Notes on my project (a.k.a. the very pretentious-sounding "novel-in-progress").

This is the first two pages (of six total) of the cover letter I wrote to R. Vivian with my first packet due to him tomorrow. When I wrote it, I was drinking red wine and trying to hide my despair behind big words. I think it worked.

January 27, 2009

Dear Robert,

Happy New Year and the Chinese zodiac’s Year of the Ox. May we all plod steadily and fruitfully—and preferably forward. That’s the idea anyway, I think, with the year of the ox: not so good for big changes but excellent for laying the foundations preceding big changes, according to a friend of mine. I think of those foundations in terms of our brand-sparkly-new President, Obama, because I seem to be thinking of him all the time, and then I think of my novel, because aren’t we all a little self-centered, and besides that’s what I’m supposed to be thinking about for you, and didn’t that make a nice segue. Ha.
After we all left the snowy drifts of Vermont, I headed for Hawai‘i, to celebrate my husband’s 30th birthday. We hiked through gorgeous ironwood forests, spotted whales in migration, swam in tide pools, and basked in Hawaiian winter temperatures of 65–85 degrees while lounging around in bikinis and board shorts all day. Do you want to punch me or what? As Virginia Woolf would write, “What a lark! What a plunge!” And then what a crash when we came back to New York to the teeth-chattering temperatures and the snow and ice—and I remembered that we have a puppy who needs to be walked, outside, four times a day. [insert several colorful swear words.] A point, there was a point to all this. Being home was like a MFA residency in observation, devouring the world of my novel (set in Hawai‘i) so that I could regurgitate it on the page. That’s where I’ve been living as I prepared this first packet for you: delving back into my pages, generating new material, revising some old, and most of all, like the ox, trying to just keep plodding along.
I have some major concerns with the project (it feels so pretentious to write “novel-in-progress” that my fingers cringe and avoid the term). Such as. I thought I knew the major arc of its plot and who people it (set between 1987–1999, in Hawai‘i, a coming-of-age story of two sisters), but new characters are snaking themselves in and demanding a reckoning of their lives (e.g., two of the chapters I have included here, set in 1976 and 1977, from the POV of the mother [Brandy] and maternal grandfather [Shinji], with a possible WWII storyline developing). I thought I understood the project’s structure: a prologue and epilogue, both set in 1999, from the POV of the younger sister (Reiko), flanking her then-chronological remembrances of growing up, 1987 on upward to 1993, when the older sister (Naomi) gets pregnant and the mother (Brandy) leaves her family, and then onward to 1999, when Reiko has herself left Hawai‘i and reencountered her mother. However, that latter structure sprouts leaks when I wonder if I can have one character “framing” the narrative (Reiko in 1999) if other characters are going to speak during the chronological rendering of their lives? Hmmm. What I’m trying to say is Big Mess. Go forward with caution. Also, I am remembering your gentle admonishment during our one-on-one that day in the Dewey lunchroom to have faith that the answers are within me, not without, and I have to simply discover them. Like Atlantis. Only you said it more cleverly than that.
What I am trying to do instead of constantly worrying myself into a corner is write where the energy is. Right now, it seems like the energy is in 1976–1977. Perhaps I will write these chapters starring Brandy and Shinji and discover that they don’t belong in this project. Or perhaps I will learn that this project is not about what I thought it was about, and I had to write 200+ pages about two sisters coming-of-age in order to arrive at a narrative about their grandfather and his brother, the kamikaze pilot, or about the girls’ mother and her attempt to come-of-age at age fifty-something. Or perhaps I am embarking upon an incredibly lucrative series of books, which will rival the Harry Potter books in marketability if not magic. Who knows! I am also working on finding that fact —that nobody knows—freeing instead of paralyzing.

Famous dog.

Hahaha, Nahe is famous! She now has an Internet presence in addition to all the entries about her on my blog. Here she is as one of the "characters" over at Cheeky Dog, her go-to doggycare center.

"The power of the image," part II: looking forward.

Check out the gorgeous images of the inauguration at "The Inauguration of President Barack Obama."

"The power of the image," part I: looking backward.

"What we’re looking for in our presidential coverage are striking moments and moments that appear to reveal something about the president or the event or the news that is happening at the time. That’s what we try to achieve; compelling images regardless of what they might say to an individual reader or the viewer and we leave it to them to interpret the images. It’s interesting to see how differently people will interpret the same picture, how a strong supporter of the president will see a picture one way and a critic of the president will see it a different way."

"Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall," a recent NYT Op-Ed, is a fascinating--albeit lengthy--examination of President Bush and his eight years in office, through iconic news images.

As he fades in the rearview mirror, baby.

Sexyhothothot.

I want to hurry up and get over the incredulous hope and sense of achievement that a non-white man--and a biracial one, and what a man, while we are on the subject--is President. I want to live in a world where things like this are not only possible, they are so commonplace that it is almost not worth mentioning.

But when pictures like this one--of Obama signing executive orders to have the CIA shut down Guantánamo and their network of secret prisons--simultaneously make me teary-eyed/filled with Hope and make me think, that's sexyhothothot, I think I've probably got a ways more to go.

"Semi-Elegant Bull in a China Shop."

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): "Dear Rob: Are you holding back some painful truth from us Tauruses? I feel like you're going too easy on us, and as a result I'm missing some clue I desperately need. Please tell us what it is so we can face it and get on with life. - Semi-Elegant Bull in a China Shop." Dear Semi-Elegant: I'm not aware of having withheld a painful truth from you Tauruses. The only thing I can think of is that maybe I haven't been forceful or clear enough in saying the following: One of your primary tasks is to study hard and think deeply as you learn more about how to create peace and serenity in your life.*

---

* Clearly, this is related to the previous horoscope and my NYE resolution to simplify my life and not be so hard on myself. But this horoscope goes easier on my blood pressure.

A little late but still true.*

Oh, Barry.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Fighting for principle first, above all else, is a courageous act… especially for you, dear Taurus, who may prefer to uphold a risk-averse attitude when it comes to gambling with your solidest footing, just to prove some point. The pragmatic among you will rightfully ask, 'Why mess with my own well-being?' Rightfully so precisely because, though acting foremost according to ideals (rather than, say, a hyper-prudent view of reality) is surely admirable, it often doesn't reveal its eventual advantages right away. In fact, in the short term, acting-by-ideal can sometimes result in immediate losses… in the form of those certain sacrifices necessary for showing allegiance to whatever principle is worth fighting for. In the end, of course, striving to aim one's ethical compass toward one's own personal 'North', a direction that leaves you feeling proud of yourself, may be a far more long-lasting and profoundly rewarding experience than remaining silent, overlooking or tacitly compromising a belief to preserve whatever status-quo situation(s) provides you (or at least appears to provide) a sense of security. But at this moment in history, are you in a position to potentially invite such losses, by voicing too firm a position? There's no black-and-white answer here, by the way. It's simply a matter of consciously doing the cost-benefit analysis—and rethinking where on the 'pragmatism vs. principle' continuum you want to set yourself.

---
* Wait, I had a horrible thought. What if Barry is not referring to my earlier experiences this new year but, instead, another situation still headed my way? HORRORS!

Facebook status.

Mayumi Shimose Poe is going through her emotional closet and making a Goodwill pile.

Also?

If I wrote in stream-of-consciousness always, I would be a lot more prolific.

Because I had brunch with my pregnant friends.*

“Various reports and discussions in 2008 highlight the ongoing challenges of parenting, mentorship, and dual-career objectives, which affect men and women alike but are experienced more negatively by women. Although many women report that their status as mothers can help them to establish rapport in research communities, they also feel that motherhood is still undervalued in academic circles (Wasson et al. 2008). The enormous pressure on women to advance professionally during their reproductive years places them at a distinct disadvantage relative to male peers.”

--B. Sunday Eiselt, “Americanist Archaeologies: 2008 in Review.” Year in Review: Archaeology, American Anthropologist [June 2009] 111(2), forthcoming.

This is what I think about in my spare time.**

How having a kid must be harder than having a puppy, and if I cannot handle a puppy then how will I handle a kid, or many kids, and how many kids do I want to have, and how many of those should be biological and how many adopted, and will Dave want to adopt, really, when it comes down to it, because he doesn’t seem so thrilled about the notion even when the talk of it is casual, and if you adopt, will you adopt within the U.S., or internationally, or from wherever will give you a child in the most reasonable amount of time and for the most reasonable amount of fees, and will the adopted and biological feel equally loved, and how can you make sure that they feel that way, and do people who have both really truly if they are deadhonest with themselves love all their children equally, because one child required literal blood-sweat-and-tears to produce and the other required patience-and-heartbreak-and-a-generous-checkbook, but who knows, not you, maybe people who have both really do feel equally in love with all their children, and how weird it must be to have children, to have your whole life changed like that, and how weirder it must be to be pregnant, to have something growing inside of you and have that be a good thing, and when will it happen for you, and if its time for it to happen for you, will you be ready, emotionally, physically, financially, but then can you ever be really ready, if you don’t know what’s coming till it hits you square in the face, and even if you do fake test runs where you try to test out how you would react to your pregnant belly bearing a child with Down’s Syndrome or how your monthly budget will factor in a child for 18+ years of life, how can you really really really know how you will feel until it really really really happens, and isn’t that a little bit scary, especially the money part, I mean the giving birth part with all the pain and the flesh doing things flesh doesn’t seem like it should do, that’s already pretty scary, but then you start to think about diapers and food and toys and college educations, and that’s when you feel actually terrified, but on the other hand, people do it every day, every single day, more kids are made, and born, and are raised by people far less fortunate than you, so what do you really have to complain about, except Everything, because doesn’t it seem like a child changes your entire life, and people who have done it, had kids, I mean, they seem to say that phrase “changes your entire life” like it’s a good thing, but sometimes you wonder if it can possibly be a good thing to always have to think about someone else first, to put their wants and needs and desires and dreams before your own, and you think you will be able to do it, when push comes to shove, but you also secretly think it’s a little fucked up, and that as a kid you sometimes wished your mom had put her own needs first and that your father had put his more second, but nothing is perfect, really, because look at the two of them, your mom lived her life mostly the way she wanted to putting you first, and your father went off chasing his dreams and yet he still hasn’t published that book or made that great album that would make him a star the way he wanted to be a star when he left you and your mother when you were just two because his dreams were more important to him than you were, so fuck him, anyway, yeah, fuck him, I said that, and if you can’t deal with my swearing, then oh well, but also does that make me unfit to be a mother, the fact that I swear almost unconsciously, that I reach for bad words like a security blanket when I am feeling threatened or mad or sad, will I have to stop swearing someday if I want to be a good mother, and if I stop swearing will I be less me, and if motherhood makes me stop editing anthropology and stop writing fiction and start changing diapers and letting infants latch onto me to feed and, well, you know all the stuff that falls under the umbrella of mothering, will that make me less me, or more a me I just haven’t met, and GOD, again, how weird that is, to think that I could someday be a mother, of hopefully multiple children, and what will those adopted and not adopted children be named anyway?

---
* You know who you are and how much I heart you, but I'm not going to out you as the pregnant ones in case you think your being pregnant is, like, your news to tell people and you don't think the people that need to know are the entire Internet.

** Because I am an editor, it bothers me a bit that I switch from 1st to 2nd person repeatedly during this passage. However, because it is intended to be a stream-of-consciousness kind of flow--incidentally, the only reason why it's a whopper of a run-on sentence--I am letting it go. Because I am a writer, and I maintain that writers get to break rules--as long as they are aware they are breaking them and are not just making dumb mistakes.

To file under "you learn a new thing every day."

Evidently, despite all that power and influence, U.S. presidents have been, of late, asked to give up e-mail. Does that seem crazy to anyone else? I mean, I know, I know, even just ten years ago, I had barely signed up for my very first web-based e-mail account, at hotmail, and that we were not all in the clutches of such neurotic obsession and dependence on various forms of instant e-contact, and this probably wasn't even an issue to consider in the days of Bush the first and Clinton, but still. Really? I mean, the Office of the President--which is no doubt one of the busiest offices out there, one which requires a ton of multitasking and delegation, one which practically screams out for easy sending of messages rather than time-consuming phone calls and so forth--has not been employing e-mail to run its daily business?!

I guess I see the rationale in terms of security and privacy and so forth. But I honestly never thought about it before and hadn't been following the intense New York Times coverage of Obama's quest to keep his Blackberry (November 15, January 7, January 8, January 12) until I stumbled across another article on the subject today (January 22).

All this is a moot point, because our Obama has won the battle. He gets to keep his BlackBerry. He gets to keep e-mailing, and Facebooking, and Twittering, because that's the kind of man, and President, he is. Contact with non-D.C. people, staying in touch with pre-presidential friends and family, and continuing to have a variety of people in his inner circle (even if some are in his cybercircle rather than his physical state and space) are more important to him than possible breaches into his security or privacy and are worth the time he'll invest to send those messages himself, instead of delegating the task to a staff member. What that says to me, too, is that he feels he has nothing to hide. Which is a definitely a comforting thing to have in a president.

Quote of the day: without writing.

"Without writing, the world goes gray. It just doesn't make sense. I quickly teeter into something not good."

--Robert Vivian, in his lecture "The Art of Change in the Meditative Essay," VCFA winter residency 2008-2009

Quote of the day: best article title, possibly ever.

And the award goes to . . .

“Spread Your Ass Cheeks”: And Other Things That Should Not Be Said in Indigenous Languages. 2008. Shaylih Muehlmann. American Ethnologist 35(1):34–48.

I mean, really. On the one hand, that title says it all! You almost don't need to read the article! On the other hand, after such a title, how can you not want to read the rest?

*This* is what I'm talking about.

President Barack Obama, so comfortable in the Oval Office that he has broken the Bush years' jacket-always-on rule.

As Paris Hilton would say (years after Wife and I said it), "That's hot."

Homesickness, con't: this time in pictures.

North Shore holoholo



Makapu'u hike



Pictures of our Kaimana Beach potluck party and the Kuli'ou'ou hike to follow once Dave uploads them to Flickr!

Passing me on, like a baton.

Meet my advisors, semesters one and two:

Rigoberto Gonzalez (last semester)

and

Robert Vivian (this semester).

Homesickness.

(This has nothing to do with the inauguration of President Obama, though I am thrilled about that happy event.)

I want to meet the people with an uncomplicated relationship to Home. I've always imagined they are out there, roaming, perfectly content in their sense of belonging to a place. I've heard of people who never left their hometown until the day they died, and never had any desire to. I've heard of others who tried to leave, spent mere months away, and then returned with resolve that Home was where it's at and never again questioned their judgment. But I've never once met a single one. And it makes me wonder, even doubt, that they truly exist.

My relationship with Home grows more and more complicated. First of all, where is it? It's not where I was born (Sacramento), that's for sure. But whether "home" for me--the place where I feel I belong--is Hawai'i, New York, or the SF bay area is hard to say. Maybe none of these; maybe all.

Maybe the definition is the problem. When I think of the word home, I think of Hawai'i. When I think of belonging, I think of the places where my friends live, New York and California. When I think of living my life to the fullest, I think of travelling widely. When I think of what is important, I think of family, and therefore of Hawai'i. And when I try to reconcile these things, I give myself a migraine.

There's the well-known trope of the turtle. He carries home on his back. Be like the turtle, some say, but I wonder if that seems sort of cynical and hermit-like, that your own skin is the only place you can feel at home.

Home is where the heart is, goes another variation. And home is where you hang your hat, goes another. The truth for me, I think, so far lies somewhere between, along with the following admonitions to self: Don't overthink it. Don't obsess. Just be where you are, and present.

Resolutions, 2009.

I could sit here retyping all the ones I didn't fulfill in the last, oh, 28 years, but you know what? I'm going to make it easy on myself. I'm going to fulfill my first resolution by going easy on myself, being a little more realistic about what is possible.

So. My resolutions this year are as follows:

1. don't give myself such a hard time. celebrate my successes and don't beat myself up too hard on my failures.

2. learn to make a really good dirty martini.

3. learn to make creme brulee.

Yes, two of them involve food. As Jules pointed out at A Candid Life, it seems those are the easy ones to keep.

Some of the photos from Moloka'i.

(I still have to upload some of the others but here's a teaser!)

Quickly, two new "daily cuppa" blogs.

Check out these new blogs written by friends of mine, both of which will become part of my treasured everyday timesuck:

Vacillations, well-written by a VCFA classmate and dear friend Rachel

and

housepants for everybody!, beautifully penned by my ex-SLC classmate, friend, and new mommy Bethie.

YAY FOR NEW AND FASCINATING WAYS TO DAWDLE MY TIME!

Top 10 things learned from this winter residency.

After a lot of vague and suggestive posts about my dreams lately, and with the Big 3-0 weekend escape for my husband successfully dispatched, I’ve finally got a moment to reflect on the VCFA winter residency.

“There was some drama which I decided not to get involved in; this proved to be a refreshing venture” was how my friend Rich summed up the experience on his blog. Alas, I found myself right in the middle of said drama, which I won’t get into here, because it isn’t really that interesting, except that it made me realize some hard things about myself.

So, what I learned from this winter:

1. The cold did not kill me. It was cold (negative 20 on NYE, I believe) but nothing I couldn’t handle with that ridiculous fortress of a coat.
2. Maple syrup candies from Vermont are deeply yummy.
3. For a lot of reasons, winter residency is worse than summer residency.
4. Do NOT try to make plans for immediately after winter residency, because the weather will no doubt foil your plans. This was a new point to learn for a Hawai'i girl.
5. I still don’t know if it’s better to know many people slightly or a few people well, but I guess I’ve opted for the former rather than the latter.
6. It can be just as painful to be on the inside as on the outside. I spent time inside, outside, and straddling the fence this past residency and still don’t know where I belong. Maybe nowhere.
7. Your mother was right when she told you not to call people names. It’s not nice and it makes people feel like shit.
8. Go to the damn talent show. Go to the student readings. Participate in community.
9. It doesn’t matter what other people are doing, because they are in charge of their own selves and they are full of their own motivations and reasons that you cannot understand. But never, ever, ever compromise your own values or go against what you believe, even if it feels easier at the time. You’ll hate yourself, and drink too much, and then end up sobbing on the phone to your previously blissfully asleep husband at 3am.
10. Despite the social awkwardness, there will always, always be moments at which people will surprise you with their generosity of spirit. This is a good and beautiful thing.

I will be studying this semester with Robert Vivian as my advisor. I am thrilled about this and am sure that his guidance will bring to light different strengths and weaknesses in my writing.

The next big decision is whether or not to attend the Slovenia residency this summer instead of the Vermont one. I’m still not 100% sure, mainly because I need to finish percolating over what I learned about social relationships and myself this past winter. I want to go, badly, but I want to be very clear about what I am heading into and what I want to get out of the experience.

This is Officially The Last Time I Will Blog about The Social Stickyness. At least, I hope so. I don't mean to be such a whiner, but it really did affect me and upset me deeply. I hope I can learn what I need to learn about it and then drop the subject because I see clearly that it was no one and everyone's fault and the best thing that can happen is to quit the lingering on the subject and move on. So, I apologize. Last time, like I said.

Okay, back to chillin’ with the husband—who is now on Facebook!!—and the in-laws. Posts about the Hawai'i trip and Husband's 30th Birthday Extravaganza to follow later, for sure.

Half-naked in the snow.

Last night I dreamed I was back at VCFA, in all that snow. Someone was working on a project wherein she needed all of us to--amazingly--take off the top half of our clothes and be weighed on a scale. Mind you, this was happening in the middle of campus, amidst the snow drifts. So there I was, half-naked and shivering, in the snow, being weighed and judged and watched by others. Gee, thanks, mind of no subtlety.

Broken glass.

All night, I dreamed of broken glass. I'm pretty certain that says something. I was barefoot in a gritty city, where broken bottles lined the streets. The glitter of it was pretty but I kept finding shards in my palms and the underside of my feet.

Guest-starring in other people's dreams.

I have guest-starred in two of my VCFA classmates' dreams this week.

Not those kind of dreams. Get your head out of the gutter.

First, one woman told me that she and I were with her little nieces, all dressed up for lunch with the Queen. Of England. She was somehow related to the Queen, and evidently I was "tight" with the Queen. Awesome!

Then, another friend, Suz, dreamed our classroom was beseiged by bats. And in the middle of workshop, evidently I stood up and insisted that everyone had to leave because the floodwaters were coming. Wild!

Now I have no idea what I was really doing, symbolically, in these other people's dreams, but I do rather like having them cameos.

Random musings for a January morning.

EAVESDROPPING
“Everybody says that cigarettes kill. But I say it’s the opposite: cigarettes save lives. I know if I don’t have my morning cigarette, I’d kill somebody." --overheard in the cafeteria

ON THE SNOW
The snow is unlike anything I’ve seen before. There is so much of it, in knee-high powdery deposits, that a singular path circumnavigates the entire campus, and even we artists walk the straight and narrow. For once we stay inside the lines. The banks of it, then, stay pure and white, their surfaces as undisturbed as when the snow fell, freshly, hours prior. When the wind picks up, it stirs the wide expanse of it, like a beach touched by tradewinds, the way the grains of it tumble and blow. Only colder.

And the Vermonters, they don’t mess around with it, not here they don’t. They are not scared of it, but they take it seriously, as a known quantity, a habitual visitor, a prodigal son or long-ago friend, found again. It falls and out come the snow plows and the liberal applications of salt. It blankets and thus appears the layering and the swaddling and the sturdy fur-lined boots.

THE DINING SET
I didn’t know how much my mother’s dining table set meant to me until today at noon.

The set is worth near nothing. It’s not made of precious wood, nor handcarved by artisans, nor carried gingerly back from a trip to China. It’s not been well-kept, the way the pieces that support the leaf have fallen, individually, and I’ve been forced to glue them back on, the way it shows its age through deep lines into its surface, the cracks, the scuffs.

But the heavy claw foot table and the four mismatchingly stained, peacock-patterned chairs were the same ones my mother bought to furnish her first house and only marriage, those many years ago. It was a dining set that weathered a marriage, children—my half-brother Bluewater and I, and the summers and winters following my parents’ divorce, during which it lived in a garage, protected from the elements but not the extreme temperatures of summer and winter. It survived being disassembled and reassembled into my uncle’s truck and carted from Sacramento to Burlingame, where it was jostled up three flights of narrow stairs to furnish my first (rented) apartment as a married woman, a wide open space with vaulted ceilings and a Californian sense of necessity, a dishwasher, four closets, two walls of mirrors, a lanai. It hosted dinner parties, and board and card game nights, and was further marked by its frequent encounters with the washing of bones in mah jongg. The sound of the heavy pieces being shuffled across the wood was a brisk thudding, a pleasant noise, like a favorite song. It was disassembled and reassembled again, a year later, this time in a “charming” (read: small) apartment, in Brooklyn, New York, where it parked itself in front of a “decorative fireplace” (read: non-working) and a large portrait window that opened onto a beautiful brick church with stained glass windows. The way the light poured in onto that table quickly made it my favorite place to write: the table’s surface bare except for a pen, some paper, a mug of coffee or tea, perhaps a piece of toast and some lilikoi butter or elderflower jelly; none of that fist-clenching chaos that my office induces, with its clutter of post-its and deadlines and quotes to inspire all around.