila! (You can be noble). It's a sort of "We are the World" piece featuring several Filipino artists, but the entire song is in Tagalog and I couldn't understand much of it.

Usually, I don't engage well with Tagalog or the other dialects my elder family speaks. I can respond in English usually to simple questions and conversations, but I usually feel a little less, a little outside, and more than a little lost when I'm around the dialects. These were the languages used to punish, hide, shame me as a child, leaving me confused, frustrated, and angry more often than not. I tried once to learn Tagalog, taking classes locally, but I lack my husband's ear, perfect mimicry, and unselfconscious ability to make language work for me. Speaking English can even be difficult as my thoughts run faster than my words.

What was different this time with Kaya Mong Maging Dakila! is that I kept listening, kept watching as the lyrics were held up for me to read. I could finally put what I heard with what I was reading and suddenly concepts were getting through. I didn't get all of the song, couldn't translate it if anyone asked, but it helped me feel connected to something I hadn't yet, something gapped even with all the research and writing I've done this past decade. Still working out the specifics, but in the meantime, here tis:

I think the themes I'm thinking about now are in the song. I can't be sure until I find the translated lyrics. Some of them I can see on the pages held up during the video - bata (children), pilipino (Filipino), kapwa-tao (people in community), isang (one or single), puso (heart), Rizal and Tandang Sora and Bonifacio (historic heroes).

Themes. I guess that's where I start with my writing, themes and character experiences. Sometimes it comes out as fiction, sometimes poetry, sometimes spec fic, sometimes YA, sometimes memoir, sometimes academic writing, sometimes performance storytelling. The /form/ doesn't matter, it's the themes, characters, and sense of place (location and/or time) that matters to me - whatever will serve the thing I'm trying to make meaning out of.

Writer/illustrator Eric Rohmann (Kitten Tale, My Friend Rabbit) talked about how children don't read illustrations left to right or top to bottom, they take in the whole image and then apply their experience to the image to make sense of what they are seeing. He urged us to look 'behold' the images in picture books, to /be/ with the images and see them as a child does, and to understand how our own experiences shape meanings for us.

All four speakers were incredibly funny, talented, and inspiring, but Christopher Paul Curtis (Bud, Not Buddy, Elijah Buxton) touched my heart the deepest. "Follow your heart," he said to me while he signed my books.

He echoed what Maurice Sendak said to writer/illustrator John Rocco (Wolf! Wolf!, Moonpowder) "Don't try to figure out what publishers want, or what readers want, or what Whoopie wants. Draw from your heart."

Maybe I'm finding my way to the same place as Kaya Mong Maging Dakila, the place I never had a name for, but only knew there was a path I had to follow to get there.

In My Language

2008-02-28T21:56:00.000-08:00

Amanda Baggs speaks frankly about the double standards placed on language and 'the disabled' using first her own language, then standard English through a computer program.

Wired featured her video recently and examined the assumptions made about autism and Aspergers, revealing the prejudices behind the science and psychology in relationship to those 'disabled' linguistically. The scientific arguments are painfully familiar - the objectification of an entire group of people by dominant paradigms which fail to recognize and respect the group enough to find fault in the dominant for it's labeling of the group as 'non-persons.'

" (the video)...is a statement about what gets considered thought, intelligence, personhood, language, and communication, and what does not." - Amanda Baggs

Thanks to JeffL of the FLIPS forum for the link.

ODLP Started It!

2008-02-26T22:07:00.000-08:00

...memes...I lurv memes...

You Are a Question Mark

You seek knowledge and insight in every form possible. You love learning.

And while you know a lot, you don't act like a know it all. You're open to learning you're wrong.

You ask a lot of questions, collect a lot of data, and always dig deep to find out more.

You're naturally curious and inquisitive. You jump to ask a question when the opportunity arises.

Your friends see you as interesting, insightful, and thought provoking.

(But they're not always up for the intense inquisitions that you love!)

You excel in: Higher education

You get along best with: The Comma

What Punctuation Mark Are You?

Excuse Me Ma'am, Your Inner Geek is Showing

2008-02-07T22:01:00.000-08:00

After finishing Janet Stickmon's Crushing Soft Rubies and Pati Navalta Poblete's The Oracles, I've been thinking about the shows I used to watch as a kid and how that might have affected the way I look at things now.

Pati opens her book mentioning how she wanted to be the missing Brady daughter, while Janet reminisces about Bill Cosby routines helping her laugh during her deepest tragic moments.

This morning I found myself hearing the tune from The Banana Splits in my head...

Trying to explain to my children the concept of the Banana Splits (and finally ending an argument with my husband over whether the characters were monkeys or dogs - yep, both right, both wrong), I found myself surfing YouTube for Sid and Marty Kroft bits - The Bugaloos, HR Pufnstuff, Land of the Lost, Dr. Shrinker, Wonderbug, Electra Woman and Dyna Girl.

I stumbled on the intros for Arc II and Space Academy, reminisced about Space:1999 and Jason of Star Command, and realized that I was into dystopian storytelling waaaay before I could tell a dysta from a utopa.

By far the jewels, though, were finding that the complete series of ISIS can now be found on DVD:

As well as several seasons of Star Blazers:

What struck me most, though, was the diversity of casting. Yes, all the mains were white folk, but their sidekicks were people of color, of different age and of stature, which is more than I can say, unfortunately for my later favs Star Wars, Buffy, and Firefly. Yah, I wanted to be Andrea Thomas and find the necklace of ISIS to be powerful, but Renee Carrol and Cindy Lee were there too, being confidantes and friends, so at least I saw them as important enough to be portrayed.

I used to think that the housekeeper from Courtship of Eddie's Father was the only Asian I saw on TV as a kid, but now I know differently. I'll be looking through these old vids more as I put together my essays, seeing what else comes up. Viva La YouTube!

Wishin'

2008-01-30T11:26:00.000-08:00

Wishin' I was going here this year, but if all goes as planned, I'll be there when it hits Chicago next year!

So here's to hopin'!

Journeys Within: The Princess Arisen

2008-01-28T08:34:00.000-08:00

Gura announces the forthcoming publication of Journeys Within: The Princess Arisen". Excitement!

It's got myth. It's got the promise of adventure. It could be fiction. It could be memoir. It's got a very pretty cover. I want to read it!

Must.. wait.. for.. release date. **sigh**

I wonder if I could get a pre-release review copy...hrm...