The Strega's Story

Becoming a Caregiver Almost Overnight

2011-11-15T12:27:00.000-08:00

Hi, faithful readers:

I apologize for the long silence on this blog. My life has taken a very unexpected turn in that I have become a full-time caregiver, while still dealing with my own health issues and continuing to teach at university (and even write--I am polishing my first nanowrimo novel)..and yes, even dancing, though I have had to give up some of that for now.

I can't tell much about the caregiving in this public forum in terms of exactly who the "caregivee" is, except that they are thriving under my care and, strangely, so am I. At first, it felt like a tsunami had swept through my life and that of my family and I was overwhelmed, with many new decisions to make, all of a sudden. I have had to rearrange many aspects of my life and am now making peace with the fact that my career, for now, may be impacted in that I might not be able to do everything I wanted teaching-wise or even writing-wise this year. Still, what is most meaningful to me is that I am making a very profound difference in another person's life. Giving of my time and love like this is also changing my heart and mind in very deep, almost subterranean ways--I find I don't worry about as much because I can't afford the time and energy, for one thing. Plus I think I got all the worry out of my system when I first entered into this venture a few weeks ago!!!

Thank you all for still visiting this little corner of the Internet, despite my silences. I hope I can post a bit more regularly this autumn. Peace to all.

Another Incentive to Stay Here

2011-09-14T22:58:00.000-07:00

I also wanted to let my faithful readers know that I have, for almost two years ago, a very large incentive to stay alive and be well: I have a beautiful granddaughter, almost two now. She is the light of my life and so much fun to be around. I am trying to be a grandmother like my beloved grandmother Mary, who was always there for me and in fact lived on my family property for many years. I miss her and really understand now all the things she did for me. I want to live as many years as possible so that my granddaughter knows and remembers me. For her birthday: a child-sized piano, because she connects with music so much. And her name for me is "Am-Ma"--which Prada, my elder daughter (who just completed her yoga instructor training in Rishikesh, India) informs me means "saint." Well, I wouldn't call myself a saint by any means, but it's nice to hear such a positive word!

Hallelujah

2011-09-13T16:25:00.000-07:00

I decided to make some important changes and boundaries on my own behalf, including taking a six-month hiatus from both my writing groups. I do miss them, but honestly, it was a good decision. Having Fridays free enables me to do two things: participate more at the Zen center and study Haitian dance with my absolute favorite teacher, Shawn. I can't do everything; my health has been so fragile that right now I can work and I can, to some degree, write, and dance because that is so crucial to keeping me healthy, and the other things have to go.

My sister died after having lupus and related health problems for eighteen years. I wonder at times how long I have (I have also had lupus for eighteen years as of December). Zen has brought me to a place of peace about my own impermanence, with a sense of "yes, of course there will come a time when I won't be here," and that is a resolved fact of life with me. I have not been through as much as others go through, but what I endure is plenty for me.

Cool scarf on Knitty

2011-08-25T19:53:00.000-07:00

I really liked the scarf on the "cover" of Knitty this month (my favorite online knitting magazine). I might make it, though none of the men I might give this to as a gift (boyfriend, son, nephew, etc) actually wears scarves. So I might make it for myself. I love the color and the way the yarn really enhances the pattern--gives it that very warm-autumn-fire sensibility.

Again

2011-08-25T19:21:00.000-07:00

I used to play the above game, Moon Cresta, when I was just a young undergrad. Today I happened upon a YouTube video of it. In the era of games I really can't play well (I haven't even saved the princess yet in Mario One), itt was nice to see dear old Moon Cresta again, in a time when my health has yet again given me challenges. Sort of like the visualization of "good" cells getting rid of the ornery ones.

Still, I am back at work, happy to see my students and ready to start a new year, however creakily I am doing it right now. I went through months of recovery from pneumonia and other respiratory problems and am now recovering from a life-threatening asthma attack last week (ambulance, hospital, intense IV prednisone and a long high-dose course of prednisone also). I am grateful, inordinately so, to be alive right now. Each day is precious, and for me, each day is Zen as well. As a Buddhist, perhaps the images on a long-ago video screen may be in appropriate (I took Dharma vows which include nonviolence), but the little cartoonish images of meteors and rockets are a bit silly and goofy, and so I allow even this little thing from long ago to be part of my healing. Healing is merely the willingness to forgive and invite goodness in, after all, and anything can symbolize it. The personal symbol is something I really like to explore and talk about as a professor, too--we will be doing a lot of that as I work with my new batch of folks this year.

And grateful for learning the preciousness of the moment, the real life, this gift of having my footsoles fastened to the earth a little while more. One day at a time.

A monk asked Chao-chou, "I have just entered the monastery: please give me some guidance."
Chao-chou said, "Have you eaten your rice gruel?"
The monk said,"Yes, I've eaten."
Chao-chou said, "Then go wash your bowl."

Slow Recovery, Again

2011-06-15T00:52:00.000-07:00

I never really meant for this blog to be a chronicle of my health battles; unfortunately, they are interwoven with the rest of my life, including my writing. This time, there were some gains, though.

I had pneumonia for at least two weeks in May and the beginning of June without knowing it. I only felt very ill with a respiratory infection. It wasn't til last week that I actually thought to have my doctor check it. He's the one who has helped tremendously with getting my asthma under control. He came to the conclusion that I had viral pneumonia and to get home and rest.

I have to say that, though it was definitely not a walk in the park to get pneumonia, my lungs seemed to have survived it fine. It is a testimony to how far I've come healthwise in a year; last year, pneumonia would probably have ended things for me. This week I am back at dance. For my body's ability to heal, I am incredibly and forever grateful.

I also turned 52 on June 7th, with quiet and gentle birthday celebrations all 'round. Since my sister died at age 53, I am well aware, sadly so, of my mortality. Time seems so precious these days.

I have also been a practicing Zen Buddhist for a year now and truly see how it is changing my life in very slow and subtle ways, all with just a willingness to try the meditation and be patient with myself and the unfolding of an entirely new spiritual life for me (though I joke that Zen is the perfect spiritual path because I get to sit for a great deal of time each day!)

What I Dreamed, I Did

2011-04-11T16:07:00.001-07:00

I would like to apologize for being gone so much from this blog. I appreciate that there are people out there who come to read my words here. I have unfortunately been very ill again and am truly hoping I will have a few more years left to me. It is hard to become this ill when I am still in the prime of my life. I recently spent six difficult days in the hospital; I came out of it with a new treatment regimen which is helping, but it was a scary time, and frightening for everyone. I can feel the tiredness of my body at this point, fighting a long battle for health and strength, and yet I am still here.

I feel sad for anyone who still maintains the idea that lupus is not a real disease. I have had it for eighteen years and can feel how much it has taken out of me at this point. The good part for me is that I fully believe, even at this point when so much is up in the air for me, that I can achieve a remission.

Every day is so precious, so irreplaceable. That is the gift I am getting out of this time, that the time on earth we have is such a treasure.

Back Again

2011-01-31T16:21:00.000-08:00

Back at school, teaching comp and creative writing. Amazing students, as always, lots of work already. I'm glad for another semester; the campus seems particularly beautiful right now and I feel that sense of the seasonal wheel turning again and the sense of rightness about being in the classroom. There's been the usual PowerPoint and other mishaps, but mostly I am doing fine.

I am currently on the last leg of my novel The Pleasure Palace, and it should be ready to send off in a couple of months (including time for edits). I'm really happy about its progress and it is quite fun to sit down with something in which I can run free with my particular brand of humor. I will miss it when it's done, but there is always the sequel (this will be a three-part series, loosely).

That's all for this week!

Happy New Year

2011-01-01T02:44:00.000-08:00

I spent my evening sitting three zazen and walking meditation sessions at the Santa Cruz Zen Center. It was a wonderful experience and I feel that Zen is becoming more and more of a branch for my spirit to rest on.

We had a fire bowl ceremony at the zendo (among other wonderful things, including ginger tea at the break and truly delicious vegetarian noodle soup afterwards). One resolution I want to keep is to help cook on Friday mornings at the Zen Center for our local Homeless Garden Project.

I had a lovely experience tonight in the gentleness of the Santa Cruz Zen Center; at the fire bowl ceremony, one of the participants told us that there was wood in the fire from the Tassajara monastery. One thing I love about Zen is that I feel linked through time to other monasteries somehow.

So I am leaving something for myself to remember this year whenever I get too full of how "well" I am doing on my spiritual path, an anecdote I picked up somewhere:

"At Tassajara there were a few students who had done a thirty day sesshin together on the outside, thinking that if seven days was good that thirty would be better. They talked to Suzuki-roshi and described all their experiences and said that they had gained a higher state from it and asked what shall we do now? He said, "Concentrate on your breathing and it will go away."

And those are my thoughts on this first day of 2011

The Wheel Turning

2010-12-31T01:43:00.000-08:00

I've got a poem in Common Ground Review, an old one about my father. I'm grateful for it, as I always am, though poetry always seems like such an odd pursuit, like mastering the art of making perfect roses out of icing.

I haven't any truly profound musings on the end of 2010. It was the year of many important things in my life. My lesson on mortality over the summer was the path that led me to Zen, probably the only belief system that helped me find true spiritual peace and acceptance, and which supports a system of recovery as well.

Nothing more profound than that, I'm afraid. I have no expectations for the coming year, only open hands for all that I will experience, good and less good. Not to say I won't be doing anything--I have two novels to finish, and will be sending The Pleasure Palace around to agents fairly soon. It has no vampires in it, I promise, though it does have zombies (the main character is writing a book about zombie pirates, just to poke a little fun on this author's part of the whole zombie/vampire/undead phenom).

I will be at the Zen Center tomorrow night rocking in the new year, Buddhist style.

Happy New Year!

Be-Leaf

2010-10-27T16:19:00.000-07:00

My talented friend and fellow nanowrimo participant Miles has written and published a book (which he wrote during Nanowrimo). It's set in the Pacific Northwest and deals with environmental activism, dance, and a treesit, not all in that order--and much more, too! Click on the title to visit his page on Amazon.

Nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month) is coming up, by the way, starting November 1st!

And congratulations to Miles, a hardworking writer (and a highly accomplished musician and composer as well)!

Heh, just kidding

2010-10-20T23:20:00.000-07:00

Anyway, I have been given a comp class and creative writing again for next semester. 2 different preps, but I'm fine with it all.

I'm about to embark on my second nanowrimo novel in November; this is the second in a three part series set in Santa Cruz. This novel will veer from the romantic comedy of the first book, and will be a suspense and mystery story (with humor thrown in, of course).

So for the time being, all is good. Just a check-in to let everyone know I'm still among the quick.

Dharma To Go

2010-09-30T02:37:00.000-07:00

I'm starting to get into the flow of the semester, starting to bond with my students, and have signed up for benefits! I've also discovered a wonderful place on campus which has organic food and gluten-free bread, so I can adhere to the dietary changes I've made for asthma. I am extraordinarily grateful to be back. In my last check-up, my doctor said my lungs sound great now, and she is truly amazed at that, given that I nearly passed away in June.

But I'm still here.

Some have asked about my pursuit of Zen Buddhism, and yes, I am still at it. The only thing I am having a little trouble with lately is finding time to get to the zendo and meditate. I did get to my Intro to Zen class at last, and really enjoyed it. I was even chosen to demonstrate the use of the seiza meditation bench (which I think I will use next time). I find it rather ironic that somewhat slothful me has embraced one of the hardest disciplines of Buddhism--but then, irony is a ruling principle of the universe, as one of my dear friends pointed out.

The other update is that I can no longer use a chalkboard or whiteboard markers without starting to irritate my lungs again. After what I went through in June, I am really careful about stuff that irritates my lungs, so I am going to try out a Bamboo Pen and Touch to see if I can use it as a virtual chalkboard, using Word and the netbook I bring into the classroom.

So, we'll see.

and that's all for this week.

Catch-up

2010-09-16T00:02:00.000-07:00

Yes, the semester has begun, with me teaching two comp courses and sitting on two committees. Because of my near-total memory loss for June, I feel that the summer was "collapsed" somehow. Yet it's good to be back. I love teaching and San Jose State, for all its urban-ness, is still a beautiful campus to me, full of hope and good memories.

Not much news, BUT, as a catch-up:

I recently had a poem accepted by Common Ground Review in Massachusetts, "My Father at Seventy," a piece about my father growing old.

I had a visitor to this blog from the Executive Office of the President of the United States, Washington DC (a little server faery told me). The search term was "strega". President Obama, my consulting fee is a big high, but I'll give you a discount, as long as I get some organic produce from the White House garden into the bargain. :)

I have my book still being looked at by one agent, but am querying more after a fairly long hiatus (since March, when my health problems cropped up).

And everything else is going really rather well, life-wise, and I am grateful, as always, for life's goodness through everything.

Anonymous Posting

2010-08-28T00:05:00.000-07:00

I just would like to send a reminder to my faithful readers that I do not in general post anonymous comments on this blog--even if you call yourself "Anonymous" as an Open ID name or something. I did appreciate greatly one posting recently by an anonymous person and so made the exception, but in future, you have to identify yourself in some manner. Please remember that I monitor all comments that come to this blog, though I did not do that for some time when I first started this. I do not post everything that comes over the transom.

Thanks--just a note from the administrative office (me).

Beloved Something

2010-08-09T02:32:00.000-07:00

"And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth."

--Raymond Carver

As this difficult (for me) summer slowly deepens towards autumn, I try to re-assess the gifts within the great physical challenges I faced in May and June, which have increased my knowledge of my own mortality. My long illness has taken a huge toll on my body, though I am getting stronger day by day; still, I am left with the deep realization that I will not be here forever. Yet this knowledge, however difficult for me, is also jewel I can learn to carry with appreciation and respect, like a treasure found in the ashes of a wildfire.

Whether my final day on earth comes tomorrow or fifty years from now, I understand, a little more now, the grace of impermanence. I try to hold with conscious knowledge that opening my eyes to the world every morning is a gift and a new opportunity to choose my behavior and to deepen my desire to walk a path of compassion and goodness, not just proclaim that I do. In fact, I hope to proclaim not at all, just do.

When I was a child, my mother would take me to my grandmother's grave, to tend it and put flowers there (she loved best the dyed carnations, blue ones and also green). On my grandmother's gravestone is the phrase, "Beloved Mother."

I have thought of that phrase often as I continue to weave into life again. I realize that no one would probably want on their headstone, "He Had a Lot of Money" or "She Owned a BMW," or "She Had an Organized Closet," etc. In fact, anyone passing by a such an inscription would probably feel a little badly that this was the phrase that summed up a person's life!

But the phrase "Beloved Mother,"--or sister, friend, teacher--the idea of being beloved to someone, would be the most wonderful thing I could earn as my last message to the world, to anyone who passed by my final resting-place. So this year, and I hope for all the many years I have left, I will work on increasing my 'beloved-ness", and hope that I can also help increase others' sense of beloved-ness, too.

And the Bridge is Love: Remembering My Sister Maryanne

2010-07-20T00:59:00.000-07:00

"We ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning." --Thornton Wilder, The Bridge of San Luis Rey

Two years ago, just as I was preparing to leave for my Sunday morning African dance class, I received a phone call that shattered my life forever. My beloved older sister Maryanne had died, suddenly and with no real warning. I was unable to sit by her bedside and hold her hand as she passed away; I had no chance to say a final goodbye. I will never grow old with her. Though Maryanne had been ill for many years with a particularly virulent case of lupus, I never believed my strong older sister could die. A magical thinker and a little sister to the end, I felt she had some secret formula to cheat death. And yet, in the end, she too traveled into the mystery beyond this life.

I would give anything I have to hear my sister's voice again for one second, to sit with her for five minutes, to laugh over a joke, share a recipe with her, or reminisce about our childhood. I lost, at the moment of her death, the person who knew and loved me best in this world. Her loss does not get better for me with time in the sense that an illness might get better or an unpleasant memory might fade; I have only learned to bear this particular sorrow somewhat more lightly.

My sister was a warrior spirit who fought a virulent, highly unusual case of lupus and went through unbelievable physical sufferings that most people do not experience in their lifetimes. Her medical treatments amounted to torture, endured in the never-ending hope of wellness and good health. Yet her journey through illness ultimately yielded a deepening of her spirit. When I was diagnosed with lupus in 1993 (my own illness in virtual remission now), she gave me books by Dr. Bernie Siegel and Louise Hay; in turn, she had learned of these authors through young men with AIDS with whom she had worked. She taught me about life's marvelous uncertainty and that today, this blessed 24 hours, is all anyone really has. Later in her journey, she gave me books by Thich Nhat Hahn and Pema Chodron; a few years before she died, we promised each other we would send a sign of a dragonfly to let each other know there was an afterlife and our prayers were heard. Dragonflies fill my life now, real ones and painted and embroidered on gifts people give me. They give me hope, but never assuage the scar on my heart that is for her.

Losing a sibling is one of life's most painful excoriations. I use it now to let people know that holding a grudge or putting a wall up between those we love is dangerous and toxic to the spirit; I did so with my sister for some time and have vowed to spend the rest of my life in reparation for this. We, as human beings, are gifted with an incredible capacity to exercise folly, thinking that we have endless time and that others we love do, too--and so we can shut them out, shun them to "let them know how we feel" and "teach them a lesson," put ourselves first always, live a life fully self-centered, and bask in satisfied emotional gluttony and a hollow sense of power, thinking, "Wow, I really showed THEM how I feel!" Out of a need for control, out of fear and selfishness, out of a childish sense of not knowing better, we put up walls of cruelty and self-righteous anger which only create an endless cycle of hurt on both sides.

But the truth is, this thinking is the foundation for a lifetime of regret should that loved one suddenly be removed from one's life, forever. By such behavior, we only reveal our pettiness and smallness. To drop a grudge, to erase the "laundry list" of grievances against a person, to simply hold one's arms out again and embrace others in all their beauty and frail humanity, to treat others as we wish to be treated, is truly all we can do for one each other in a world where we are all imperfect. It is a mark of maturity and "walking the talk" of loving compassion. Love demands much of people, including humility, to yield its greatest gifts. I am glad beyond belief that I reconciled with my sister in the year before she died. But for the rest of my life, I will regret the times when I felt justified in acting otherwise.

I would like to tell people who read this who are holding a grudge to consider reaching out to the other person, even if you have to eat a bit of humble pie to do it. There's something truly satisfying, even wonderful, in being the person who turns around and says, "I'm sorry and I love you." I know because I did it with her, and it salves my regrets, a little. Take my word that the light pours in when we find it in ourselves to do that. At the very least, hold someone with whom you have conflict a little more compassionately in your heart today, in her honor.

And though my sadness at losing her never ends, neither does my love for her, forever.

I leave you with one of her poems. She was a beautiful writer.

Remedy

Cotton swathing
grey light
through flimsy window sieve
purdah of illness.

In a half-remembered room
great grandmother holds a bowl
pale water, deep green oil
Swirling
over the head of the afflicted
Speaking
of "malocchio", evil eye
Breaking
curses with lucid hope and wisdom

It's a simple remedy now
to unsheath your memory
rip my curtain
arise and walk
bathe in the daylight

Light
is the mother's gift
We have always known
no one room can hold
our precious lives

--Maryanne McMillan

Returning to the Breath

2010-07-06T00:26:00.000-07:00

I realized the other day that I could do two things with my recent illness: crawl into a shell and hide, and contemplate the horrors of what I went through, blame everyone for their lack of support and fear, hate myself for the same reasons, and otherwise become an unpleasant person no-one wanted to be around, and waste my time by imagining more horror and illness.

My other choice was to use my experience for some sort of betterment. Yes, I am still afraid at times. I am far more aware of mortality than I ever was. But I need to simply incorporate these lessons into my self. There might be a time when I will use what I've learned in the course of service to another. There are gifts to be had even from this experience. It is again the experience of facing my own annihilation, my dissolving into the universe and the life beyond this one. I am grateful for such an extraordinary chance and reminder that it is folly to try and pursue the path of comfort, that life shakes me back into the idea that I cannot run from the fear of groundlessness--that I can sit with uncertainty and be present and fine with it. My illnesses have given me a great gift: the knowledge of impermanence, that I have a limited time on this earth. Falling headlong into worries about the future or living forever in the past erase the present moment, which is all I really have.

One thing, over and over, I have been hearing is "mindfulness meditation," from close friends to my therapist. I passed by the Zen Center in Santa Cruz recently, realizing I have thought of this place from time to time, even walked by it occasionally for the past 26 years, but never walked inside.

Somehow today was the day I changed my path.

Of course I was afraid--afraid of not "doing it right," of my cell phone going off even though I silenced it--I carried my whole bag of junk inside, my big purse with cell phone and wallet, Ipod, journal, pens, Chico bag for groceries, pen case, all the junk of my life--what a metaphor!. The monk overseeing the meditation was so warm and welcoming; he truly "saw' me, I think. Not a dour person in sight; everyone seemed calm and yet happy. One fellow--I dub him "the old salt" because I just know there's a boat lurking somewhere in his life--mentioned to another person that Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind was a good book to have when starting zazen, and always coming back to the breath was a good thing.

The meditation center is simple and deeply beautiful in its simplicity. One does not have to sit on a cushion; I sat on a chair. The monk told me that they faced the wall in this practice. I sat in my chair, keeping my spine straight, and put my hands in the "universal mudra," both palms up, left resting on right, thumbs touching, forming an oval. I faced a white wall and a window with white paper on it.

What came up for me? I focused on my breath. Panic arose; the panic of the small child I once was, made to sit for many hours facing a wall in a dark room, as punishment, creating a lifelong fear of the dark. I assured my "inner child" she was in a place of safety and peace. I recognized the panic, I felt it; I did not attach to it; the memory fell away. I realized the panic I often fear is a customary panic put in place during my childhood, and that this panic will attach to situations in my adult life--a tremendous breakthrough for me. I felt a deep constriction at the bottom of my lungs and realized the panic also takes root there; I felt the panic and the place where it rests in my body, and let it go. At the moment I let go, my lungs did also, and I experienced wonderful deep, unconstricted breaths. I heard a bird singing outside; a child laughing and running down the sidewalk; and slowly I came to a deep center of peace, returning always to the breath. And then the bell rang and it was over. It seemed five minutes, but it had been forty-five.

I walked back into the world with a delicate sense of what it means to have a "center." Everything looked so alive--a rose seemed the only rose in the world when I looked at it. It was as simple as the breath, as simple as being alive in that very minute.

I told the monk afterwards that I had been walking by the Zen center for 26 years on and off without going in, and somehow today was the day. He said, "I wonder why today was the right one." I said, "I don't know. It just was." A koan for this beginner? I don't know. But certainly a deep and real truth.

To Kali's House and Back

2010-06-30T01:44:00.000-07:00

I stepped down to 5 mg. prednisone today, an accomplishment given what I have been through this month. I have lost an entire month of my life. I have memory loss of most of it except for small spots here and there--a medication so powerful that it wiped my "hard drive" fairly clean for an entire month also saved my life. For now, I believe that I will live.

I did not believe this earlier in the month. One day--I cannot remember which day now, but I was very ill and believed that if I lay down and shut my eyes, I would not open them to this world. So afraid was I that I nearly emailed a friend to chant the Heart Sutra for me because I felt in a deeply intuitive way that I would not live through the afternoon. There are no words to describe my emotional state that day: emptiness, giving-over, a sense of light. I would have died alone, the way my mother and sister died. This day I remember, a white pearl in an ocean of forgetting

I managed to get outside onto my deck at some point--afraid to lie down, I just walked out and sat in a chair. I felt more ill than I have ever been in my life. Everything looked incredibly bright and detailed. Suddenly something amazing happened: it seemed I was surrounded with dragonflies! There might have been just a few, but in my state of mind, there seemed to be dozens, green and electric blue and bright red. My sister's sign to me that she is with me is a dragonfly--something we agreed to send each other long ago, when she was still alive, as a sign that life goes on beyond this one. Her other sign to me is a feather, and at the same time the dragonflies came, several small feathers started to drift down out of the afternoon sky, slowly, as if someone gently shook out a down comforter.

I lived through that day and feel that my sister, as she did in life so many times, nudged me back from the brink of something. And I am still here. And it is good.

Stepping Down

2010-06-26T08:08:00.000-07:00

I've stepped down to 10 mg. prednisone today, an accomplishment after the level of problems with my lungs. Kali backs off, for now.

I find I have to weave activities back in slowly; the world seems full of triggers for me. I have had trauma from the times during this period that I came close to dying. I have to learn to be calm when I encounter a trigger (perfume, cigarette smoke, etc). It is understandable, this fear, given that a trigger could set off a chain reaction and I could end up in the hospital again. Getting frightened, however understandable it might be, does not help the state of my lungs and their reaction to a world full of potential asthma triggers.

People around me have been okay; one or two people have called me on trying to do so much: my tendency to try to force myself back into life despite how ill I am, like a rebellious adolescent. Part of asthma is learning to deal with denial, the same way I have had to deal with seventeen years' worth of dealing with lupus: my life is forever altered from this time. I have been called on the fact that I do not put my health and recovery first and foremost--I have never been very good at that, but now it is crucial.

What is my lesson from this time? That my body is still strong and knows the way to fight and get well again. That I have to remember I am part of a community, a family; that I can't just dump everything on my partner and immediate circle, that I have to extend outwards for support. And gratitude goes a long way: gratitude for still being here, for not dying, for this day and this moment, always a gift.

Opening the Heart Lotus

2010-06-15T09:34:00.001-07:00

If you have been following this blog, you will find that I have been dealing with asthma and an intense course of prednisone therapy to deal with it. It is likely I would not be alive right now without this course of treatment, or at least very seriously impaired.

Prednisone is an extreme medication that quickly brings down life-threatening inflammation. At the same time, it can cause very serious side effects to the body and mind. It is used as a form of chemotherapy in some cancers--since cancer is unfortunately and sadly the disease we have to deal with often as a culture, perhaps it might be easier to remember that drugs used in chemotherapy are by nature very intense, with devastating side effects, and prednisone is no exception.

I am overwhelmed with love from many sectors--prayer, good wishes, loving kindness, suggestionns for dietary changes,people buying gluten free products for me to eat in their homes (sometimes a lot, which is extremely sweet and touching) and friends making commitments to not wear fragrances around me (an extreme asthma trigger). It is very hard for me when I plan to go out and have a fun night and then can't participate when someone is wearing perfume or smoking--and even worse when a cascade of triggers occurs and I end up in the hospital. And it's not like people are not being harmed, albeit silently, by the same triggers--it's just that my body reacts and shows it.

At the same time I have been treated lovingly, the people closest to me have had to deal with the most devastating side effects of high dose prednisone, the emotional effects on me. I do not sleep on prednisone; since May 31st, I have been averaging three to four hours sleep a night. Last night was the first night in sixteen days that I have got a full night's sleep. In addition, the prednisone revs me up and if I try to do normal activities like drive around, run errands, shop, participate in writing groups, etc., my brain on prednisone gets unbelievably wired and I call it "having a brainstorm." And I have come to call my treatment "dancing with Kali." It is hard on people to see and experience these emotional changes, and since they are intense and immediate, probably hard to remember that "this too shall pass."

As the prednsone dosage decreases, the side effects lessen, but not what it reveals about the "compassion capacity" of people. Devastating illness and treatment in a loved one is an opportunity and a journey, a means to walk the talk about compassion--it's one thing to have rehearsed the vocabulary of loving compassion because it sounds really good and brings you attention for being able to parrot it--and a far different thing to reach for strength, open the heart, and really practice it. I sadly learned this the hard way when I set too many boundaries with my sister during the course of a long and very difficult illness--because part of me did not believe my beloved older sister could die, and she did. She was my strong warrior sister and I believed she could vanquish anything simply by willing it for herself--and in my selfishness and fear, I lost precious time with her. It is very hard to learn a lesson in compassion and one's shortcomings and emotional deficits the hard way like this. I would not wish it on anyone. It is one of my greatest regrets in a chain of many.

I plan to get a new bumpersticker today to go with the "follow your bliss" already on my car, a quote from Thich Nhat Hahn: "We are here to awaken from the illusion of our separateness." And when I was very sick last week or so (timelines are gone right now from the memory loss) I had the revelation that one of the purposes of our life on earth is to "hold each other up." If we cannot be there for a loved one who is ill or struggling, if we fail to take a second to see things from the perspective of the other person and try to realize how difficult it is for them and it is not "always about us," or participate in their joys and sorrows, how can we be there for anything in life? The capacity for love and compassion comes from expanding the heart, even in difficult times. The heart is a lotus that shows its beauty most when it is fully open.

Thoughts While Dancing With Kali

2010-06-14T14:32:00.000-07:00

I am doing better but am saddened by the reactions of certain people as I endure high-dose steroids to control asthma. The emotional side effects, which are hard to manage at the level I am taking them, seem to be all about the effect it has on THEM (I mean, "expectations are preprogrammed resentments," but sometimes serious illness in people do a great deal to show the mettle of others). The irony is that the most difficult reactions from people (re:: emotional side effects from a drug I have to take to save my life right now) are from the sector of the people who call themselves the most compassionate and groove on saving the environment. It's crucial to be dedicated to solving our horrific environmental problems, but to me it is hypocrisy to cry over the plight of dolphins, spout off about how compassionate you are and how you see the divine spark in everyone, plaster your house with spiritual books and icons--and then treat poorly someone in one's life who is ill and going through medical treatment.

I have an action plan of trying to stay in calm quiet rooms and stuff right now, doing quiet organizing tasks because predisone makes my brain want to organize things (my Itunes playlists never looked so great). I find that I feel worse if I try to go out and do anything but very minimal tasks. The world will be there when I get back, I tell myself.

I think that one problem with illnesses like lupus and asthma is that they are periodic. There are months, even years, I can feel perfectly well and then something will strike out of the blue. Perhaps that is the one thing that is frigtening to others--that a periodic illness which emerges like a dragon from a cave from time to time is a reminder of mortality. People do not want to be reminded of this, especially people who should by this age be understanding that when people get sick, it is because bodies get sick and sometimes the medical treatments needed to control it can be difficult. When a loved one is ill, it is a chance to really exercise love and compassion--and boundaries, yes, but not to make the other person feel bad.

I was also reminded by a dear young friend to stop saying negative things about my treament, such as saying it's like being on speed (which I have never taken, of course; I just assume that because predisone feels like I have had 400 espressos all at once)--that to say negative things about the treatment is to put up some resistance to taking it in. So I am calling predisone "dancing with Kali" instead.

The truth is, we will all have to deal with health issues on some level, whether it is in a lover, spouse, friend, parent, or child, and when someone is seriously ill, as I am right now, it is a chance to exercise the concept that "we are here to awaken from the illusion of our separateness." When your loved one is "dancing with Kali," it is important I think to remember some good slogans such as "this too shall pass" and that healing is a journey.

very slow recovery

2010-06-08T03:43:00.000-07:00

My lungs continue to heal; I feel like a person who has fought a forest fire without oxygen or a mask. I am extremely limited in what I can do this week and will not be returning to dance this week, and very limited next. I have had my immune system knocked out by high-dose steroids and so am trying not to be around people too much this week.

But June 7th was my birthday and I am happy about that. I love being in my 50s and have no problem with it. But I do hope that my health improves! I have come to contemplate breathing as the force of life itself, and am grateful when it comes with ease for me.

Asthma improving

2010-06-04T18:56:00.000-07:00

My asthma seems to be improving on the 80 mg. I have been taking since the IV steroids in the hospital (125 mg., a few days after an 80 mg injection of solumedrol). My body feels like a rag doll that has had all the stuffing pulled out of it. Asthma attacks like the ones I have been going through for the last year truly tire me out. I have not been able to do much this week except get through each day the best I can. At least I do not feel my lungs are lined with glass and that no air can get in--because that is what my attacks are like. And my peak flow is up). I will be on steroids for some time. I do not like to take them, but my lungs cannot heal without this treatment.

I have come full circle as I recuperate to reading some wonderful books by Dr. Bernie Siegel; I used to read these and listen to his healing audiotapes for many years when I was very ill with lupus. I am reassured by his kind words. He is truly a healer (my sister came to know him personally and we corresponded a little after her death). One thing that struck me in my reading today is, "Live within the knowledge of your mortality."

We are all so blessed with time on this earth, but such a short time in the grand scheme of things. As I look out the window of my house, I see redwood trees that were there the day I bought it; they were there before the house was built; if all goes well for them, they will be here long after I am gone. I am the more temporary part of my landscape equation!

The important part today is, for me, to be grateful for my day and to try to create 24 hours of which I can be proud at bedtime--whether that is because I chose to speak kindly to another when I could have easily chosen otherwise, slowed down, smiled at someone, took care of something regarding my health, chose not to worry. That is what I can do with my precious 24 hours.

asthma again

2010-06-02T18:12:00.001-07:00

My dear readers, please be patient with me as I post about my ongoing struggles with asthma. I had two bouts in the last few days which required trips to the hospital, high amounts of IV steroids, breathing treatments, more adjustment of my meds, and a long-term steroid course to try and get my lungs to eliminate the inflammation. Right now, I can no longer handle tobacco smoke, petroleum-based perfumes from anything, including shampoo, housecleaning products (hurrah for Dr. Bronner's soaps and baking soda), or basically any artifical scent or fumes, and cannot go outside for more than about fifteen minutes because even going outside triggers the attacks. I can no longer work or sleep in a room without a HEPA air purifier, so I have ordered one for my home and my bedroom and will probably get one for my office at work, too.

My doctor has upgraded (downgraded?) my asthma to "chronic". Hopefully my new meds will help. I cannot continue on the prednisone doses I am receiving without eventual long-term damage in other ways.

I keep hoping things will get better. I used to love things like perfumes, and now only use essential oils--which are much nicer and actually feel very healing to me.

But on top of it all--hey, I got two classes for next semester, English 1A. BTW, it's not a downgrade from Intro to Creative Writing--the department rotates the class amongst the faculty, and I'll likely have another turn next year.

I guess my thought for today is--no one and nothing lives forever. I did sense a strange shift in me in the last few days, that it was time to stop acquiring things because I can take none of this with me, that I at least need to really consider the things I add to my life. It feels deeply appropriate, actually. We take nothing, not even our bodies, on the great adventure. And that is okay with me. And whether it is true or not that some great change is coming to me, there is no question it will arrive one day--so I remind myself that every day is a jewel and a gift, and I can learn to dance with joy on the edge of the abyss. In Tarot, the Fool who steps off the cliff into the unknown often is depicted carrying a white rose he has received from the Shekinah; she gave it to him at the crest of the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden. It has always been my favorite image on the card. The Fool is always depicted as smiling before he steps into a reality that is unseen, but can be trusted on an intuitive level.

Namaste!

Real-Time Video of Gulf Oil Spill

2010-05-30T02:37:00.000-07:00

Sometimes this video may be stalled or unavailable. It is a view of the Gulf oil spill from remote robotic cameras 5000 feet below the ocean surface, right at the source of the leak.

It's sickening. In fact, there's no words to describe how truly sickening it really is.

End of Year

2010-05-11T12:10:00.000-07:00

My academic year is about to end; I had a marvelous semester teaching creative writing, though am very sad that my health problems made me miss a small amount of time this semester. At least I got some control with asthma and I think we will finish out a good year. I will never forget the students I had this year, as I remember and love them all over the many years I have been priviledged to be a teacher.

It has been one of those life-changing years overall, but the nature of life is, after all, change and stretching. Resisting change is only natural, but it leads me to frustration and resentment; the past has already slipped over the transom the instant that it happens.

Losing many significant people in my life in the last few years shows me that life really is a dance forward. I can choose to either sit in place, or take the steps forward that life actually compels me to do every single day--even with my health struggles this year, even with all the uncertainties about my job, about the amount of classes I will have in the Fall, with everything, I simply hope that my steps are graceful and that I open my hands to whatever comes.

My interview for The Collagist

2010-04-28T02:33:00.000-07:00

I'm rather proud of this one (errors and all), and immensely grateful for the opportunity.

You may nave to scroll down a bit to find it.

don't fear the Reaper

2010-04-24T03:33:00.000-07:00

My breathing gets better every day (since the blog posts aren't read in chronological order, I will recap by saying that I have been struggling with serious asthma for nearly a year, necessitating two courses of prednisone (which I truly hate), tinkering around with various meds, reducing exposure to my triggers: cigarette smoke (yes, God, I'm sorry I was a cigarette smoker, 'K? Now cool it!), perfume, and incense, among other things, and entirely changing my diet. I'm now off gluten for good--and it has actually done a great deal for my health. I truly can't tell what it is, but keeping a HEPA filter in my room when I sleep, changing my diet, and getting my meds tinkered with have all helped. I can breathe. I no longer feel I am on the verge of drowning while surrounded by air. And that is good.

At the tail end of my health crisis, last week I had my most frightening moment as a teacher. My class and I were near the end of the session; one of my students was sharing from a novel she'd brought in--I'm teaching a creative writing course this semester and each student is to present a short excerpt of writing from a favorite author. As my student was reading (a really terrific selection of work, actually), the door opened (we have a pesky door that drives me up the wall--it slams hard-shut without provocation). I looked up to see a tall person enter the classroom; he was quite literally dressed as the Grim Reaper, in a long red velvet cape with a hood that fully concealed his face. One hand held a crudely made scythe; the other was concealed under his cape.

I waited to see if he would say anything, but he just stood there silently, creepily walking towards me a little even after I said, "May I help you?" What I will never forget are my students, their eyes wide as saucers and full of fear, looking from the Grim Reaper to me and back again. I felt terrible that they had been frightened so badly.

Was I concerned, in this era of school shootings? Yes, absolutely. I had to begin assess in seconds whether this person was a threat--he never spoke, identified why he was there, unmasked himself, or made any gesture to show he was benign. He was between me and the classroom phone also. I never caught the remotest glimpse of his face. At some point, I fell into that terrible abyss of unknowing what was going to happen next--but I felt to be in a bubble of deep and amazing calm and an almost Zen-like clarity of mind. I accepted that perhaps he had a gun or other weapon, that I could be shot or otherwise harmed, that my life could very well be about to end, and the only sadness I had was that it would happen in front of my students and traumatize them. I didn't sense he was after anyone else given his facing-and-moving towards me. I knew if he got closer he would have a chair slammed into his head by me, that I would do anything to make sure my students were okay, first, and then me. But I wasn't afraid--not til after class was over and jokes were made about the Grim Writer and the Zodiac killer. Turns out the Reaper simply and silently turned and left the classroom; a few minutes later, someone ran into the room looking for him, as he was part of a schoolwide program on drunk driving (but of course this hadn't been announced to many of the students at my university, and certainly not me and my class).

I had a severe stress reaction later, starting at lunch, when I began shaking, and the incident activated my PTSD from various incidents in my life, producing insomnia, nightmares, and restless sleep. But the silver lining is this: I came realized that, if it ever did happen that my life might end, I have had a most glorious fifty years on this planet. In a moment of complete uncertainty, I accepted whatever might happen to me with simply--acceptance. And that is comforting, in a strange way--though I am glad it all turned out relatively well, and that the Grim Reaper decided this time to slip away and down the hall.

Better

2010-04-16T03:20:00.000-07:00

My latest brush with asthma and, unfortunately, mortality this time around was quite sobering, to say the least. I spent my spring break struggling with asthma, as I wrote in my last entry. Unfortunately, despite my doctor's best efforts, every major attack is worse; this last bout was the most protracted I've had in my life so far. I can no longer tolerate cigarette smoke, artificial fragrances, and most types of incense, and large amounts of paper fiber and feathers. I now have a prescription for prednisone that I need to keep on hand at all times.
I am following a gluten and dairy-free diet religiously. The latter seems to be helping.

It is sobering and yet--who in the world isn't going to deal with their mortality at some point? Mine has been in my face since I was diagnosed with lupus in 1993.
I think the point is to continue to live unafraid in the face of anything.

on the nature of breathing

2010-03-29T13:19:00.000-07:00

My spring break (and actually all semester) has been taken up with fighting asthma. Asthma and lung problems were a primary symptom when I was diagnosed with lupus back in the early 90s and it seems all of this is becoming gradually a bit worse--overall, unfortunately, my illness is sadly a bit worse these days, not surprising given the amount of years I have been with it, and I am going through a course of prednisone. Cortisone knocks the illness out, but at 60 mg and above, I seem to turn into a werewolf. I am glad to be on the lower dosages now, where I feel relatively normal. I should be off prednisone this week. My doctors do not yet know if there is a problem with lupus bothering my lungs as well in some new or different way. I will be having a full pulmonary workup and a chest x-ray at the local hospital this week. I hate descending into the nether world of hospitals and doctors again, but it is my Persephone sort of existence at times.

I truly could not breathe well this week and realize what a gift it is, that breath is truly the source of life itself. A friend taught me a mantra and breathing exercise to use for calming and for reminding myself to take deep breaths, the "sohum" meditation (the link on this day's title is to an article by Deepak Chopra on this). It is very simple and calming, regardless of whether one believes in things spiritual.

I was also given in the ER last week the following curious device, called an acapella.

It literally gives a mini-massage to my lungs, basically, shaking loose some of the less desirable stuff that my nonproductive cough will not bring up on its own. It greatly helps in clearing my lungs out. Breathing is really not an option!! :)

It is very funny and is now labeled "the pickle." Or the "ocarina," or the "pickle ocarina."

As an aside to all this, my son Riff, home for a few days while moving from one place to the other, said that he dreamed last night we were walking up a hill, and heard the sound of a wild pig being killed in the dark woods; out of the woods walked a beautiful wolf, who had dispatched the pig. The wolf is my totem spirit (and ironically, lupus means "wolf" in Latin), and so I felt this was a positive image that my body and spirit are strong and will get over what I am experiencing now. It is just a bit of a "dark forest."

I do feel I am going to be okay and that this is a bit of a setback only in my journey to live a full and happy life despite my disability. A hidden disability is often very perplexing, especially one such as mine, which waxes and wanes. When I am reminded to slow down, I am learning to do so, to accept what is right now, to do what I can within this one day only, not worry too terribly much about the future, and above all, slow down and breathe.

poem in The Collagist

2010-03-16T11:03:00.000-07:00

I have a poem about my mother in The Collagist (click on the title link--I didn't link directly to my poem because I want everyone's work in the magazine this month to be visible). I have to say that the editors here did a wonderful job with this issue and were terrific to work with. I will be posting a podcast and likely an interview there soon.

My poem is called Witch Hazel.

wow!

2010-02-24T14:21:00.000-08:00

It's been nearly a month since I blogged! Partially, this is because I have been busy revising The Pleasure Palace, my new novel, and getting my poetry manuscript ready for submission to a small press, an imprint through the literary magazine in which one of my poems has just been accepted. No guarantees about the poetry book, but I will have a short interview through the magazine, which is called The Collagist and can be found by clicking the title of this post. My poem is going to come out around March 15th and I am going to do a short interview and possibly a podcast for the magazine, the latter to be determined.

I just did a reading for Poet Speak of Santa Cruz, a long-standing reading series. I saw many old friends, got a couple of contacts, and had a marvelous time on a rainy day. I have begun to write poetry again after a long absence and it feels good.

And I've been cooking soup. Lots of soup. I don't eat meat much anymore, and am straying into vegan territory, so have been experimenting with vegan soups. Recently made a butternut squash/sweet potato soup with cardamom, ginger, coriander, and garam masala, with a touch of chipotle powder for a bit of smokiness, and tossed in a roasted apple also, and blended it all up. Curiuosly, when blended, the cardamom (whole pods, crushed) made it quite spicy. A good meal for this rainy Santa Cruz weather, bright orange and lovely in a white bowl.

John Paul II: Tell Me It Ain't So!

2010-01-27T17:25:00.000-08:00

(Sigh)--but apparently it was. The late J2P2 whipped himself on a regular basis to bring himself closer to God (and his activity was apparently audible to those in earshot at the Vatican. His Holiness even brought his flagellation equipment on vacation with him. Now THAT'S a level of devotion I know I certainly cannot begin to emulate in this lifetime--I have trouble on my days off with just getting to my grading and whatnot).

Heathen that I am, I immediately envisioned a windup toy of The Flagellating Pope, but the better half of my nature said, "Get ye behind me!" See how well my years in Catholic school have served me? I have enough brownie points now with Mother Church from that sole act of self-discipline to nearly support my very own pagan baby.

And yet, seriously--why is this self-punishment somehow not a sin? If our bodies are created in the Divine image, what on earth then made it okay for the elderly Supreme Pontiff to sleep on the bare floor (apparently mussing the papal blankets to make it look like he'd slept in the bed--a bit of a benign fib right there, Vatican-style) and beat himself with a belt? To emulate Christ? Nowhere in the New Testament did Jesus harm himself; in fact, he seems to have been a bit of a social butterfly--the man went to more feasts in his three-year ministry than I've been to in the last decade!

Food for thought, I suppose

Another donation site

2010-01-19T03:11:00.001-08:00

A reader has kindly informed me that CARE is another donation site for Haiti earthquake relief. Click on the link to donate.

Haiti quake

2010-01-14T16:58:00.000-08:00

My link (click on the title of the post) will bring you to Oxfam America's site, which will give you information on donating to Haitian earthquake relief. My Haitian dance instructor has identified this as a reliable source of donations. As always, the Red Cross is also reliable.

I have no words to describe the horror I see on the news. Haiti is close to my heart because I study Haitian dance and through it have made friends with people from Haiti. Haitian dance is the most deeply spiritual, demanding dance I have done in my years of learning many forms of movement--a dance full of life, energy, heart, emotion. I am heartbroken over the unbelievable devastation. Please, though we are all struggling financially right now, I urge my readers to donate what they can to earthquake relief. Even ten dollars will make a difference.

And as for people like Rush Limbaugh and Pat Robertson making inane comments about "pacts with the devil," etc., they obviously have no concept of what it means to react to such a horrific world event with any measure of compassion. No one is immune to the possiblity of experiencing horrific natural disasters, and this is NOT the time to push one's ludicrous neoconservative platform.

Please pray for Haiti, please donate what you can--we are all part of the world's community.

Anniversary

2009-12-22T23:28:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow is the second anniversary of my mother Kathleen's death. She died alone in the same hospital in which she had been born, Massachusetts General; I remember there was a full moon that night. I also remember being grateful, in the midst of my tears, that she was released from the considerable torments of her life. There was no time to say goodbye to her before she slipped away. Seven months later, my sister Maryanne died alone in an Oakland hospital, completely unexpectedly. So enmeshed and embattled were those two in life that it is no wonder to me on some karmic level that they slipped into the afterlife so close to one another. My first year of losing my mother passed in a hyper-bright, energetic haze which I realize was utter shock, compounded by my sister's death. The shock, I realize now, was like a wing keeping me shielded from a reality which would take time to incorporate. This year, it's gotten very real.

I realize now that losing a parent is another step in the long process of growing up. I used to think my mother did not really know me, but now I think she did know me, perhaps better than anyone, if only on an intuitive level. As time goes on without her, I realize more and more the enduring gifts she gave me, of cooking--my mother was beyond the shadow of a doubt the best cook I have ever known and could have been a professional baker, her pastries and cakes were that amazing (our family had been bakers in Italy). She spoke fluent and beautiful Italian; I used to love when she would break into it in the middle of a conversation, like tossing a silk banner into the air suddenly. She taught me the gift of story and the importance of telling it so as to enthrall an audience. Some of her lessons were cautionary.

What I take from her most these days is the simple gratitude for having been given the gift of life. For all my mother's flaws, for all she did not know how to protect me from, she was the sacred vessel I chose to come to this earth. And for that, and for many other things, I feel a good and simple, and very much abiding love for her, and for her spirit: wild and sometimes misguided, flamboyant and unreliable, but at the end, still a phoenix to me, with a legacy that transcends death.

disclaimer

2009-12-15T11:51:00.000-08:00

I wanted to let my reading audience know, especially those who come here for the first time, that I often write about difficult subjects. I have never been afraid of tough subject matter as a writer and there isn't much that's going to make me be afraid of it in future. If you have a problem with this, please remove my blog from any bookmarks you may have and don't read it--that's about all I can say on the subject! This blog is about my life and that which infuses my writing and creative process, and sometimes that involves difficult themes--that's all I can say about it.

What it means

2009-12-05T17:44:00.001-08:00

I have had an intense week since learning of the death of a very abusive person in my past. I have had poor sleep and some post traumatic problems; however, these are gradually waning. The PTSD is something I will deal with perhaps forever, but it is manageable. The sheer fact that I am alive and he is gone, that he burned up his life in alcoholism and anger, struggling to be better at times, then flipping back into terrible behavior--the very same traits he exhibited when I knew him--makes me sad. I really believe it is possible for anyone to change their behavior, though it may take herculean efforts to do so. It's never too late to begin to heal one's heart and spirit--and it is none of my business if anyone wants to live a life of bitterness. It's not even my judgement call to make--one person's bitterness is another's joy, after all. I just have the invective to heal my own life and be mindful of my own journey.

A Long-Resounding Harm

2009-12-01T17:03:00.000-08:00

I beseech the wisdom of all enlightened beings, past and future. May the Four Immeasurable Minds (love, compassion, joy, and equanimity) grow in the hearts and minds of all beings. May peace and wisdom visit the home of our hearts, and may we know the true, clear light of liberation. OM MANI PADME HUM

--Prayer for Liberation of All Beings

I was given information recently that a person who greatly harmed me--as many of you know, an employee at my undergraduate college--died about a year and a half ago, after a lengthy and extremely difficult illness which destroyed both his body and his mind. He died in the same period of months as when I lost my friend Maude, my mother, my sister, and my friend and dance sister Ayperi.

I have little time to write today, as I am attacking a pile of grading at this end of the semester, but feel compelled to compose a few words about this incident, knowing that I do plan an essay about it in future. I once wrote an essay on this chapter of my life, but it was written far too early, long before I had enough consciousness and enough perspective to really address what happened to me and to speak clearly of the circumstances surrounding what I suppose I must call, for the purposes of this blog post, "a great harm." It was more than this, but for a blog post, that is what I call it.

This afternoon, after one stack of grading was done, I went out into the woods, to the dark and cold ribbon of creek that borders my house, to try and sort out this bit of news. I had been given information that the man tried to become a better person, basically despite himself, but remained a "lost soul" until the end of his days. This is a sorrowful tragedy, but I spent too many years being sorry for this man and with trying to figure out why he did what he did to me, to his children, to his wife and so many others. I am sure he did to others what he did to me, that I was not the only one.

I decided as I walked the autumn woods, that I think I can eventually come to the place where I will feel sad for the child he once was, who was put into foster care, torn from his mother and all he knew. I even feel I can no longer regress into saying, "Well, thousands of people have been in foster care and they don't abuse," because it is not my place to conjecture why this man chose to be destructive to himself and others; I have no idea what his reality really was for himself. It is only my task to sort out the rest of my life and understand why his harm has reverberated so strongly for me, and so deeply even into the lives of others. I believe there is still untold harm from this in ways I will never know. I also believe this behavior was enabled and by default encouraged via the heavily Catholic nature of the institution at which he taught, a time when those who abused their positions of trust and power seemed to be able to cause great damage and commit terrible acts with impunity.

I feel, personally, that he hated, and felt entitled to, my youth and my potential, even though he was only in his fifties at the time, his own life still able to reap much in the way of promise. I am fifty years old now, near the age he was when he harmed me, and I do not feel entitlement to the lives and youth of my students--rather, I feel like a steward and a protector. I am content and still looking forward to all the gifts in my own life and all my years, without feeling jealousy for the time these young people have. My students often feel, even in their youth, that they do not have endless time, either--it is the nature of the world we live in now, so different from those decades ago.

Returning to the man who hurt me, perhaps it is more accurate to say that the alcohol he consumed (and to which he was heavily addicted) hated me, fueled whatever thievery might have already been in his mind. What I do know is that his actions caused a long reverberation that remains in my life to this day, if only because I still live in Santa Cruz, to which I literally and figuratively ran away after graduation, a place where I sought refuge. In many ways, though I consider this place my home, I almost fear living anywhere else because Santa Cruz represents safety, freedom, and distancing from that time for me.

It took me twenty years after the incident to find the courage to apply for and enter my MFA program; between those years, though I taught in elementary and junior high, wrote poetry, and raised my family, I was like a zombie, going through the motions of a half-life. Another friend from that time, harmed in the same way by a priest at the same institution, described the effects as a sort of zombification in his life as well. It saddens and sickens me that students who paid hard-earned money and for whom the state of California paid much in scholarships to attend that university were denied the right to have a safe place to pursue their degrees.

It is a basic right to seek one's education in a place free from predation. And it is a non-negotiable right, even if the trustees of an institution decide to look the other way. It does not matter if anyone feels I should be "over it" by now. The fact of my profession alone speaks for itself and for the work I have done towards resolution, that I did not ultimately throw my career away. Still, the damage will resound on some level, albeit to small degrees, until I too finish my time on this earth. It was that destructive.

My path towards healing my life was to go into recovery and therapy, to complete graduate school, and now to teach at the university level. That was not all of it, but a great part and a large step forward. When I returned to teaching after a two-year hiatus after grad school, I was given an office that looks over the quad and Tower Hall, and every day before I leave, I stand at the window and look out at the view, and make sure to be consciously grateful for the chance to teach again, a chance that I nearly relinquished in the wake of an enormously destructive act.

A few nights before I was given the information of this man's death, I dreamed I was in the room where I had counseling at my high school many years ago. I felt in the dream a palpable sense of what had been accomplished in this room; there was a table and around it were many people, one of whom is my "guardian angel" that I dream of over and over, even though he was a fellow student at my high school and I am pretty sure he is still alive! The man who harmed me was standing by the door, looking both young and old, gazing directly at me, and the curious thing about him was that his eyes were all dark iris, with neither pupil nor white sclera, the color of polished dark brown stones. My "angel" stood behind me and indicated that the people seated at the table were also angels, and said to me, "Everything you have ever lost is found again."

Which of course, I think, is the point, on some strange and sorrowful, and perhaps indecipherable, and even life-affirming, level.

I Finished Nanowrimo, a day early!

2009-11-30T11:06:00.000-08:00

I finished my nanowrimo novel,The Pleasure Palace, yesterday! Yay! I found nano to be an extremely difficult yet highly valuable experience in that I now have the framework for a really fun novel--I wrote it sequentially, on purpose because I think it will make the substantial rewrites better.

So I've definitely got something to be proud of this week!

45,000 words and counting

2009-11-28T02:54:00.001-08:00

I don't want to predict an early win before the polls close, but I am at 45000 words for my nanowrimo novel, The Pleasure Palace, and anticipate finishing by the deadline Nov. 30th, although I want to finish by Sunday BECAUSE I have been told the server for nanowrimo gets overloaded by folks needing to verify their word count.

It wasn't terribly difficult and I had a lot of support along the way. The nano crowd is fun to be around, too!

Back to writing...

The Progress of Nano

2009-11-12T01:15:00.000-08:00

Cafe Pergolesi is an awesome place to write, even though it seems to cater to a younger crowd than I'm used to, unless I am teaching them. I'm at 22,000 words with The Pleasure Palace and, as I said in my last post, am weaving so many wonderful threads into this novel. It is going to need a huge amount of editing and rewriting after Nano is done--I'll probably end up handwriting the whole thing over, then rework it on the computer, but still, this has been truly a huge amount of fun. There's a joyful aspect of creativity that I think sometimes gets lost in the struggle to be published and get one's work out in the world, and that's a tremendously good thing to discover. I've decided that all my characters, though contemporary, are like Victorians on subtle levels (this because I am reading The French Lieutenant's Woman before bed every night and am thinking a lot about that sensibility).

Time to upload words and get to bed on this moonless night. Anticipating that next year's nano will be a horror novel, and not about killer zombie pirates, either. But that's for 2010.

G'nite.

Nano going great!

2009-11-08T12:45:00.001-08:00

I'm doing quite well with my nanowrimo page counts in my novel, the working title of which is The Pleasure Palace, and am up to 14,000 words as of yesterday's write-in at Cafe Pergolesi. It takes me a little while to get the page count every day, as I am actually drafting my second book. Parody (in the middle of a love story) can be quite fun and I am amazed at the many threads I can weave into this. It's far lighter than The Strega's Story, though it touches greatly on issues of gender and sexuality, themes I haven't yet tackled as much in my prose.

It's fun to just simply write, and the camraderie of writing with others is also fun on the few occasions I have been able to get over to write-ins. There's a book within a book--the male protaganist, Martin, is a local writer who publishes his zombie and werewolf and vampire stories though a local small press and has a devoted cult following--really, like a zombie cult, just kidding--in his town and immediate environs, shamelessly based on Santa Cruz. In the time frame of the novel, Martin is writing yet another horror potboiler (which we get to read as he works on it). Martin's love interest teaches English and creative writing at the local university and of course, thinks people who write stories about zombies and werewolves and vampires are hacks (which I don't, but she does).

I'm having about as much fun writing Martin's book-within-a-book (which he calls Attack of the Killer Zombie Pirates) as writing the rest of this shamelessly chick lit book (really, the genre is actually--and a bit sexist-ly so--called "hen lit," as the people are in my age group). Heck, why not? And it's fun! It's probably the most fun I've had writing since fifth grade, when I wrote stories AND illustrated them with crayons.

But for now, it's grading time.
Happy writing to all the nano people out there! It's proving to be quite a fun experience!

Halloween, and Nano Begins Tonight

2009-10-31T09:19:00.001-07:00

I'm going to be at my troupe leader's birthday bash tonight, and for a bit at my friend Mysteria's house. It's been a low-key Halloween for me; I haven't put up my usual array of decorations this year, but am enjoying all the ones my neighbors and friends have put up this year.

At midnight, it will be the first night of Nanowrimo, y'all! Yes, I am ready for it...the writing amounts to just about six pages a day for me, which honestly is a manageable amount for me. And at the end, I've got--a fluffy-themed novel which will be fun to write and will break the ice of writer's block for me. And there's nothing wrong with sitting in cafes with other people who are focused on the same sort of fun. I mean, having fun writing--what a concept! :)

Time to start working on my costume!
Happy Halloween!

Pure Fantasy and Fluff

2009-10-17T00:31:00.000-07:00

Yes, I am doing nanowrimo. Every morning I want to drop out. Every evening I want to start.

The book I am writing is about a woman who finds herself in the process of losing weight healthily in her 40s/early 50s (after years of battling anorexia--an ongoing battle for me, as when I gain a pound, I go into immediate thoughts of three-hour exercise sessions and starvation, even though I don't give in to them anymore). She's trying to find different ways to exercise, and happens upon a bellydance class. Nothing at all like real life for me. Yes, there's a love interest, as so happens. Girl meets boy. Boy meets girl. Girl meets bellydance. Heck, maybe even the guy will take bellydance lessons. The bellydancer is a bit straight-laced and teaches English at a local state university (no, not all ALL based on my real life, even though she will famously struggle with the PowerPoint projector, just like me), but has a best-friend-since-elementary school who works as a salesclerk at a rather interesting store (based on Camouflage in Santa Cruz).

Yes, it's all silly pink marshmallow fluff, but I need something to just write. My creative life has felt so impaired since my sister and mother passed away that I feel a writing marathon in November will help to at least work again.

Notes from the Slow Blogger

2009-10-05T19:24:00.000-07:00

Seems everything has slowed down for me since school began. There seems a lot of sadness and subdued-ness among my students--very different from last year. What is it? Just my perception, or something real?

My furlough-docked paycheck came today--the reality of the budget cuts really hits home. And yet, here I am, teaching--the profession I have never stopped loving.

Next month, I plan to do nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month). It's going to be fiction based upon my life as a bellydancer. It's so chick lit that I really ought to just write it on lime green and bright pink paper right now--but there's something to be said for writing just for the sheer fun of it.

A Long Vacation!

2009-09-03T10:28:00.000-07:00

Dear faithful readers, I apologize for having been gone so long. It's amazing how summer can creep up on someone, but now summer is over and I am back to work, amidst furloughs and budget cuts as a State of California employee. BUT--what a wonderful, fun, amazing Introduction to Creative Writing class I have right now.

I've a class full of bright, responsive, sharp students--some of whom are English majors! I think English majors are brave souls in this day and age.

Mostly I've been querying with the book, outlining Book #2 (which I am going to at least start during nanowrimo). For those of you not yet in the know, nanowrimo is National Novel Writing Month, and more information about it can be found by clicking the title of this entry. My next book is going to be fiction (easier for me right now), but based on my life as a bellydancer. Yeah, probably chick lit, but I have been in a bit of a writing block and thought I would have some fun.

And there really isn't other news, except that I will be posting on a more regular basis. Even without posting, I know many of you kept coming back here, and for that I am most grateful. I am fine, I had no problems with the wildfires here in Santa Cruz (though recently, one came really too close for comfort), and of course I am still writing and teaching. There's no better life for me, in my personal and humble opinion!

Frank McCourt

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

Frank McCourt, the author of Angela's Ashes, 'Tis, and Teacher Man, has been reported by his brother to be near death in a New York hospice.

McCourt has always been one of the most inspiring authors and speakers to me. I met him in a very curious fashion one day on the Santa Cruz Pacific Garden Mall, of all places, completely by accident. He was walking out of Palace Arts as I was walking in (we did a simultaneous walk in/walk out), and I apologized for bumping into him! He was quite sweet and gracious. Then I trailed him a little as he walked down the Mall (he was with a friend); people recognized him and he talked to everyone who talked to him, very graciously.

Here's a great video of him talking about writing and stories (there's a tab on the video to watch the full talk if you wish):

Been Away a Bit

2009-07-13T11:44:00.000-07:00

I have been away from blogging for a bit, due to simply being a bit lazy. But that's summer for you. Still, I am looking ahead towards work, towards a creative writing course to teach that is full and waitlisted. And really, I've just been enjoying my summer and getting used to a somewhat empty nest. And all that is as it should be.

Scars

2009-07-01T11:11:00.000-07:00

I am well recovered from my surgery in June, though it took surprisingly longer than I thought to clear even the moderate anesthesia from my system. Now I have a very ugly scar on my previously rather nice shoulder. I have plans for a small tattoo over it, but am not sure what. I feel it will take getting used to. I keep thinking of how many people bear scars, psychic and physical, and how they become part of our landscape. God knows, I have got both, and I think the grace comes in learning how to bear everything with equanimity. I'm not perfect--when I took off the bandage on my shoulder, I was really sad. I can feel the scar tissue when I dance and need to find ways to keep the skin supple there. But I am glad my tumor is gone--my arm has never felt so wonderful, free of pain and numbness--and that I am okay. I still have work to do in this life, and am grateful I am here.

Love Abounds

2009-06-16T15:41:00.000-07:00

Missing my dear departed sister today intensely, I switched on the radio and the following song was playing (you have to sit through an intro, but it's worth it):

My sister and I saw Cindy Lauper perform this live.

Love you, sis.

Watching It Happen

2009-06-10T14:00:00.000-07:00

I'm tempted to start out my Creative Writing class next semester with a disclaimer that the decision to embark on "growing" one's creativity, particularly through writing, is a dangerous and a courageous act, because it changes one's life, subtly or overtly, in nearly alchemical ways. I saw so many of my students' lives change during my summer course (and it had nothing to do with me, and everything to do with their decision to open up their willingness). I am getting like a kid in a candy store as I think all I want to teach, all the writing exercises, and a semester of absolute wonder and fun (hard part is getting them to buy into it at first, but they warm up quickly).

Yes, I Turned 50

2009-06-09T12:52:00.000-07:00

I turned 50 years old on June 7th, and am really quite happy about it. When I was young, 50 seemed "old"--and of course, I could never imagine that the day before my odometer rolled over, I would be participating in my first African dance recital! Which is precisely what I did. My friend Nonah from my dance troupe, almost 80 years young, has a slogan on the frame of her car's license plate: "Screw the golden years." Damn straight.

I feel younger now than I did in my thirties. That was a difficult, questioning decade for me. My forties were better, but I look forward to the next decade with joy and curiosity. I leave you all with the following quote:

"People do not grow old no matter how long we live. We never cease to stand like curious children before the great Mystery into which we were born."

Albert Einstein

Over the Weekend, A Cloud

2009-06-01T22:55:00.001-07:00

Coming to terms with things over the weekend, there is sadness--really enormous sadness--but also a sense of what is real. I feel that perhaps life is always about trying to see through the fabric of illusion. I was saddened by an answer this weekend; it was not the one I wanted. We all get answers like this from the universe, so it doesn't matter what it was. I felt like a woman walking barefoot through the desert today, and yet I did not feel so sad after a while. I went to restorative yoga (the type in which one is supported by pillows and blankets, as if in a cocoon). And remembered something my myth professor Harvey once replied to a student, that in the end, it is all love, no matter what. And love cannot always be quantified, which is good.

If You Forget Me

by Pablo Neruda

I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.

The Week Ahead: Yay!

2009-05-30T20:42:00.000-07:00

Three nice things will happen this week, with all luck: I get to go to African dance on Thursday night, a nice treat as my teacher from my regular class that night will be away, and I really plan to get to a class with my yoga teacher on Tuesday night. And I turn 50 on June 7th! ;)

A breather, then it's on to compiling a course reader for my Creative Writing class (feel free to comment with suggestions, dear readers, or send mailstrega@yahoo.com--short stories, poems, nonfiction essays, including books which I can excerpt). And the syllabus.

Keeping all my hopes up this summer for finding an agent, too.

Peace out!

For Kathleen Flowers

2009-05-30T15:06:00.000-07:00

A beautiful poem by Kathleen Flowers, my friend who passed away recently:

In These Five Remaining Days
After Hafez

In these five remaining days, I see
I’ve spent my life bellowing like a mule,
feeling broken beneath a burden
that was mine to learn to carry
or the weight of another’s I could not ease.

In these four remaining days, the robe,
that has been my body, revels in
its own unraveling. Inside, a hummingbird
hovers, half-inside a flower, then zips
away, stitching the sky with iridescence.

In these three remaining days, I am still,
knowing what ripens below, soon breaks
through the duff, finds some light––
a rose-colored mushroom, quietly
glistens in the redwood mist.

On this, the second to last day, I ride
a riptide out to sea, find myself
fixed again to the ocean’s umbilicus.
Rocked upon her heaving breast, I taste
the briny tears we share, let go my thirst.

Oh this, my final day of living,
with every last breath, I make a plea
for the chance to hold aloft a hundred more
burdens, a friendship to sip, a forest to sit in,
singing thank you, thank you, thank you!

I miss Kathleen, though I hardly knew her. A short time ago, I was taking a walk in Santa Cruz, and stumbled upon her little house. I had only been there once. I went to Emily's Bakery afterward, close by, and wrote this in my journal. Could be the start of a poem, might not:

"In this unexpected rain, I walk, suddenly discover your little house with its neat bamboo hedge, this day a landscape of lead, fog, mist, stormcloud. Here is your cherry tree with its small ruffled parasols of ruffles, here are the tall spires of lavender, the ones you wrote about from the other side of the window. I wish my poetry would bring me to such heights as yours; you knew the wild pulse under the hummingbird's throat, the ecstasies in a single opening flower. There was a time, not too long ago, when I could look deep into the creamy throat of a morning glory and joyfully translate its song.
Now poetry is my Lilith with wild red hair; she wraps me in chains, drops me to the bottom of the sea, twists me through dead-end labyrinths, old wells echoing with grievances told over and over, unquenchable longings.

The night before your funeral, I dreamed I stood in front of a dark church, waiting, afraid I would not find a place there, and you jumped out of the dark, showered me with handfuls of pink rose petals. Laughing, you gave me a gentle push down the street. "Go!" you said, "Leave here! Go have fun!" So many leaves on the sidewalk, shushing under my feet.

How strange now to me that you are gone and your house still stands, paint washed to ochre in this gray light, a flamenco-red geranium in front, all the small brightnesses, the suns you dropped like coins in the wake of your leaving.

In the Heaven of Flowers

2009-05-27T18:02:00.000-07:00

"I must have flowers, always, always." Claude Monet

Went to the Plant Works in Felton today for the first time since my mother and sister died. How she loved flowers, though hers was not the ragtag gypsy garden that I have--I plant for wild color, she planted for uniformity, though everything she grew became exquisite, especially her roses, like colorful silk skirts open to the wind and sun. I grew up with roses everywhere: in vases, on porcelain lampshades, printed on my clothes. on bedspreads and tablecloths, the perfume in her garden swoonable in its intensity. I plant roses for their scent now: Bella Roma, Gertrude Jekyll, Angel Face, Mr. Lincoln, Elena, Dreamweaver, save the petals, cook them into rose petal jelly in the autumn, the jelly a soft, soft pink. The mouth fills with roses touched ever-so-delicately with lemon, in one bite. The jar has to be used up quickly, the sweetness does not last.

I walk along green-shaded rows of plants, every leaf like a hand reaching for the sun, dumb and so grateful. My heart knows the planet is ill, but the leaves still reach, still give me the most basic of hopes. My sister is ash now, my mother has gone to bone-white, wrapped in rags of a beaded dress. I turn down the path that is all roses in black buckets, too tempting for this day. I could take a truckload home.

I buy salvia the color of pink paint thinned again and again with water. Each flower is perfectly shaped for the hummingbird's inquisitive needle. A miniature fuschia for my shady deck; my mother had fake fuschias in a wicker basket, same colors of red and purple. I touch a plant called "dead nettle," the name evoking a shiver, wonder if I will feel the sting anyway (I don't). In England, it is called "Archangel." I see the blood threads lining the petals of abutilon, the delphinium's cupped leaves like ragged-edged plates, coral bells, poppies always on the verge of losing their petals, like shameless hussies.

How goes the heart today, the healing from my losses. Blooming again, blooming.

I want to be a D.J.

2009-05-26T15:18:00.000-07:00

I've been primpin' my Facebook with playlists, including song clips with great titles, like:

The Witch Queen of New Orleans (Redbone)
Paying the Cost to Be the Boss (BB King)
Nobody Loves Me But My Mother (and she could be jivin' too)--BB King
Chicken Ain't Nothing But a Bird
Are You All Reet?
Is You Is Or Is You Ain't? (above three as performed by Cab Calloway)
You and Me and the Bottle Makes Three Tonight (Big Bad Voodoo Daddy)
Stop the Wedding--Etta James
Love Me Like a Man--Bonnie Raitt
Mr. Jelly Roll Baker (performed by Leon Redbone).

I want to be a DJ; my show would be called "The Witch Queen of New Orleans" and I would play all kinds of wonderful songs.

For now, enjoy the following video of Cab Calloway (Fred Astaire said this was, in his opinion, the best tapdancing ever put on film). And then, all you hep cats get up and dance!

Another agent wants to see partial of manuscript!

2009-05-23T20:32:00.000-07:00

They just keep asking, and I just keep sending. Hopefully one of them will take it!

It makes me feel like the song you'll hear if you click the link.

Happy Memorial Day Weekend!

Sharon Olds: Self-Portrait, Rear View

2009-05-21T23:10:00.001-07:00

Sharon Olds is one of my favorite poets. Here is her ode to cellulite:

Summer Draws Nigh

2009-05-15T11:53:00.000-07:00

I apologize to my faithful readers for being away from Blogville for so long. I was dealing both with end-of-the year stuff and a worse-than-usual flare of lupus. I dreamed about the flare-up before it happened (the dream involved looking at my face in a mirror and seeing half my face covered with a bright red rash). A few days later, my body did just that, but not much on my face beyond the "butterfly" rash that is typical of lupus--I broke out in a huge rash that covered all my large joints, and became rapidly very sick. When I went to the doctor, she put me on a course of prednisone, which I was very upset about--it makes me feel good and it does bring the illness down, but it has bad side effects (none of which I ended up experiencing this time, though).

I felt better within a few days, but it was a reminder to take care of myself, get enough sleep and exercise, and generally be a lot more mindful of my health.

In the wake of this, I said goodbye to my beloved class of engineering (and a few other) students, most of whom have been with me all year. It has been, I think, one of the most challenging years of my entire life, incorporating the grief of losing family members and accepting that it was going to take time to feel anywhere in the realm of normal again. I think as time goes on, I miss my sister and mother more, but in different ways and with less of the acute grief.

I also was very stressed about work, as I had not gotten word of being re-hired, and would have been very happy with a composition course again. However, my appointment was well beyond anything I had hoped--I was given Introduction to Creative Writing!
I was so happy that I went to the department chair (who deserves some sort of medal for all he's done to try and save jobs in the wake of horrific budget cuts) and thanked him. Of course, it's going to be a challenging class and different from the one I taught in Summer '08--I have almost no memory of what I taught in that class because my sister died during the session and I went on automatic pilot. Still, I am grateful to have work, as much as my illness will allow me to do, and I am glad to still be at the alma mater, teaching wonderful students.

I have a visualization I started doing when I got sick with this flare-up. One thing I've noticed is how I will often not believe good things are supposed to happen for me. This is an old, old thought, something that comes from childhood and has lingered in my adult life. My visualization involved seeing all my hopelessness, lack of self-worth, anything negative I still carry in my heart, as a wall. During the visualization, I was guided to start seeing cracks in that wall, through which blue sky and sun begin to pour through, as a metaphor for hope and trust that the universe is not hostile and that there are good things in store for me. This gave me a lot of comfort when I thought for sure that there would be no work for me next semester, and with other things.

As for an update on agents--they are still looking at the book! Yes, it does take time--I've accepted that wholeheartedly! :)

Finish Line

2009-05-08T01:31:00.001-07:00

I haven't been updating in a bit because I am finishing up my semester. I hope to post more in a few days. I did get a really wonderful end-of-year evaluation, which made me feel really good about all the hard work and effort I put in this year!

Closer

2009-04-26T16:11:00.000-07:00

Every day brings me closer to the end of the academic year and of saying goodbye to another bunch of great students, all of whom I will miss greatly, as always. I do not know yet if I will have a job next semester, but it seems likely I will have at least one class to teach--which works just fine for me.

This has been, beyond a doubt, the most difficult teaching year for me, these months after my sister's death. It takes a long time to integrate something like this, and I look forward to a summer of reflecting and trying to incorporate this loss into my psyche. I feel as if I have been walking around with my body and mind twisted in slightly wrong directions all year. It is the old path everyone travels, from shock to numbness to anger, then finally, at some point, it becomes part of the fabric of life.

The Great Wind-Up Towards Summer

2009-04-22T16:22:00.000-07:00

Yes, it's true--soon it will be summer, my first summer off in a year. I am planting both simple (eg. easy to grow) flowers in my garden, and slightly more ornery and mysterious things (heirloom tomatoes again, corn, and Swiss chard, and flowers from obscure packets my friend Mysteria--not her real name--gave me), and of course many roses. My lilac bloomed with fountains of gorgeous flowers, though they have drooped a bit in the heat. It is am emblem of my devotion to my garden that I get up early to water, to be in keeping with the watering restrictions in my littlecorner of the world.

At any rate, summer is peeking over the horizon and I am feeling very happy about it all!

Kathleen Flowers

2009-04-16T17:40:00.000-07:00

One of our latest writing group members, a wonderful poet and a lovely person, Kathleen Flowers, died of cancer on Easter Sunday. She was 44. I did not know she had passed away and read about it today in the Santa Cruz Sentinel. I am sorry I did not know her as well as I wanted to; she was in our group for an all-too-brief time, and on this earth too regrettably brief as well. I am glad for the handful of nice talks and emails we had; she was a deeply loving and loved person. I took her photo tonight and placed in on the altar my African dance teacher always creates each class; she put the photo in a pair of carved angel wings for the class.

Here is one of Kathleen's poems:

The Joke

The skull throws her head
back and out comes a scream,

not a reckless scream, but more
like she’s laughing, laughing at herself,

at this small life that ends
when we wake ourselves.

Out of the black chasm, out of her mouth
fly roses, crosses and gold

coins. She cannot stop
laughing.

Never Judge a Book By Its Cover

2009-04-13T19:39:00.001-07:00

Click on the title to this post to see a very good lesson in this.

Apology

2009-04-13T00:05:00.001-07:00

I want to send a large apology to friends, colleagues, students, commenters on this blog, my faithful readers, even my kids--it is nearing the end of the semester and I feel I must cram into my students' craniums every shred of compositional wisdom that ever was or will be. I must begin teaching MLA citation big-time, over and over. I have told my students I would rather clean the catbox than teach MLA citation. But there you have it. If you don't know what I am talking about, you don't need to know. I will be under a pile of grading from now until May 22nd, so I may not be as attentive to emails or reply to comments. Such is the life of college instructors at this time of year. I promise to be more responsive when school lets out. I am not teaching this summer--I plan to dance, write, and work in my garden.

One woman came up to me and very sweetly said that she remembered me from many years ago, when I was very ill with lupus (actually came close to dying of it, but she didn't know that) and walking with the help of a cane (I had horrific bursitis in my hip them and could not walk without pain, so the cane helped me immensely to take steps). I have forgotten those days (especially today, when I did a full aerial spin, feet completely off the floor, landing easily and surely as a cat).

It was good to be reminded at how far I have come and how much work it took to get here, even though I honestly don't think of those past days much anymore. Dance and yoga were my paths to healing. I fully believe now that I will not die of lupus like my sister did, that my body wants more to be well than it does to be sick.

More Haitian Dance

2009-04-12T13:55:00.000-07:00

I took a class with Blanche Brown, a revered teacher of Haitian dance (who taught my regular teacher). I don't think I have ever met a dance teacher with her incredible warmth, presence, and, for lack of a better word, power. She*kicked*my*butt. She corrected me 18 million times, it seemed. Over and over, 'till I got it somewhere in the ball park of the right steps. She told me to feel the drums, to respond to them--I've never been corrected so many times in one class! She told me that now I had a chance to unlearn everything I knew about dance, that my mind was telling my body this was much harder than it really was. It's like she took one look at me and knew exactly where my resistances were. And of course, everything emotional came up--not because of her corrections, of course, but as I danced and tried to break through my hesitations, all the old feelings came up that plagued me from elementary school through college and beyond, that I was awkward, stupid, not even worthy of the degree I sought, worthy only of betrayal and being made fun of, of being rejected and treated like I was "less than". Those, of course, are the feelings that need to come up and go away in order to give over to the body and the dance. I wonder if it happens for everyone.

Been Away...

2009-04-08T22:56:00.000-07:00

Because I was sick and then busy, I have been away a bit. Life has been full of queries (yes, I still send them out, even though I have many agents looking at the book now), sending out poems to litmags, dance, and--most importantly--planning and planting MY GARDEN! My lilac is just about to bloom, despite the rain

According to my calendar, tomorrow night is a "pink moon," According to the Farmer's Almanac, this is because the herb "moss pink" grows in abundance this month. I prefer to think that this is the time when the Pink Umbrella Man takes his moonlight stroll.

Goodnight!

Guede

2009-03-27T22:52:00.000-07:00

Just back from Haitian dance--what a class! I now have a white skirt to wear (a traditional costume for these classes), and it was drenched by the time I was done. We danced in honor of the guede (click on the link to see who they are), the tricky spirits of the afterlife--lots of dancing in a crouch, twirling, moving the hips snakelike in a figure 8 while inching across the floor, tossing the head back and forth as if entranced--and I felt drawn deep into a trance just as the drummers started singing, I forgot to be embarrassed and just moved. I was with the guede and knew each of their names, I tread lightly between my boundary in this world and theirs, as if lightly touching my feet down on either side of a long red ribbon. I looked in the mirror and saw myself writhing like a snake, tossing my head like a horse, sliding back and forth across the floor like a cat, my white skirt like a cloud. If I forget myself, if I let myself be taken by the drums and enter into that space, I am lifted away from my worries and learn not to fear the crossroads of this existence.

New Poem

2009-03-25T14:55:00.000-07:00

I realize this is a bit of a weighty subject, coming on the heels of yesterday's post, but I have finished a poem and am starting another. I have had many years of poetry-silence as I finished my prose work, so it's nice to see the well filling up again.

Witch Hazel

Nothing returns her to me
like this scent. The woman on the bottle’s different
than in childhood: a sorceress with wild red hair,
leafy branches over her head like torches.
My mother’s bottle was utilitarian, round glass,
with a line drawing on the label of a stern Victorian profile,

but the fragrance is the same as the one
that filled my room when she poured just a little
into her cupped hand, to stroke on my skin during illness:
wet earth, roots, autumn woods steeped in rain and shadow.

How is it that I grew away from her?
How is it that she closed her eyes
against this world, her hands stilled, never to quench
the fever of my grief with any elixir,
her bones fragile now, and white as a handful of dry twigs
broken and scattered for divination,
their ciphers a hoarded message waiting
in the coffers of silence and the absolute dark.

Sylvia Plath's Son, Nicholas Farrar Hughes, Kills Himself

2009-03-23T20:55:00.000-07:00

Yes, it's all too sadly true. Nicholas Hughes, the son of writers Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, killed himself. Apparently he had been suffering from depression for some time. A report from Fairbanks, Alaska is linked here (click on the title of the essay). I liked this report because it gave much information on what a rich life this man lived, not just "the son of the suicidal poet."

It is terrible beyond words when depression becomes fatal like this. It is unspeakably sad for those left behind, too, and can have repercussions into subsequent generations. I hope that his family can find some comfort, somehow, in that he battled his depression bravely for so long and lived such a productive existence, in which he contributed so much to his chosen work. What an unbelievable tragedy. Depression is a robber, and I am deeply saddened to know that it robbed us of Nicholas Hughes along with his mother.

My thoughts and prayers are with the Hughes, Plath and Farrar families tonight.

Nick And The Candlestick

Sylvia Plath

I am a miner. The light burns blue.
Waxy stalactites
Drip and thicken, tears

The earthen womb

Exudes from its dead boredom.
Black bat airs

Wrap me, raggy shawls,
Cold homicides.
They weld to me like plums.

Old cave of calcium
Icicles, old echoer.
Even the newts are white,

Those holy Joes.
And the fish, the fish----
Christ! They are panes of ice,

A vice of knives,
A piranha
Religion, drinking

Its first communion out of my live toes.
The candle
Gulps and recovers its small altitude,

Its yellows hearten.
O love, how did you get here?
O embryo

Remembering, even in sleep,
Your crossed position.
The blood blooms clean

In you, ruby.
The pain
You wake to is not yours.

Love, love,
I have hung our cave with roses.
With soft rugs----

The last of Victoriana.
Let the stars
Plummet to their dark address,

Let the mercuric
Atoms that cripple drip
Into the terrible well,

You are the one
Solid the spaces lean on, envious.
You are the baby in the barn.

Pink Umbrella Man Returns!

2009-03-22T23:36:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite individuals, the Pink Umbrella Man of Santa Cruz, has returned to strolling along Pacific Avenue. Click on the link to see his new, albeit toned-down attire and some information on why he quit strolling for almost a year. He, like Madonna, tends to reinvent himself every now and again. When he first started his afternoon strolls, he wore what looked like pink or yellow scrub pants and a Hawaiian shirt, and carried a colorful umbrella (previous to this, he lived under garbage bags on the Pacific Garden mall, had a sign on his bag tent that said, "There is no God," and bade passers-by hello in a gentle voice). Robert went all-out in pink attire and colorful makeup later, sporting boas, purses, beads, an array of flowered hats, pink frocks, socks with ruffles at the cuffs, bracelets, rings, and of course, a pink umbrella (usually a Tweety Bird one with a blinking red light at the tip). He walked at the slowest pace you could imagine, one snail step after another. Suddenly, Umbrella Man disappeared one sad day, and no one knew where he went.

Well, he has apparently traded in his marabou, fuzzy hot-pink leggings, and fleecy pink-lamb-shaped purse for more sedate attire, and now looks a bit like Ben Franklin, albeit a parallel-universe Ben Franklin with a kitschy "Lucy Does the Rumba" umbrella. I myself spotted Robert along Pacific Avenue just last week as I passed by the entrance to the Palomar hotel. It was like old times--we waved and said hello. And he did indeed walk more briskly than usual, when he finally got going. Perhaps, like so many of us, he needs to pick up the pace to get that daily dose of cardio!

Welcome back, Umbrella Man!

Spring Break

2009-03-21T14:39:00.000-07:00

I am with Mr. Strega at his place of employment, enjoying all the comforts of a Silicon Valley conference room, with comfy chairs and a nice wide desk. I am on Spring Break right now, and was determined to get ALL my correcting done and off the board for this week. I was hovering on the edge of burnout, but am feeling better today. I literally have nothing planned except to rest up and write. I've been feeling singularly uncreative lately (a hazard at times of having a bunch of correcting to do), so hopefully my well will replenish.

The Fool

2009-03-09T19:44:00.000-07:00

In Tarot, the Fool has many meanings, but I especially like the interpretation of the Fool as a blissful innocent, fully open to whatever the universe brings. There are some tensions at work due to the impending Fall budget disaster in the California state university system, and I do not yet know whether Dr. X (my alias for the director of my department) will be able to hire me again. I do know, directly from the source, that he wants to...but no one really knows how everything is going to shape up moneywise.

So, I just make like the Fool and balance on the edge of the unknown. I don't worry. There has never been a time in my life where options were not revealed to me, where I was unable to make a path for myself. It would be very sad for me to leave my office with its beautiful view of the campus. It would break my heart not to have students to teach next semester and next year. I never really know how my illness is going to go, so every semester is precious to me anyway...but I know if my job becomes a victim of the California state budget, there is little I can do about it.

I must say here that there have been some students of mine who have gone directly to Dr. X and to the head of my MFA program and made sure to praise me as a teacher--these things do a lot of good and Dr. X always lets me know when this happens. Still, there would be no good teaching without a whole lot of excellent students and, no matter what happens to me at the alma mater, I can still count myself as blessed to have been part of many wonderful lives.

So, I keep dancing on the edge, knowing that it's possible to look into the abyss without fear.

What to Do When Disappointed

2009-03-07T23:21:00.000-08:00

I had a minor, personal disappointment (nothing to do with books, agents, or writing, just a performance I could not be in)...and so, instead of mulling it over, I went dancing...and not just any dance; I took my first Haitian dance class last night. Click on the link to see my teacher Shawn (underneath the photo of Blanche Brown, with whom I'd also like to study when she comes to Santa Cruz from time to time).

Dear God...I thought I had seen amazing, exquisite dancing in my lifetime. I had only been in the kindergarten of dancing. The instructor is a professional dancer and has literally the most beautiful strength and grace I have ever seen, intimidatingly so, and yet there is something amazingly kind in his personality, so that I was not afraid to stand right next to him and slowly learn. The drummers were absolutely hypnotic, and I felt drawn deep into a place of mystery as I moved along in the beginner's line, something that went beyond time and space, beyond words and thought. There were dancers of all shapes, sizes, and colors, all making an amazing world in that hour and a half.

All the dancers were beautiful and expressive in their own ways, but one woman in particular captivated me. She had to be in her mid-sixties, with white-gray hair cut straight at chin length, extravagant of body, no makeup, in a pair of white tennies, a flouncy, long green patterned skirt, a black shirt like any of my everyday pullover shirts, a gold heart necklace around her neck. This woman danced the intricate turns and motions with a grace that stole my heart forever and shattered every myth of being too old, too ugly, too large, too different, to express the mysteries and the wisdom of the body through dance. Her face--plain by perhaps some of society's standards--was so radiant and so filled with love of the dance, of movement and joy, that it gave me a sense of connection with all the people who are overlooked by the world. Seeing this woman on the street, I might not have guessed what a whirlwind of grace lay at her core--and it reminded me to try and remember that there are surprises and mysteries in every person that lives, and that face value is not always the right value, so much of the time.

From the Wide World of Writing

2009-03-05T23:45:00.000-08:00

I sent an email query last April, asking after a short essay a magazine had been holding for six months. Yesterday, they answered my query (almost a year later). Just goes to show how slow things sometimes get. I think writing is the only "business" in which practices like this are "allowed" to happen.

The literary world really has changed in this regard; for a couple of decades, I didn't have any problem hearing back from every editor I sent to, no matter if the ultimate answer was a rejection. Now I often hear nothing back at all, and things get lost a lot more often. Granted, I get more acceptances, but there definitely has been a change in the whole sending-and-receiving of literary submissions, at least for me.

Grading

2009-03-01T16:57:00.000-08:00

I'm in the middle of trying to catch up with my grading and PowerPoint stuff for tomorrow's class, but wanted to just let the world know I'm still here. I've resolved the situation with my dance teacher and am back in her classes, AND in the process, when I was branching out and trying to find other classes, I began to work with this wonderful group of women (click on the link to see),,,

...and am going to keep working with them, even though it is a small amount of extra money every month and I need to go to San Jose one more day a week (I also work in San Jose). These dance classes are an amazingly nourishing environment for me to be in.

In other "news," I dreamed of my mother last night, sitting with others at a far distance, around a beautiful lagoon with green water the color of a peridot, surrounded by salt flats which were bright white. She seemed happy and young-looking, and I knew she and the others with her were spirits and not alive anymore in the physical sense. I was able to have a lucid dream in which I actually was able to ask questions and get answers consciously from a being who spoke with me through a speaker-like device. Lucid dreaming something I've been working on, though I tend to have to shout my questions in the dreams! A very interesting experience, to say the least.

Alice Walker on Losing a Sister

2009-02-20T14:16:00.000-08:00

My sister Maryanne used to buy me books by Alice Walker: In Search of Our Mother's Garden, The Way Forward is With a Broken Heart, The Color Purple. These books gave me immense hope and happiness, the wonderful satisfaction and sense of connection with writing that springs from a deep well of life, of authenticity.

I recently learned that Walker lost her own sister, who had (like my sister) been ill for many years. I was astounded at the similiarites between her physical, visceral reaction to her sister's death and my own. I also so greatly admire how she expands her vision outward even in the midst of grief and mourning to look at the wider world. Click on the link to see her essay.

Balanced

2009-02-19T09:19:00.000-08:00

Had the most wonderful time in my troupe's dance class last night. We are getting ready for Rakassah, the huge bellydance festival that takes place, at different times of the year on the East and West coasts. The festival is really amazing. Our troupe is doing a balancing dance, using pots we made this year. The floorwork we're learning is a bit different from the one shown here (from the amazing Hahbi Ru dance troupe), but the part where the women twist their hips in a kneeling position is very close to what we do...and man, it is physically taxing. I did this sequence over and over last night, probably ten times, plus other floor work, all while balancing a heavy, weighted pot (like the ones the women are dancing with here).
Plus falling backwards while kneeling and catching myself at the last minute. Plus getting off the floor from a kneeling position in one graceful move, without bobbling. Mind, you, I'm going to be fifty in four months. Would I have it any other way right now? Heck, no! I think those yoga classes are starting to pay off....

Enjoy Habhi Ru's balancing dance. They are an amazing and fun group:

Thinking of Her

2009-02-17T00:16:00.000-08:00

I took the Caltrain up to San Francisco today on an errand and went to a lovely tea house with my dear eldest daughter, about to launch into the world and, I hope, a stellar career. Her artwork is so beautiful, it wrings my heart and makes me glad that I have encouraged all my children to follow their dreams.

Sadness came to me, though, as I sat and looked out over a gorgeous San Francisco landscape, knowing how much fun it would have been to enjoy this lovely place with my sister. My sister's ashes were scattered at Point Reyes a short time ago, and this so much seals the finality of her brief life for me. At least my mother lived into her seventies, though much of it was spent in the misery of active drinking. My sister's life was such an abbreviation, and my heart breaks for this. So much of her existence was spent gathered around a single wish that never happened for her, a wish for a life with a man who ultimately cared nothing for her, whose love for her now boils down to dollars and cents. Her memory is a bill he would like to pay and be rid of. My sister was so much more than anything she believed about herself. I wonder if I dream of her in relation to mirrors because she so invested her self-esteem in what others thought of her.

Now she is fully gone, her ashes dispersed in a gray-white cloud over icy gray water. I am haunted by the idea of this finality, the fine dust of bone and carbon making a cloud in the tide, just for a moment, then vanishing, as if her life had only been the quickest of thoughts. This was her wish, to be scattered in this place of rough and silent beauty, but I wonder why--why no footnote of permanence, some testament to the fact of her life? My mother lies with her grandparents in the family plot, in Malden, Massachusetts; on my desk is a blue glass bottle filled with sacred earth from this place. Anytime I am on the East Coast, I can travel there and put flowers on my mother's grave. Anytime I am in Los Angeles, I can put blue and green carnations on my grandmother's grave. My daughter whispered to me over the phone when visiting the graves of our loved ones in Los Angeles that a single red maple leaf lay on my grandfather's grave, bright as a splatter of blood.

But my sister has no such place, no final mark to say, "I was here." She died alone, as did my mother, no one calling us in time, though I would have traveled across the world to hold my mother's hand at the very last, to cradle my sister in my arms as they unhooked her from life support. I am old enough now to have stood at the bedsides of the dead and the dying; when I was not even in my thirties, I held my stillborn son in my arms, saying hello and goodbye in the same instant. I would have done as much for the woman who gave birth to me and the sister who shared my life.

So I say to my sister, don't be afraid. Yes, the water is dark this time of night, the waves tall, as if in a painting brushed by Hokusai, the water black as squid's ink, but let it be your cloak, let the black water and the night air, pregnant with rain, give you a new body, fragile as the dome of a moon jelly. How often we looked for lights out in the ocean, thinking they were spirit lights, messages from a veiled world we thought we could almost glimpse. My two hands release you so that you may find the light, a bone-colored dove who flies away from me, easily into the silence, sure of its path.

Answer My Prayer

2009-02-13T13:04:00.000-08:00

I have been in a moderately difficult situation in my dance life, trying to figure out whether to leave a course of instruction and a teacher I've been working with for six years and moving on to another teacher in San Jose. This is NOT my troupe nor my wonderful teacher for Dancers of the Crescent Moon; we are going strong and learning amazing new things all the time. The situation I'm in is going to likely involve setting boundaries, saying no, and making the best decision I can, then sticking with it and taking the consequences.

I realize this is nothing compared to the immense pain and sorrow so many people are experiencing, so I am grateful I do not have to make life-affecting decisions right now. Still, leaving an intense course of instruction with someone you've worked with for many years is very sad and has affected me greatly. It is not easy to be nearly 50 and have to start over again, even though I have a huge amount of training and can likely move up in the new classes quickly.

Anyway, last night I was in, of all places, the Felton Safeway, having broken that very night with my other classes. I was feeling very down about it, not sure I had taken the right course, and so I prayed to my mother for a sign, any sign, to show me she was listening and that I was on the right path. Instantly--really, immediately after I breathed that prayer, my mother's favorite version of her favorite song, one she played over and over when I was a kid, came on over the loudspeakers. If you want to see what it was, click on this YouTube video:

Living Life

2009-02-08T01:16:00.000-08:00

Mr. Strega and I had the most wonderful walk tonight along West Cliff Drive, about 3 miles (slowly, as I have not been feeling well). It was an absolutely beautiful night and I remembered, again, how much I love living here.

I am extremely grateful to be in this time and place, even though the world is sotroubled and so many people are losing their livelihood. I really believe that positive changes are going to happen, though they will take time.

Some people have been emailing me about the agents and no, no one has responded yet. It does take time and I have to say, in the midst of gratitude, that it's a little stressful!

Another Manuscript Request

2009-02-02T23:41:00.001-08:00

An agent at InkWell Management in New York has asked to see the manuscript. This is request #4.

This is a great exercise in detachment for me! It's hard not to get excited about it, but I have too much work to do right now, teaching-wise, to get caught up in it.

Back to grading!

Think happy thoughts, y'all.

New

2009-01-21T17:53:00.000-08:00

I am so blown away by the Obama inauguration. Bush is REALLY GONE! It's been eight years of,,,well, I can't really say this on a blog my students and friends read.

I have ANOTHER manuscript request, this time at the Irene Goodman agency in New York. I have not heard from the Harvey Klinger agency yet, either. I'm not nervous, just businesslike about the whole thing. At least I'm starting to get hopeful that I have a viable book.

Anyway, off to dance class.

Facing the Dream

2009-01-19T00:11:00.000-08:00

--warning--slightly graphic--do not read if you get upset at scary dreams

I dreamed last night that Mr. Strega and I went into my sister's apartment to witness the immediate aftermath of her death, and I saw her blood-soaked clothing all over the floor (part of her death in the "real" world involved a hemhorrage). Her phone was buried under old clothes and off the hook, and her apartment was in the kind of disarray someone might leave if they have to go out suddenly,expecting to be back later. We were frightened in the dream and cleaned up the mess. I wandered to a set of revolving mirrors, out of which my sister stepped. She told me she wanted me to live in her apartment, and I told her I couldn't, that I didn't like the city she lived in. She and I spent the time locking doors against "bad people" and trying to figure out where she could plant a garden. She told me she had already planted a flower called schizianthus (which later I found out is called "butterfly flower"--in many cultures, butterflies are thought to be the souls of the dead).

I woke to a state of near-hysteria from this dream, which had an overlay of strangeness and terror that I could not understand, though seeing my lost sister was not scary.

I know in "real" life that my sister got in her car and drove herself to the hospital as she began to have symptoms, rather than call an ambulance. I always wonder what her apartment looked like after she left that night--she must have fully expected to come back there, and she never did. I must have needed the catharsis of this dream, but I am not sure I needed the emotional ratlling for the rest of the day, and well into this evening!

On George Bush and Parallel Universes

2009-01-16T00:47:00.000-08:00

(Sigh)--if only we lived in the safe, secure parallel universe that George Bush seems to think he inhabits and which he described tonight as he made his farewell speech. What America was he talking about? Certainly not the one I see around me, with crime on the rise. people losing their homes, and with our libraries and even the neighborhood swimming pool on the budgetary chopping block, and that's the very least of it.

I think Dubya should have said, "Thank you, America, for letting me and my folks wiretap your phones, read your emails, spy on the very books you take out from the library. I'm proud to say we've solved our energy crisis by foreclosing on your homes, so you don't have to use lightbulbs or appliances in them anymore. Think of the kilowatt hours I've saved you! And, hey, why do you need health care anyway in this era of global warming--do you REALLY want to live long enough to see the results of catastrophic climate change? My cohorts and I have stolen an election, ransacked your wallets, put many of you into the ranks of the unemployed, mortgaged your children's futures, created an atmosphere of oppressive fear and tension, killed thousands of people in our wars, and left you with a national debt the size of the whole Himalayan range. I'm outta here, America! Yee haw! Mission Accomplished!"

I feel that Bush's speech reflects an attitude whose time is past--and I hope Obama can unify the country in hope and leadership. Maybe the next four years will be like that plane which landed in the Hudson River today--it looked scary and everyone thought we were going to crash, but we glided to a place of safety and in the end, everyone was fine--we all helped each other and not one person was lost.

I Don't Go To Bed Until...

2009-01-15T01:40:00.000-08:00

... I write and send five queries, until I've reached 20 queries this week (I query in 20-agent batches).

Jenny Bent of Trident Media Group (my first manuscript request), passed on the book, but had great praise for me, calling me a "talented writer" (this woman has had 16 NYTimes bestsellers, so I was very appreciative of that) and praising the book's storyline, but the descriptive prose was not for her. I wasn't disappointed, but instead was very appreciative that she had taken a serious look at it. I had gotten a manuscript request from another agent just a day or so before the email from Jenny, so it's not like weeks and weeks pass before someone else wants to look at it. I am sure I will have the right representation when it is the right time for me. In the meantime, I keep sending the queries out. Doing this in incremental batches feels much easier to me. Before I go back to work at the end of the month, I will have turned to doing a bunch of mail queries as well.

So it goes. I am glad to be doing this--though I have to say that email querying is a little bit addictive!

Another Manuscript Request!

2009-01-07T01:26:00.000-08:00

Another agent has requested to look at the full manuscript, this time at the Harvey Klinger agency in New York. Yay!

My formerly flooded office is now in the process of being set to rights. The only residual effect is a slighlty sticky desk drawer. There is not even that nasty "wet carpet smell" which I so feared would happen.

Involved

2009-01-06T02:26:00.000-08:00

I've been pondering a situation on the periphery of my life lately, the doings of a person in my "exercise" life whose behavior has--I suspect completely inadvertantly-- caused a sort of emotional vortex, the result of which I don't know yet--it could be positive, negative, or a tangle of both things. The results have little to do with my own personal life, yet I've been dwelling on it so much that I have neglected good things in the last two days, such as how gorgeous the moonlight looked tonight on the branches of winter trees.

It's so easy to get caught up in drama and neglect the center of my own life. The truth is, I do get perplexed by behaviors and some part of me, perhaps the writer part, just simply wants to figure out why someone is doing something. Still, I can spend an inordinate amount of time on that when what I REALLY need to do is detach and take stock of my own life. In this situation, I could choose to do nothing right now and see how things unfold; I could choose to take a hiatus; I could walk away and find another venue. I won't make any decision without breathing, taking time, asking for guidance from my Higher Power, even exercising gratitude for what has been given, even if things initially look as if there could be no gratitude at all applied to it. Sometimes in life, I've found that the gratitude lies in simply saying, "Thank You for opening my eyes to what seems to be the reality of this situation."

And that's all for tonight--gratitude and silver light on cold white branches.

2009

2009-01-01T03:24:00.000-08:00

It has been quite a year for me, to say the least. As all my readers here know, I lost my mother, sister, and two close friends, many difficult losses starting 2007. I also had a miscarriage in June 2007, which was very difficult for me and about which I haven't really wanted to write much, except in my journaling. At my age, a surprise pregnancy seemed a miracle and it was profoundly sad for me to experience its loss.

Life does bring people down very difficult roads. I would not really want to live again the difficult parts of the last couple of years. I do feel that it has been one of the most deeply spiritual times of my life, when I have felt so close to unseen worlds and people who have passed beyond this life. Still, it has really hollowed me out. I am trying to be gentle with myself during this break, and plan to not teach summer school this year so that I can have some time to re-gather my thoughts and creativity.

I do feel that the new year is going to bring hope and light to this troubled country. I feel heartened by Obama's strength and resolve already to help our nation, and certainly positive change is always something wonderful to behold.

I've no New Year's Resolutions--I never make them--but perhaps being kinder to myself might be on the agenda!

The Joantown Flood

2008-12-29T13:59:00.000-08:00

(click on the title link if you don't get the pun).

Well, I was meaning to post all about my Christmas (which was low-key), finishing grading, last-minute shopping, and all that, but something got in the way. I was going to send out my late Christmas cards December 26th, but then I managed to flood both my bedroom AND my downstairs office the day after Christmas (it's a good idea to check if one has left on any running water, I found). The water flowed into my bedroom and then directly downstairs through my light fixture in my office. I'd been meaning to clutter-bust my office and rearrange things, and clean the carpet, so I suppose the universe heeded my call.

We had to move everything out of the office--mind you, I try to keep this room neat, so there wasn't junk lying around, but I do have an extensive doll collection, books, all my Tarot cards, family photos--a huge amount of memorabilia, some not replaceable.

Miraculously, not one really important thing was permanently harmed, including the light fixture--three or four books got soaked, but are slowly drying in front of a fan. I only had to toss out some old papers and envelopes, and that's it. Mr. Strega rented an extractor and pulled what he guesstimated as about 20 gallons of water out of the carpets, upstairs and down. Now I have my array of giant fans running upstairs and down, and it is taking care of the residual damp very nicely. I've read about people coming home to find their houses flooded from a broken washer or something like that, with hundreds of gallons of water throughout. I figure I was lucky.

Mr. Strega remarked that he has done all kinds of household stuff for which there could have been serious consequences, dozens of times in his life (though there never have been), and he was incredibly kind throughout the flood. He took me out for pho (Vietnamese noodle soup) that night, and said he felt a lot better for my sake when I began to laugh about it all.

Hmmm...when I decided that mindfulness was a goal of mine, I suppose this wasn't what I was thinking! Still, it's a good reminder to be aware. The truth is, everyone has the potential to make a mistake like this, and mine could have been a lot more costly.

So, if you haven't got a Christmas card from me yet, well...they're on their way!

A Time To...

2008-12-19T23:54:00.000-08:00

...breathe.

My manuscript is still being considered by an agent for Trident Media Group in New York (their clients include Deepak Chopra, Russell Banks--I had the wonderful experience of sitting with Russell Banks and Mr. Strega, long ago, well into the night in a little restaurant in San Jose, talking about all manner of things--Stephen Colbert, Molly Giles (who was one of my creative writing teachers at State), Stephen Coonts...and, heck, even Penn and Teller. My manuscript has been under consideration there for over a month now. I know it's the holidays and I am sure the agent is swamped with things to do; I don't expect to hear back for a while, and that's fine with me. Mr. Strega says that I have been remarkably calm about it all...I'm really not worried about it. I still think it is a great nod from the universe, no matter what the agent decides.

I also feel like I am querying in the crappiest economic time ever for anyone to be doing this, when the economy is so dismal...and yet this is pretty much my life's journey, facing very strange odds and finding the path through, anyhow.

I'm starting to write an essay, which I'm thinking of submitting to NPR for This I Believe, about returning to teaching after I never thought I would stand in front of a classroom again. If anything, I am beginning to write more and more, which is good. All those months of shock over my sister and mother's deaths are feeling like they are giving way to another aspect of what will probably be a lifelong process.

Finishing Up

2008-12-15T00:41:00.000-08:00

I'm working on bits and pieces of grading, and reflecting on a memo I was sent by Dr. X, my beloved boss and chair of the department. He warned the faculty that there might be cuts in re-hiring people next year, and that those of us who were hired-in during the last couple of years may have to be let go if things get very bad. I know it kills him to write things like this. I saw him as he was about to get the memo proofread and he looked like someone had dropped a hundred pounds on his head.

It would just about kill me to have to leave teaching again; I had to leave many years ago due to my chronic illness, and it would be a shame now, having fought my way back to a time of relatively stable health, to have to let it go again. I hope it doesn't come to this--I'm perfectly happy to take one class every semester until things get better. Even though teaching is sometimes very challenging for me, I still love it and would miss it if I lost it again.

I have to say, this country is in a deplorable state and I really don't envy the Obama administration their jobs once January comes around. They are going to have to be like the folks in the circus who clean up after the elephants have passed through (literally). And that's a whole lot of crap to get rid of.

Lucky Drummer

2008-12-14T15:28:00.000-08:00

I am so lucky to have a wonderful teacher right now, Afia Walking Tree, who is giving lessons in African drumming on various Thursday nights at Louden Nelson Center in Santa Cruz. Afia is a world-renowned percussionist and teacher, and she is both fun and really challenging. On Thursday, I played both the djembe drum and the junjun, and even managed to get a sound out of each!

I've discovered that I am terrified to hit the drum hard enough to make noise. I thought this was going to be simple--after all, I've played the doumbek (Arabic drum) for about a year now, though I haven't been practicing much lately, and have no problem getting a sound out of that. The African drums are much more challenging. I had Afia standing over me, saying, "You have to really hit the drum! You have to bring its voice out!" while I tried SO hard to get a sound, any sound, out of my djembe. It challenged me on every level of my fears about being visible, being seen, about my lifelong desire to hide in the corner.

Well, it took me about a year to not feel like a complete dork in any dance class I've ever taken; it's taken me about five years to look at myself directly in the mirror in the dance studio, and I suppose it will take me some time to give my drum its voice...but I have no doubt that one day, I'll be just as addicted to African drumming as I am with the dance.

Nearly Done

2008-12-09T02:26:00.001-08:00

I am nearly done with this semester, and am looking forward to a break...this has nothing to do with my students, current and former (several of whom have found their welcome way to this blog), but because I have not had a real break from teaching since around this time last year. There is a point where one really has to recharge from all the energy it takes to be an effective teacher (and I frankly thought I was at about 20 percent of my capacity this semester due to the enormous work of grieving my losses).
I have some grading and a day where the faculty reads the composition finals, but that's about it.

I know I will be preparing for my next semester during the break, but I plan to just rest up, get to my yoga class more often, and really think about what I want for next semester, as a teacher and a writer. What I am losing, more and more, is the terrible frantic sense that I am running out of time because my sister ran out of time. Even from something as terrible as losing a sibling, I can walk out and say, "My life is mine."

Where It Went

2008-12-08T00:00:00.000-08:00

Every time I go to my writing group, I feel like some sort of...well, not a sort of writing fake, just lame. I never have any work at all, not since finishing the book in July. I am never good with the times when writing is on hiatus.

There are times I wonder, even when it's silly, if the Muse is real and if I managed to offend mine somehow. I wrote tonight that my Muse, my goddess in the ether who directs my poetry and prose, is a sort of gypsy dressed in rags and tinsel, peacock feathers and sequins, with a touch of small dry bones, flecks of blood and shadow. What did I do to make her go away, slip under the transom of winter, leaving me stranded? I would like to go to the place where I scattered my lost sister's flowers in the autumn woods, make a ritual to the goddess, coax her back. I am always, I think, going to be one of those writers who struggles for every word.

Well, okay, that's a bit dramatic. I suppose I can say I'm hollowed still by grief, though the well is gradually filling again, but how incredibly gradual. There are times one has to trust even in times when words won't congeal into lines, lines won't congeal into poems. I have to trust that the poems, the stories, are waiting and will come back, maybe better than before. My lost sister understood this: when I began to act like a tiger pacing its cage, the writing was about to return. Now that she is not here to remind me of this, I have to, consciously, hoping this restlessness is a sign of rebirth, the goddess waving at me from the infinite dark.

One agent passed on the partial, one still has the full manuscript

2008-12-03T15:46:00.000-08:00

I did promise myself I'd keep my faithful readers updated on the book and my renewed search for an agent.

One agent has passed on the partial manuscript, and one agent (the one I would gladly give my eyeteeth to represent me) still has the full manuscript. I've had a few agents pass in the last couple of days on my query, but I still have ten who have not responded (it's also standard these days to not get a response at all unless they are interested).

I think what helps me in this search the most is to treat this like a business, as always. Sure, I've got just as much anticipation and hope as anyone else, but I don't take the rejections personally--I figure that they clear the way for the exact right person to represent the book. I think the best thing to do with all aspects of writing and publishing is to have a positive outlook.

One thing I know about myself is that, writing-wise, I have never given up and so it's unlikely I ever will--because I think at least ninety percent of becoming a presence, in all of the arts, and perhaps in anything, is to maintain a Zen-like sense of persistence. There is no failure, not at all.

Obama nominates Hilary Clinton as Secretary of State

2008-11-30T12:58:00.000-08:00

Just like the title says--Hilary Clinton has been nominated to be our Secretary of State. I am really pleased with this choice.

I remarked to one of my colleagues yesterday that this is the "honeymoon" period with Obama, but I honestly hope that the honeymoon doesn't end!

Well, back to grading my FINAL set of in-class essays for the semester! As often happens, my English 1B course is made up of nearly all my students from 1A! It's really fun to spend a whole year with many of the same students.

As for writing, I have started two essays, and am awaiting word from two agents. I have been savoring a bit the fact that my book is being considered by two of the top agencies in New York (one is in the top ten, the other is in the top three). I am at peace with whatever happens with this.

I do know that I feel I am coming to another point in my emotional healing from a time when I lost five deeply beloved people in a short time span. I am moving from frantic activity, trying to get everything done because of my acute awareness of limited time, back to choosing projects that give me a sense of satisfaction, with a better sense of focus.

Well, back to grading.