Yipes.

I opened my Google Reader just now, and it showed 1,000+ unread items. Probably not a good choice for a "quick little break" from proofreading.

This is what happens when you spend all month unpacking! You fall behind on key things like your Google Reader!

HWJ: Where the Ladies Are At.

These people make me happy.

OMG: NATURE.

Yesterday, our hike kicked off with warning signs about rattlesnakes and mountain lions, and continued with deer and mountain lion tracks, actual deer, bluebirds or bluejays but in any case something blue, and quail.

Just now, there was a loud knocking sound at our door, and Nahe went barking and rushing. When I finally could get a hold of her and open the door, no one was there. But nestled in the nook of our door, I found a nut, and when I called, hello, anybody there, a black squirrel scampered into and out of view.

Seriously. A squirrel just tried to squirrel away a nut into my house.

California, y'all: this is deep nature.

This seems like a really bad idea.

OK, so I didn't WIN, but ...

my short story "Death by Pufferfish" placed in Glimmertrain's Top 25 in its August 2010 Contest for New Writers. According to the lovely e-mail I received this morning: "That's the top 2-3% of over a thousand submissions!"

I am so psyched!

Because this is literally the only writing I've done in the past few weeks, what you get is my gushing about Vermont College of Fine Arts.

Asked by the staff of the MFA program from which I just graduated what it was about the program I most liked, I wrote:

"I'm afraid I had a bit of trouble being concise. "

And then ...

I came to VCFA from the desperate depths of six years of editing anthropologists' words at a nonprofit by day, and trying to write by night. Let's amend that: trying to believe I had anything worth writing by night. After years of working on others' work--and possibly an outburst involving a snippy older anthropologist and me banging the phone repeatedly against the jack--I finally knew it was time to take my own seriously. VCFA made it feasible for me to do--because I could keep my workaday job while following my passion.

What the program did for me is make me able to say I am a writer. Not I am an "aspiring" writer, not that I am a "short story" writer or "novelist," and not even I am a "fiction" writer (although that's the genre in which I graduated). Simply: I am a writer. It plucked me up and then set me down amidst such a wonderful community--and by this, I mean the faculty and staff but also my classmates. People are pretty much the point when you're looking for a MFA program. You can look at rankings and what faculty have published where and how often till your eyes cross, but it doesn't matter as much as the people you meet. There's something in the air at VCFA (that, or NECI is spiking the coffee) that encourages everyone to fling wide arms, heart, self at people whose politics and backstories are radically different enough from their own--and the effect it has is to unlock a world of possibilities for us as writers and as people. It is these people who inspire me *and* move me to bravery in my own writing, whether that translates to experimenting with surrealism, border crossing into creative nonfiction or poetry or craft essays, or even, simply, trying out more minimalist dialogue or writing more intelligently and thoughtfully the regionalist writing I was already doing.

Residencies overwhelm: it's like having lived on table scraps and suddenly being invited to a banquet, where there is so much plenty that all you can do is desperately stuff your face... and your pockets, purse, hat, and shoes. But then you take the plenty home with you and live with it for six months, and it continues to feed you.

And the plenty doesn't end with graduation. I literally cannot--and will not--imagine my life without this community. VCFA introduced me to writers who invited me to be in writers' groups, both regional and online. It gave me the courage and chops to become the Managing Editor of a lit/lifestyle journal (Hawaii Women's Journal) that now regularly publishes many VCFA students. Other MFA programs might have agents hanging out on the quad or Oprah-approved faculty, but VCFA does not foster the spirit of cutthroat competition but genuine comraderie: I feel as proud of writer-friends' publications as of my own, and I do not begrudge any of their achievements as something that should have been mine. I am sometimes angsty and envious (hey, I'm human) but never begrudging. I'd reapply in a hot second.

I urge anyone thinking of pursuing their MFA in Writing (poetry, CNF, fiction, children/YA) to check out Vermont College of Fine Arts.

Shoring up the soul of the home.

desk collage (click on link for image with NOTES), originally uploaded by dave & mayumi.

We've been doing a LOT of unpacking, and the apartment is starting to feel like a home, but this was one of the unpacking tasks that made me feel most accomplished and, well, HAPPY.

Kitchen Revolution up at Frontier Psychiatrist.

My new short-short story--a love story, naturally, and one based on true events--is available for your reading pleasure at Frontier Psychiatrist. It reads especially smooth with your morning cup of joe--just keep that mug far from the computer keyboard.

I really love publishing with FP. They really know how to make a lady's words look sexy.

This is exactly right.

"It is not work that kills men, it is worry. Work is healthy; you can hardly put more on a man than he can bear. But worry is rust upon the blade. It is not movement that destroys the machinery, but friction." --Henry Ward Beecher

(blogitecture: under construction)

P.S. Sorry about the ginormous header. I'll get the proportions fixed as soon as my tech help has a free, unexhausted moment. But for now, isn't it pretty? It's a carphoto* of the Golden Gate, on our way up to look for and buy a car, which then got frescoed in Photoshop. I love the moodyness of the fog.

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* I am notorious for whipping out the camera while riding over the Golden Gate in the passenger seat of the car. All combined (2006-2007, 2010), I must have near fifty shots of the GG in different combinations of light and fog.

Dispatch from California.

We're still sparerooming it at Surfrunner's till the 9th, but here is why we never want to move out:

1. Awesome friends.

Surfrunner, le chef, and her chief taste-tester, R.

2. Nahe's new dogfriend, Kaika.

Nota bene: dogFRIEND, nano, not loverrr. You haven't been replaced.

3. Ridiculously delicious, homecooked meals.

Like: pancetta, pecorino, basil pasta and grilled grouper.

And: cinnamon-roasted sweet potatoes, pan roasted rosemary/sage pork tenderloin, lemony-garlic green beans, and pumpkin-chocolate chip bread (pictured).

And: beef stew, hapa-haole rice, and ginger-tumeric cauliflower.

And ... upcoming this week: kona coffee glazed ribs.

As much as it's important to settle into your own space and unpack/etc., we have it pretty sweet. I'm sure you can see why we kind of don't want to leave.

How to Buy a Used Car.*

Be done with all twenty times you had to sign your name—twenty-four letters long—and be in the rental car coasting down the Redwood Highway, upset without knowing why. Be heading from the bright, dry sunshine of Santa Rosa back into the dense grey fog that creeps over the Marin Headlands and sits on the highway before you begin to understand. You have never signed anything more serious than a one-year apartment lease. You have never handed over so much money, ever. You should be popping champagne, but a manacle has caught you at the ankle and there is the tinny sound of dragging chains. Someone is clipping your wings, and that someone is your own self.

I live here now? You try it out, aloud.

I live here now, you say, thinking about living in NY, where you couldn’t afford to invest in anything and in this capricious moment it feels safer, easier, known. You suddenly miss the subway.

I live here, now. Breathe in, breathe out. I live. Here. Now.

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* (From my writing group's prompt this morning: "What I really want to write about this morning is ___________." You might even replace the word "want" with "need.")

Dreaming in two parts.

I.

I had gathered a large number of writers--friends of dear friends, all--to create Salon West. We were all in metal chairs in a large circle, about ten of us, at some kind of outdoor cafe. People were chatting their neighbors or sitting silently, but the quiet wasn't awkward. I was thinking I should get my bearings and start when another woman launched in. "So! It's so nice to see us all gathered here ... " etc. I sat in my chair, feeling the wrestle of power between us, unsure what to do, suddenly aware that I truly had no better reason to facilitate than she did--we were all strangers together, beginning.

II.

There was a dog costumed to look like a fox. Nahe sniffed at the dog, then, when I wasn't watching, pawed and bit at him until his costume came off. But he was left bloodied from her teeth and nails.

May is back in the bay.

Nahe ate and pooped today. This may not seem newsworthy, but she’s been out of sorts since the movers came to pack us on Tuesday. Four days of “irregularity”—this is the most encompassing way to put it. That today she felt safe enough to do these most simple of things—eat, go to the bathroom—is a huge relief. We walked together through the borrowed labyrinth of our friends’ housing community, and Nahe wants to pee on every single blade of grass. She pulls in any and every direction, indiscriminate. Her ears ever perked, her eyes wide open, she looks up at me despite the bright glare of sunshine. She understands nothing but that wherever Dave and I are is home.