I sat in on two interviews at Densho this week. On Tuesday, we interviewed a 96-y.o. Seattle resident who was interned at the labor camp in Idaho. Yesterday, I interviewed an 80+ year old who was removed to Tule Lake with her family, while she was still in her teens.

I'm finding that it's challenging to not interrupt - if you interrupt and break the flow of the narrative, you risk alienating the narrator and having them clam up. If you don't interrupt or reroute, it makes for a long, non-linear narrative at a mile a minute. The interview yesterday was little more than an hour, and we covered the building and development of Bellevue, life at Tule Lake, and racism in Bellevue post-WWII - house burnings and discrimination. The camera makes a big difference for both the narrator, and I must admit to myself - the self-consciousness factor. Trying to choose words sparingly and accurately, knowing there is no editing.

Yesterday, a former UW employee self-immolated himself in Red Square in the middle of the UW campus. The man was 61 years old and had worked for UW as recently as two weeks ago. At least one student tried to stop him. A student who photographed the burning had his camera confiscated by the police. Walking thru Red Square today, the center of the plaza was surrounded in a circle of yellow police tape, small flower vigils placed along its borders.

This is profoundly sad.

I'm heading into week six of the fall quarter at UW. Things have been going fairly smoothly, though I don't feel like I am balancing the workload stress very well. Last two weeks, plagued with aches, pains, and illness. I am fast-tracking finishing the degree by next spring and that makes for a very compressed timeline of working and achieving certain markers towards finishing up my thesis.

I'm very intrigued by the role of the oral historian and public historian, in a way that I had been very interested in anthropology at one time. Next week, I'll sit in on my first interview at Densho, and two days later, conduct an interview with a former resident of Bellevue and former internee of Tule Lake. I need to figure out what's going to be feasible with doing the chop suey interviews - if elderly Chinese-American men are going to want to talk to me, or if they'd rather talk to the project's photographer, over a beer and off the record. Lessons learned re: best practice for oral history and being a good listener:

Allow for silence.

Never interrupt someone.

Be flexible with your sequence of questions.

Clarify in the transcription process what cannot be clarified on tape due to timing, appropriateness, etc.

Read body language.

Open-ended questions!

Quiet setting with noise control is best.

Wishing I was in Austin just about now

WT is on a multi-city tour this month performing solo at small clubs and coffee shops and hits Austin tonight. I sent my bf. My cell phone chimed and the text msg that came in was "W is tall." A statement of the obvious. Something I feel/felt acutely hanging out with W is that the self-consciousness that I almost always feel about looking/being Asian falls away when I am with W, because people, strangers and acquaintances alike, inevitably fixate on his height. It is a marker of difference and it is such a distinctive marker that it prevents invisibility and/or anonymity that some how eclipses any markers of my own difference.

Why I am not a pizza chef... and other lessons learned at the Wedgewood Coop

I am lucky enough to know a couple of members of the Wedgewood Coop here in Seattle and went over to the house today for a clothing swap/pizza party. It was easy to tell who was a veteran of both the cob oven and the clothing swap and who were the tentative neophytes (myself included). The co-ed clothing swap involved dozens of friends and members of the coop putting into sorted piles their unwanted clothing; after about an hour or two, the scene resembled the Garment District in Cambridge, meets Filene's Basement dressing room. Women stripped down to brightly colored bras, women trying skirts on over jeans. Lesson learned for next year's swap - wear a tank top and or skirt, something easy to try clothes on over and under.

In the backyard, people assembled to make home-made pizzas, unsupervised. Last couple of times K and I went to the coop, K managed the pizza-making process. I didn't understand why it stressed him out so much until experiencing the whole process firsthand. My first pizza was a debacle - it became a half-cooked calzone that got fired in the house oven. I skipped reading the directions to the pizza line which instructed that you must first fire your dough before adding any toppings. It is also necessary to center your topping as much as possible, to prevent topping/sauce/cheese fall-out in the oven which gets difficult to clean. So the first pizza I attempted got sent inside. The second pizza turned out better, but as I was trying to determine whether or not the dough was sufficiently cooked, I put my face to close to the opening of the cob oven and got a backdraft of woodfire smoke and heat that seriously blinded me with an eye-stinging pain. If there is sufficient wood in the fire, it creates enough light that you don't have to risk blindness by leaning in too close.

I don't usually swear so much in front of acquaintances and people I do not know well, but tonight was one of those nights. I have never done so much work to make something edible. It made me think about how distanced I am from certain cooking/survival skills. This at a party where two people make their own kombucha and one guy pickles his own sauerkraut and a ton of people were ciliac intolerant. K says that in the last days (of earth) the coop people would be good people to hang out with and learn from.

Sad

The McLeod Residence in Belltown is closing at the end of October.

Malcolm Gladwell wrote a beautiful essay on the work of my friend Ben Fountain for today's New Yorker online.

Ironmen

I pretend muteness when
he shares that the root
of his profession
is to educate,

my doctor raced
his last triathalon
for the sake of saying
he competed

you can’t school everyone
even if all beings
may be our teachers –

Pheidippides, that runner
who sped from the battlefield
to Athens, dropped dead
after sprinting twenty-six miles

this gospel the body knows already,
though its the mind that trains
to steel itself long distance,
screwing up one’s courage

All the world a teahouse, where humans behave badly

In the goddess Kuan Yin's Teahouse, two women argue over who's more virtuous

Centrum, a 36-year-old nonprofit located on Fort Worden State Park in Port Townsend, is recruiting an Executive Director. Centrum is dedicated to serving artists of all ages and backgrounds through residential workshops, creative residencies, and public performances.

when you are engulfed in flames

Just finished reading the new David Sedaris book which I am shipping off to the BF in tomorrow's mail. Best essays in this book are "April in Paris" - about a spider in Sedaris' Normandy home which becomes a pet/obsession; "Memento Mori" - about Sedaris buying his partner Hugh a human skeleton for his birthday; and "The Smoking Section" - a long piece on quitting smoking in Tokyo. Also loved "Of Mice and Men" - an essay inspired by Sedaris' reading of an AP newswire story - the story of Luciano Mares who's house was burned to the ground by a flaming mouse. The same story inspired one of the poems in Adamantine.

The Iron Chink

The local history museum here has an object in its collections called "The Iron Chink." It came up in our oral history class last week. The Museum planned an exhibition with this object, where some of the label and didactic information repeated the racist language of the object. It was a piece of machinery created by a white inventor to displace Chinese laborers - not unlike the story of John Henry. Anyways, the museum took an institutional party line that although the language of the exhibition was offensive to some that Chinese-Americans could "take it." This as opposed to their perspective that African-American visitors couldn't deal with an exhibition using the "N-word." So it was very interesting that people in the class had no problem saying "chink" but tiptoed around using the N-word. At one point, I became very irritated. MOHAI sent the institutional message to the public that certain kinds of racism are acceptable, and what is this perception based on? On stereotypes of Asian-American docility and good manners, the organized power of the collective, and the level of perceived threat or danger that they might be called out and branded by the public with the "R-word" - i.e. racist. So I'm working on a new poem called "The Iron Chink" that explores some of these tensions.

on having an archnemesis...

I have an archnemesis.

She is AA, and she is poet. I would be curious to know if other poets have such doppelgangers?

I did not choose her, or perhaps, we unknowingly chose each other. We attached ourselves to one another at a writing conference in 2004, where we were both fellows. Friendship seemed entirely possible at the time, or at least "resource sharing." She started blogging, cribbed liberally and critically from this blog, and a very public falling out ensued around the criticism her anthology received from the AA community, which had nothing to do with me, except perhaps that I mirrored some of these attitudes and subaltern voices which were violently silenced. I was accused of instigating some of the criticism and threatened with a lawsuit. All quite gracious, you say. All quite violent.

Water under the bridge, I like to think. Then in 2006, she came out with an interview where she took a pointed and unmistakable jab at me. She got the details wrong of course. Her new book came out last month and she sent me an email about it. Whereas, I regularly scrub my address book and mailing lists, it seemed like a very deliberate move. I congratulated her and asked to be removed from her list. Then I came across a recent interview, with another pointed barb. It's interesting how much in common superficially we can share with our "frienemies" and how well we can understand them. There is no truce, when there is no admission of conflict.

Your archnemesis knows that you write about violence, because of the war that you wage within.

Your archnemesis knows that motherhood is a construct. So is your AA identity. Along with that press photo of you embracing your child.

Your archnemesis knows that you are a maverick rulebreaker as much as you are a Republican in your sentiments.

Your archnemesis recognizes your allies when she meets them. She can tell by their distinct brand of graciousness.

Your archnemesis knows that you never got the approval you longed for from your immigrant parents, that this haunts you, that this plays into your competing for the unattainable.

Your archnemesis thinks your best poem is a highbrow remix of TMBG's "Bird house in your soul."

Your archnemesis understands the lies you tell yourself, and the lies you tell others. Your archnemesis also knows and remembers the truths behind them.

Your archnemesis understands all about representation and myth-making.

Your archnemesis understands that admitting naivete is an entirely different thing than owning your mistakes.

Your archnemesis is sometimes surprised at your behavior, but ceased to be hurt a long time ago.

Your archnemesis understands that paper is your kryptonite and that you should hire a PR manager.

Your archnemesis has compassion for you.

Your archnemesis is simply a mirror of you, even if you do not look the same. Since all Asians do not look alike.

Kicked out of YOGA class!

team diversity

cheer squad practice
stunted dwarf leaps alongside
white boy & colored girls

Thesis

After meetings this week and last week, I believe I have a solid thesis project:

I am working with the former director of the Wing Luke Asian Museum, a culinary historian and a photographer to develop a visual documentary manuscript that includes oral histories of Seattle's chop suey restaurants, i.e. Chinese Americana. We've got a tentative list of 20+ potential narrators and I am working on the paperwork to lay the groundwork and timeline for the project. The museological tie-in will be collections development for an oral-history based collection like the Wing Luke and/or a virtual or physical exhibition. Voila!

Guru Richard says, "Let go of the brain cells."

I speak for myself,

except when spoken for.

I was in Boston this past weekend for the Simmons International Chinese Poetry Festival where such questions as "What makes a Chinese poet Chinese, or Chinese poetry Chinese?" were posed on panels. Does it boil down to language, ethnicity, geography, lineage?

What makes this Chinese poet Chinese? Looking at the characteristics of the other poets in attendance and their shared commonalities, I felt like the marginalized of the marginalized. There were two Asian-American poets, inclusive of myself, both from outside of the academic world, at the festival to present our work. Neither one of us presented our work in Mandarin, nor were we able to provide written Chinese translation of our work. There were about 15 poets total, each allotted 8 minutes of presentation time. This festival, Marilyn Chin, Li-Young Lee, Timothy Lu, they all opted out. Apparently, the first fest left Li-Young feeling puzzled and out of place. The feeling of not belonging - though he did have the language piece of things.

The organizer of the festival felt that my voice should be included in such a gathering. But what is it to really speak at one of these events? Who gets to speak and who doesn't, quite literally? I realize that these sorts of gatherings produce in me a profound sense of identity confusion and self-loathing. To look Chinese, but to not be Chinese. To let others speak for me. That when the speaking that does occur on my behalf is a rattling off of CV details and qualifiers of my Chineseness - i.e. lived in Taipei, funded for a fellowship by the Taipei City Government, friend of so-and-so, etc. I am embarrassed.

The work should speak for itself, always. But where language is an issue, how can it speak for itself?

I came back on the airplane and saw a friend who's experienced similar alienation from her experiences with Cave Canem.

Sometimes I long for the experience of racelessness. This seems impossible.Even if I were to repatriate to Africa...

The question of what makes a Chinese poet Chinese and Chinese poetry Chinese - this catapults me back into my first PhD mixer at UW with the anthro department. Getting interrogated by a professor in my department who made me justify how I could identify as Taiwanese-American, if my father was indeed descended from Han Chinese.

I no longer wish to identify as being Taiwanese-American in terms of my poetic identity politics or my professional career. I no longer wish to identify as a poet. I write poetry, sometimes. I practice yoga. Buddhism happens to interest me. Etc.

I feel like a veteran of poetry organizing, whether of readings or festivals - it is difficult to not walk into a situation organized by someone else and to critique it. Agendas, priorities, budgets, politics, aesthetics, funders, partners - all these things compete for a subtle and sometimes dominant role, and yet in the end, isn't there a way to make them appear at least to disappear long enough to actually create a critical mass?