She Said/She Said: Valentine's Day

Valentines Day

Single Awareness Day. A mandatory day of romance and sweet nothings. Evidence of the direct correlation between love and creativity.

Or so I thought when I was single.

Back then I gave googley eyes to the boy who crafted parmesan chicken and candled ambience in my dining room. Swore I'd never find anyone sweeter than the one who gave me a leather pouch packed with symbolic stamps, quarters, and a 3-page letter filled with sentiments that still shake my core. Found my place on the continuum of love and loss with the one who palmed a red velvety bear as he picked me up from the airport. Thought I'd found my soul mate in the one who booked a fancy pants 7-course meal.

Over the years, my girlfriends regaled tales of arriving home to pre-packed suitcases as a prelude to a weekend whisk to San Francisco. Rose petaled beds. Little blue boxes. Packages that elicit genuine surprise. And I waited patiently for my turn. For my guy who would acknowledge that his action could predicate my mood on February 15th. Only, I didn't marry that guy. I married the guy who was surprised he wasn't able to secure a same-day Valentine's Day dinner reservation. The guy who prefers to pay $80 overnight shipping fees rather than brave a Christmas Eve trip to the mall. The guy who thinks gifts are less important than needs.

After 8 years of trial and error, he's aware that what we do is more significant than what he gives me. I'll take a hot air balloon ride over silk pajamas any day. And I've learned when he says "I have a surprise for you" that I married the guy whose gift philosophy hinges on the notion that others would be happy to receive the gifts you dream on possessing yourself. While my idea of a surprise is sparkly, adventurous, and innovative; his is likely to be practical, useful, and a token of his hope that I live forever.

This year I decided to give him a break. I let him off the event planning hook by deciding I'd rather we went to game night with My Singles. Only, I got a text 4 days in advance informing me that we had reservations for dinner in addition to game night. He also embraced my house hunting obsession and agreed to look at houses before dinner. And it turned out to be the best Valentine's Day ever.

Watching him get excited about our house, our future, is better than a dozen of anything. As we walked through model homes he made comments like "Well, this room won't be big enough for our kids when they get older" or "This is a perfect room for your dad to stay when he visits" or "I think we'll need a bigger back yard for the dog I want to get you." And, more than anything, he told he me is finally comfortable with the idea of adoption. That if he could save a Caylee Anthony from losing their lives to a parent who doesn't want them, that he's ready to make that commitment. The child doesn't even need to be white.

I felt like an asshole. For making him change his shirt that morning. For being a little bummed that he hadn't bought flowers. For thinking bad things when he asked me to drive that morning. For letting outside forces tell me I should have this day. For forgetting why I love him so much. Why he is the person, above all people, whom I chose to, share my life with. That, even though it's not draped in baby wings and arrows, my valentine is with me always.



Modern life doesn’t always allow for the celebrating of holidays and anniversaries on the days that they actually occur. Kort’s been booked on the 2 – 11 p.m. shift for the last few Saturdays, and so this past Valentine’s Day was no exception. Over the year the hubster’s gotten good at planning for big dates. Last Monday, he walked into my office while I was working on a grant application for my thesis project and interrupted so that he could ask if he could make a dinner reservation on Friday night at Nell’s on Greenlake, a very tony Pacific NW/American-cuisine type eatery. We dined there on Kort’s last birthday and I liked the vibe of the place – the view of the lake, the Kir Royale cocktails, etc.

I get home first on Friday and stop on the way home at the record store to pick up some new tunes for K, which he’d put on his Amazon list. Some Fruit Bats and Jeff Hanson. K texts to let me know that he’ll be home early. I get dressed and wait and wait, and about half an hour before our reservation, Kort finally gets home. He’d driven all the way to Ballard to get me a salty caramel frosting chocolate cupcake from Cupcake Royale and gotten caught in traffic. I skipped the cupcakes for gelato at the Greenlake Bottage that night and ate the cupcake for Valentine's day.

I got to experience the best of both worlds this year – some friends here in Seattle decided to do a low-key dinner at their apartment downtown on Saturday. When they found out that I’d be spending it alone, they quickly said, “Come for dinner” and to bring my friend from UW. My UW friend is male, attractive, intelligent, good in a kitchen, and single. Certain neurotic scenarios flashed through my head. On Thursday night’s “30 Rock” – Liz Lemon asks out her neighbor. He suggests Friday, but she can’t do it then, so she insists on Saturday. He agrees but notes that it’s Valentine’s Day which makes for some awkwardness. I thought back to my SAIC days in Chicago too, when GB asked me over to dinner on V-Day. As far as I was concerned, I was in love with and mourning Kort who was in Japan that year. It ended up being a one-on-one dinner and while eating was part of G’s plan, there were other latent intentions that I missed completely. He cooked eggplant parmesan – even called his mother to have her consult on the recipe.

So when UW friend and I are at the Whole Foods picking out a bottle of wine and dessert, he asks, “So is it just you and me and this other couple? Is Kort coming later?” I get squirrelly and adamantly emphasize the “anti-Valentine’s day” non-Romantic element of the gathering. It actually turns out to be one other couple besides the hosts. But everything works out well – UW friend is a master at steaming seafood and cracking open crab legs and gentlemanly in serving others, winning many points with the hosts for his skills which are not in fact cultural, he jokes, but genetic. But I being Asian too, definitely didn’t inherit the cracking shellfish gene.

Jenn writes about home, as in a house and who you come home to. I think of the notion of coming home to as closely related to my sense of community and those with whom I find affinity and familiarity – the friends that won’t let you sit at home on a silly holiday alone, even one that you may not recognize or celebrate yourself culturally or get sad about, but which becomes another opportunity to create new memories and bonds together.

Seeing the opening sequence of Coraline reminded me of the Quay Brother's film about the Henry Wellcome Collection. The nature of the stop-motion animation and something about the disembodied deconstruction of objects in both.

Midterms on Tuesday.

I am reading on Feb. 28 for the Rainbow Bookfest Literary Festival at the Langston Hughes Art Center at 4 p.m.

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about issues related to social justice. It is a buzz word in academia and educational institutions - promotion and commitment to "equity" and such. But the practice of social justice on the ground looks very little in my mind like the theory of it. Could I, at this point, work for an organization that didn't prioritize or have in their mission or programming some aspect of social justice? This is a question I have to ask myself. The reason it would be an easy choice to help K build an acupuncture business is because his work resonates with me in terms of helping others on the path realize the right to pursue the health and happiness which every one of us deserves. We may always be poor, but there is dedication to something greater.

K's on a restricted diet that prohibits consumption of nightshade vegetables - onions, tomatoes, eggplant - these are my favorite things and a diet of mostly bland, sweet foods for a prolonged period of time led me last week to binging on the flavors of Indian food, Korean food, and spicy kim chi (not all in the same day). These foods tasted divine, but they didn't feel so great in the body. K explained to me today how tomatoes operate on the body in the ayurvedic system, creating excess in all the doshas. But living like monks isn't particulary appealing either. We have a Taoist friend that eats no meat, garlic, or onion and eating out was always an ordeal. This past month, I've been feeling some of that frustration.

The SF Bay area has poetry neobenshi, Seattle has cineoke.

I am totally unimpressed with the Slog Blog's Seattle Poetry Chain.

Oh, Michael Rothenberg, come and play with Seattle on your Rockpile Tour!

Mammology

We had guest speakers last Tuesday; the head of the mammology department came and talked about the accessioning of mammals and birds - we learned about how new specimens are acquired: Road kill, collecting trips (which utilize traps and euthanasia), people bringing in dead animals, and window strikes - I love the language of that last one - basically bird strike. We also learned about whale fall - before the museum can acquire a new whale specimen, it has to undergo a decomposition process. Whale fall doesn't always happen in shallow waters, so the museum contracted with a mink farm that has a giant metal pot where the skull of the whale could be boiled down. It wasn't totally clear, but it sounded like the flesh boiled off of the skeleton could be used to produce mink food. Someone raised an interesting question around ethics - i.e. what are the ethical implications of contracting with a fur farm to prep a specimen for accession?

Euthanasia was defined as meaning "good death" - we learned about how small animals are captured in traps and then placed inside a jar with a cotton ball soaked in halothane - within 10 seconds the animal is asleep, another 10 seconds and the animal's heart stops beating and it dies. Animals are euthanized while in the field - because to bring them back to the museum for euthanasia would create prolonged distress and suffering. Someone asked about secondary measures to insure death. Neckbreaking is a common measure. A lot of information. A lot.

Objects catalogued recently at the Wing Luke:

- Fu Manchu DVD
- Mr. Wong cartoon DVD
- pornographic Oriental Sliding Puzzle
- Bomb the Jap game (x2)
- Chinagirl flower holder
- Fu Manchu ceramic drinking vase
- Chinaman head ceramic pin
- "Splendorient" pin with Chinaman caricature
- maroon tie handpainted with a toilet and the image of Toyo
- Ronald Reagan propaganda film on VHS
- noir/crime books with Oriental themes
- Chinaman head buttons (x 100)

These are all from Roger Shimomura's private collection. We're also accessioning items from Jimmy Mar's mercantile:

- various Chinese teas
- incense
- box of red envelopes for wedding gifts
- Buddhist ritual paper
- bottle of ink
- restaurant ledger books
- mock money
- joss paper

She Said/She Said: Super Bowl Redux

I am no longer a Super Bowl virgin, though I can’t necessarily picture myself tuning in to watch the big game again next year. Kort and I turned on the tube at home, no beer, no chicken wings, and minimal fanfare. I think part of the whole experience must be the whole group bonding, tribal violence sort of mentality that carries the energy. My experience was fairly painless but somewhat lackluster.

Here’s what I noticed: the Pittsburgh team had a whole lot more ethnic diversity vs. Arizona. Part of playing football seems like learning to fall in a precise way – feet touching the ground, rolled over the ball. This sort of fall when complicated by someone knocking you over with weight and momentum behind them also looks like it has major impact and repercussion for spinal cord and neck injuries that makes me wince. Recently, the New York Times reported on football players documenting major brain injuries.

Most exciting moments were Harrison’s sprint and Holmes’ touchdowns for the Steelers. Bruce Springsteen’s half-time performance and a daring stage slide that resulted in his crotch in the camera lens! He looked a bit sheepish after that one. Springsteen is looking very “man in black”/Johnny Cash these days.

Favorite commercials: the Mr. Potato Head Bridgestone Tire commercial. Jason Statham’s Audi ad which could have been a movie preview. The monkeys and motoroil – though the kissing between monkey and actor was creepy. The Pedigree dog food commercial with wildlife standing in for domesticated pets. The Pepsi remix of Bob Dylan. I also liked the Cheetos “Gossip Girl” commercial because part of me has always wanted to act out quietly when confronted with women like the cell phone chick in the ad. I also found the Alec Baldwin Hulu ad resonant, as I looked over at Kort who was surfing on the internet and reading on his computer during the game.

My last acupuncturist who has since left Seattle once asked me how I thought acupuncture could be marketed during the Super Bowl to spread the word about its healing powers and make an impression on the unwashed masses to mainstream or Starbuck it. It was an interesting question to pose to someone who had never seen a Super Bowl. My response was “celebrity endorsement.” It goes a long way – but I think it would have to be something like a star player having experienced pain relief/management through acupuncture to treat football-incurred injuries (sports acupuncture is a subdiscipline acupuncture). Trade an athlete acupuncture for a celebrity endorsement that is worth millions. Partner with a medical or research center to conduct studies on athletes and treatment of their injuries.

I have a love affairs with sports. Make that most sports. Anything you can do while fat and smoking, however, is not something I consider a sport. This means you, John Daly. (Really, Augusta National? Blacks and women, bad. THIS guy, good?)

Sports are doses of triumph. David and Goliath. Leonidas and Xerxes. Us and The Economy. The underdog plucked from obscurity and afforded his 15 minutes of fame. A ticket to the good life, even if only for a short time. And I always root for the underdog. Or the black person. Whichever comes first.

My love of the midget that is Bob Costas is based on stories of hope he brings to my couch. The autistic boy who goes from team manager to meeting the President of the United States all because of a new successful 3-point shots. The ragamuffin team of college students defeating the iconic Russian hockey players. Lopez Lomong kidnapped by militia at 6 years old in Sudan now a member of the Olympic Track team. USC trampling all over the all-white Alabama football team in 1970, ending segregation in college football. The Williams sisters successfully lobbying for equal pay at Wimbledon after 123 years.

There something about shared a vision, chants, agonies, uniforms and happy dancies that bonds people in a way that's astonishing to me. There's something about a ballpark that makes kissing, hugging, cursing, and patting butts of complete strangers socially acceptable. Sure, I'd get some looks if I did it on a subway or in an airport, but I'd quickly be pardoned if I point to a team's logo anywhere on my person. Be it a bag, a hat, a pin; my sports paraphernalia is a "get out of jail free card" for doing crazy shit in public. The Superbowl is the mecca of get out of jail free cards.

I was astonished to hear that The ABFF had never, in her life, bared witness to a Superbowl. Surely, my father wasn't the only guy who carted his daughter to professional sports games with the "If you want to keep your husband at home, you'd better learn to love sports" mantra. Really? Just mine, then? No there girl-child got quizzed on the first black baseball player or was told black people don't play hockey? Hmmm, my dad's got some 'splainin' to do.

Although I boycotted Arizona through the Jake Plummer years, I became an instant fan for this Superbowl. The recipe for instant fan? Just add a team that's never won a championship with a hobbling underdog of a quarterback and pit him against the youngest black coach in history. I know, I was torn. But Kurt Warner stole my heart with his abusive Midwest upbringing, having to work in a grocery store in the midst of his career, adopting his wife's children, and stealing Matt Leinart's job without NOT telling Matt he can suck it.

For my deep, deep, open-mouth kissed love of football, I was kind of bored with this one. Other than Jennifer Hudson, the koala-punching commercials, and Kurt's near-win in the before the last 30 seconds were the highlights for me; I could have gone all day without Danica Patrick's stupid commercials (you're hot, we GOT it!), some of those lame calls, and the half-time show. What? So ONE little nipple slip umpteen years ago stucks us with singing extras from The Sopranos and old dudes sliding across stages in too-tight pants?

Of course this post would be VERY different if The Cardinals had won, so take this all with a grain of salt.

Research commences tomorrow for my 1st oral history project interview for Chinese Americana. I'm interviewing Ron Chew, former Wing Luke E.D., on his childhood growing up in the I-District, bussing tables for the Hong Kong Restaurant. Ron's had an amazing career as a journalist and community organizer who's risen to fame as a non-traditional museum professional. Ron was on the forefront of the multicultural movement in Seattle. The more that I learn about him, the deeper my respect for Ron and his work grows. That he dropped out of UW on principle due to institutional racism, reaffirms my decision to drop out the PhD program when I did.

cat w/ hunched back on
stone steps mirroring the shape
of the broken mailbox

scuttling overhead
in the trees near Denny Hall
the masked raccoons

I'm supposed to be watching the Super Bowl this weekend for educational purposes. I am actually a Super Bowl virgin. It's a blogging assignment that I have some ambivalence about. Doesn't this game always last like four freaking hours? How am I supposed to do my readings for week this class against the backdrop of grown men tackling each other?

The trustees at Brandeis voted to close the Rose Museum. This decision is a hot topic in the museum community - selling off collections to pay for the school's debts is a big problem (proceeds made from sales from collections should only ethically go towards maintenance of existing collections or new and appropriate acquisitions) and sets a scary precedent for other university collections. Museum officials do not appear to have been involved in the decision-making process.

Yesterday, I had my teeth filed down by a metal strip coated in diamond dust. Abrasive to say the least.

Mickey Rourke was brilliant in the new Aronofsky film. His performance in the deli counter scenes, his addiction to self-mutilation in the film. The Wrestler is a movie about many types of pain, self-inflicted and external. Oh, Mickey. Happy comeback.

After the first week of Collections Mgmt class, I wanted to go home and archive and properly store all of my photographs, negatives, and works of art. I pulled the silk shirts out of my summer storage that were piled against linens and cottons. Moved my wedding dress into a different storage arrangement where it would experience less crushing and creasing. Moved the handbags that were hanging from hooks and hangers.

How is one to manage internship and job apps, conference scholarship apps, thesis work, classes, marriage, yoga, and sanity? I am applying for a job in Dallas, a job in Seattle, and an internship in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Top choice? New Mexico. Second choice? Seattle. Etc.

The chop suey project received a grant from the Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs and my advisor and I are getting ready to apply to another round of local grants to support the gathering of oral histories related to the I-District and surrounding environs. Interviewing begins in February. Prospects for funding look good.

Just read the catalog raisonee for Allan Kaprow's work. A good history of happenings and some great pieces pulled from the archives.

The WPA is working on their spring poetry fest at the Hugo House which will take place on April 25. Several out of town poets from the Bay area will be here teaching workshops. Several really fine La Alameda Press poets of the Beat and SF Renaissance tradition.

Speaking of the Hugo House, they are looking for a new director. No small task. I don't think I will apply. I'm not made for the overworking track.

Rainbow Bookfest is on Feb. 28. CS Perez is coming from Berkeley.

Our neighborhood is in transition. LaborWorks just moved out of our neighborhood. The building sitting between SIOM and Julia's restaurant is vacant. The tattoo parlor was replaced by a nail salon. SIOM just raised their acupuncture rates. The photo lab down the street folded, and with it my local p.o. contract unit. Last month a new custard stand and raw food joint opened.

Structure of the Inner Ear has a new publisher. I hope for a 2009 release.

I graduate on June 12, 2009, at 5 p.m. Friends, come to Seattle and celebrate with us!

Welcome to Seattle, Joel Felix. You rocked the 1412 Gallery reading. No bells and whistles necessary.

Happy Niu Year and lhosar, year of the earth ox.

Seth Thompson's work reminds me a lot of Misty Keasler's work.

The Montreal Zen Poetry Festival site is now live.

I don't love facebook, but I'm grateful that it's put me back in touch with old Naropa friends, teachers, companions on the path. The poet who taught me shambhala meditation is now making films, after a lengthy retreat in Cambodia. I learned so much from observing and practicing with Bill, more than I could probably ever put into words coherently. I also reconnected with the meditation instructor who coached me in taking refuge vows my last summer in Boulder. And of course, finding Phillip who I thought was lost to me. Not lost, just living in Flint, Michigan.

She Said/She Said: The Inaugural Edition

I watched the inauguration live this morning with classmates from my program. The streaming internet failed, so we ended up watching on a 15-inch analog television with rabbit ears on a media cart in our classroom with poor sound quality. Staff brought champagne and students brought cookies. No tears were shed, though I admit to getting misty-eyed. There was a lot of chatter obscuring everything except for Obama’s acceptance speech and the inaugural poem. I debriefed with a friend in the law school over lunch. C arrived at the law school this morning to watch in the designated room where live internet was streaming, but there was a low attendance and a less than enthusiastic vibe, so she went over to Odegaard Library for the undergraduates where the air was much more celebratory. Young people wept openly – people who had probably voted for the first time in their lives in this election. I wondered about the classmates who didn’t make it to class to watch the program – did they watch at home? Did they not watch at all? What was the mood down at the Seattle Center and around the city?

I was struck by many things during the program – the images of American natural and national wonders projected during Aretha Franklin’s solo – the Grand Canyon, the Statue of Liberty – dramatic images to evoke patriotism and nationhood. I would have much rather looked at Ms. Franklin’s gorgeous hat. I misread the starts and stops that happened during the official swearing in as nervousness on Obama’s part, which made him all the more human, but was fascinated to learn later that the judge officiating over the ceremony that fed Obama the lines, switched the usual script, thus confusing the moment, though not ruining it.

I was deeply moved by President Obama’s speech – the call for responsibility and the promise of change. A leader in who I can see my own values reflected. Tomorrow the work begins, but today, there was a suspension of anticipation, criticism – and a deep acknowledgement of the joyfulness and relief of this historic and momentous occasion. What a showing on the national mall - over a million people.

As for Elizabeth Alexander’s inaugural poem – it rang to me of Walt Whitman’s poems of America in Leaves of Grass. The depiction of common laborers and the interactions between individuals. Pre-inauguration, there had been a call by a Philly poet on the Buffalo Poetics List asking Ms. Alexander to boycott the inauguration to reflect her support of gays protesting the selection of Rick Warren by President Obama to deliver the invocation. All in all, I thought that the poem addressed the issue of gay marriage and equal rights subtly, moving towards the message of love, which is not unlike the theme of hope. News reports are criticizing Ms.Alexander’s delivery of the poem as lackluster and the placement of her reading in the program as anti-climactic; some are calling Reverend Lowery's benediction much more lyric. I had been prepared to be disappointed in the performance, but in listening to her poem and hearing the shifts in imagery and momentum of her language, I see her commission as a fine achievement – personal, evocative, and imaginative. Read it here.

I found the moment that Bush flew away in his helicoptor to be very powerful - maybe akin to those Annie Leibovitz photos of Nixon leaving the White House lawn. Ben tells me that the ex-Pres has bought a house in his neighborhood in North Dallas - the Bush Library is being built at SMU which has bought up much of the residential property around the campus displacing area residents. Given these details, I'm not sure I could ever go back to live in Dallas.

I'm officially jaded.

On the day when the first black president is inaugurated millions of people gather under bundles of clothes with runny noses and nipped toes. Their chance to capture a moment in time with photo lens and camera phones, oversized buttons and $50 ski caps. So they can go back to their lives and present the communists who didn't trek to Washington to be a part of change and provide Smithsonian-worthy mementos. Oh, that is the snot rag that tripled as toilet paper, a snot rag, and hand warmer at the inauguration. And THIS is mud that permanently changed the color of the shoes I wore at the inauguration. Here is the prosthetic eye I got after some kid poked me in the eye with the tip of his mini-flag...at the inauguration.

Today was the first day of class and, though we had a live feed streaming in our lobby, getting into a class she failed to register for during pre-registration trumped history.

* Obama? Pish-shaw, this is my last semester and I need you to get me in the easiest class on campus.
* Martin Luther King, who? All my classes were deleted and I think it's ridiculous that you don't check your email on weekends or on the day the entire university and registration system are closed.
* Oh, I know you're a little brown girl and all, so I'll just make this quick. Can you just construct my entire class schedule for the next 4 years?
* I not from A-mer-ee-ka, so I not care. Can please to schedule courses in those for which I have no prerequisite for?

I missed it.

The swearing in. The speech. The 3 hours of pre-inauguration coverage. The 9 hours of inauguration dissection and color commentary. Who was there. Who wore what. What happens next. The feeling of being stuck at someone's house watching a graduation/wedding/bat mitzvah/Oscar acceptance speech reel. And I'm not all that sad. Maybe because I know that this day has been and will be documented to within an inch of its life. From the brand of Malia's mittens to the curious interaction between Bill Clinton and Jenna Bush. To the controlled scowl on G. Dub's face that masked the little marbles of thought bouncing around in his head. If I take towels from Air Force 1, it'd be freaking hilarious if I re-gifted them to The Obamas next year. BOING! If I touch my testicle right now, would anyone notice? BOING! Obama, Fama, Bobama, Me, My, Mo, Momma, Obama! BOING!

I know how important today day is to black America. To America, America. To my parents. My grandparents. My unborn, big-headed, bi-racial children. But the commercialization of it makes it less. Less like a unique space in time and more like the deliberate creation of a clips for the end of the year slideshow. I imagine this to be the what guys experience when they have to channel Steve Irwin to make it through Hallmark stores on Valentine's Day and Christmas. Why should I cultivate feelings on this day and this time because I'm supposed to? Because everyone else is doing it?

I assume this is a direct result of being sick and couch-ridden for the last 3 days and consuming copious amounts of Jon & Kate Plus 8, Property Virgins and Clean House.

But I DVR'd it. And I will sit down with fleece throw, tissues, and a glass of gewurtztaminer when I am good and ready to absorb history on my own terms.

THE NEXT DAY:

Clearly that is not a normal response to, what should have marked, a significant turn of events in my country. In an abbreviated lifetime that's seen The Challenger, Oklahoma City, Hurricane Katrina, September 11th, Columbine; the inauguration should have been one of those rays of sunshine piercing through thick gray clouds of harsh realities. This is the day I get to my own JFK, MLK, FDR. But I think my disappointment in the 20-somethings got to me. I was waiting for just one student to say "Wow, the first black president is being sworn in right now. This may mean something to you. Why don't I go grab some lunch so you can enjoy this. I'll be back in, say, 20 minutes? Can I get anything for you while I'm in the cafeteria?". It's a bit like hoping the new 25-year-old high school soccer coach will ask you to prom...so I've heard.

I waxed optimistic and decided that, after they left my office, they ran to the nearest iPhone to download the video from CNN.com.

Or MTV.com

At 12:35am, I watched the swearing in. The inaugural speech. All by myself. And I'm glad I did because I got a bit misty. Well, when The President wasn't bitch slapping G. Dub and basically nailing a GAME OVER sign on Georgie's crinkly little forehead. I almost felt sorry for him. Until I remembered the economy sucks, unemployment has skyrocketed, and the hot mess that is Dick Cheney. Then I just wanted to kick him in the jimmy. I have no political prowess, I refuse to tear apart his speech. There were parts my ears and heart feasted upon and parts that tasted like rice cakes.

"As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals"-- Warm Chocolate Chip Cookies

"To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society's ills on the West — know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy."-- Cheesecake Factory Oreo Cheesecake

It's a good start.

Elizabeth Alexander's inaugural poem was absolutely Whitmanesque.

Edible "Books"

The Edible Books Festival is coming to Seattle on April 4. Ideas for possible entries:

"Holidays on Ice" (David Sedaris) - water with gas in a glass, w/ candy cane

"Seismosis" (John Keene & Chris Stackhouse) - abstract drawing composed of seaweed strands

"Grapefruit" (Yoko Ono) - a grapefruit with an instruction poem

"The Handful of Seeds" (Andrew Schelling) - 3.5 mountains of various seeds - mustard, cumin, sunflower,?

"French Milk" (Lucy Knisley) - glass bottle of milk

"Girls for Breakfast" (David Yoo) - bowl of cereal, milk, and various non-food props

"The Book of Tea" - tea bowl, tea powder, tea whisk, tea spoon, iron kettle, water

"Haiku Not Bombs" - eggplant incised with haiku

"Mortar and Pestle" (Lisa Gill) - stone mortar and pestle w/ various healing plants

"The Missing Piece" (Shel Silverstein) - carved wheel of cheese and various shapes

"Crooked Cucumber" (David Chadwick) - carved cucumber

"The Cinnamon Peeler" (Michael Ondaatje) - grated cinnamon stick

"29 Cheeseburgers" - (Mark Lamoureux) - 29 sliders

More yoga scripts

courtesy of Baca:

"Spread your sternum open like an angel is grabbing your heart."

"Drop your arms and relax. Angry people are inherently uglier." (said with a stern authority, broken immediately by smiling)

Next Sunday

She Said/She Said

Meet my best friend Jennifer. I have known Jenn since I was twelve years old. We went to middle and high school, before going our different paths to college – her to the Southwest and me to Boston.

Jenn had many of the qualities that I admired – she was outgoing, funny, unafraid to talk to strangers. She performed on the drill team, rollerskated like a pro, and later got into team sports – everything from swimming and soccer to women’s softball. Pick a physical activity and she could master it, or at least keep up with and contribute to a less than diverse team. At home, she lived in a condo complex near the University of California, Riverside, with her single working mother and seemed to my eyes to enjoy a great deal of freedom and independence, with her summers spent with her father in a suburb of Long Island, New York. From early on, we wrote letters back and forth during those long summers spent with families, and as we moved around the country for college and jobs, the letters continued - she became a life line for me: she took me to Planned Parenthood when I had no healthcare and needed help. When I had an accident with some glass, she took me to her mother who taped my hand back together. When I was involved with the unstable and controlling married man, she told me what she thought about the relationship.

Some friends grow farther apart, outgrow one another, other friendships deepen. I’ve known Jenn now for twenty-one years – longer than I have not known her. As the years have passed, the scope of our conversation has deepened – when we were young, we rarely talked about our bodies, illness, careers, race, children, family, power and powerlessness, what it is to be a woman of color, but now it often feels like we think about the same things on any given day.

Last year, Jenn started a blog called The Coconut Diaries. And as her writing practice has developed, I’ve been delighted at Jenn’s capacity to express herself through story-telling, humor, and a sharp wit. Reading her writing leads us to new conversations with one another about the things that we think about and experience every day.

I went through a period where I didn’t want to collaborate with anyone creatively, after a number of sour experiences – with women. I am occasionally coaxed out of this mindset by the friendly persistence of male colleagues that I deeply respect, but on another level I haven’t been interested in “getting the band back together” for quite some time. Like since 2006.

Jenn casually suggested the idea of a blog swap a month ago, a low stakes experiment where someone guest blogs for you. I’ve known poets to do trade-offs, and Jenn’s traded with women from her own circle. I sat with the idea and it grew on me. A lot. It was presented with such an easy and open quality, that the foundation for this dialogue quickly evolved for me into what felt undeniably like a collaboration that I could feel passionately about, in terms of shared ownership, communication, and creativity. One that doesn’t relate to the academic and intellectual worlds in which we each participate, but to life as we experience and live it.

Jenn is one of the first people I consult on major life decisions, matters of marriage, and race. I care how she thinks and recognize the value of her opinions, experiences and voice.

So we’ve come up with a plan – our version of “The View,” but less annoying, from two women of color who grew up in the strangeness of the Inland Empire of Southern California who are learning to come into our voice, and our power in our early 30s. It is our goal to make dual posts twice a month on topics that mutually interest us. If you are interested in suggesting a topic, please email Jenn or me, though we’ve got a loose plan for topics – expect postings on the inauguration, the Super Bowl, husbands and video games, rites of passage, and fathers and daughters.

You can leave your comments at The Coconut Diaries or email us, but I will not enable the comments here due to blog stalkers. I do not expect for these posts to interest anyone except for Jenn and me. This blog is not a performance and this is an entirely selfish act of ownership. I hope this blog swap will be a way to re-invigorate the medium of the online journal or daybook – this is a conversation between me and my best friend. I invite you to eavesdrop.

The ABFF is someone who just makes stuff happen. She plucks an idea from the cloud of ambition hovering above her head and crafts it into existence. She’s like a Top Chef contestant who looks at an apple and thinks caramelized, reduction sauce, etoufee, gnocchi; while you’re stuck on apple pie, apple pie a la mode, and, you know, plain old’ apple. In the wrong hands, this quality could be wretchedly annoying. If she were someone who shrugged and said, “I don’t know, I just ate less” or “It’s easy if you just (insert overly simplistic bulleted lists and steps and to-dos here).” But she makes things happen because she knows luck and waiting won’t get you as far as a solid network, a catalog of success, and attention to detail. It is her tireless attention to detail that turned a flighty idea into the newest way to give my blog some substance.

She Said/She Said is what The View would be if Sherry Shepherd suffocated in her own cleavage, Elisabeth Hasselbeck came out and ran off with Joy Behar, Barbara Walters died, Whoopi got a weave and Lisa Ling needed to add some street cred to her resume. This is a show where two early-thirtysomethings discover how our experiences with race impact our view of contemporary events, friendships, our spouse’s have a seemingly large interest in video games, rites of passages, and familial relationships.

In case you couldn’t crack my superior code, the “A” in The ABFF is “asian” (gasp!). We had a common friendship with a white girl in junior high that cultivated into uniquely shared experiences of matriculating as the only people of color in our Southern Californian circle of friends. There is something about being “the only”, “the first”, “that one” that bonds us. We drifted between concentric friendship circles in high school. My boundless need to fit in guided me towards the jocks, proms, prep rallies, shopping, movies, makeup, sports, church; while her gifts led her to choir, art, theatre, and an ungodly run-in with a perm. No matter how our lives diverged, we always wrote letters to keep in touch. I was floored by her fierce rebellion against tradition and needed to connection to life lacking superficiality. A life that was real and messy and rejected and sad. A life where strength, courage, challenge, and hope wasn’t in a tube of gloss.

So, we wrote. And wrote. Through college, the baby I didn’t have, the nervous breakdown, The Ex, marital doubts, career disillusions, every choice I’ve made in over 2 decades. She is the first person I dialed when I was called a nigger my first week in Texas. The one I consulted when I slept with the wrong guy. (OK, guys). The one who I cry to when my father measures my inches of success with a milestick. She’s as much a part of my life as anyone I share DNA with. The depth of my respect for her lies in her authenticity. That reality that resilience, success, pain, disappointment, passion, initiative, and risk often share the same space. She’s Jiminy Cricket. Glenda the Good Witch. This amateur blog’s muse. Motivation personified.

With all kinds of courage and drive, she left our little west coast cocoon and spread her wings in Boston, Colorado, Taiwan, Chicago, Dallas, and Seattle. She’s blazed her own path to become a published poet, much to the chagrin of the expectation that she become something more stable, like her brother the doctor. But I’ve attended her readings and wished they could see the fun gushing on her like she was Oprah in a little asian body. I’ve also seen her take jobs just left of her passion to pay the bills, but attended to them as learning opportunities. She’s unconsciously exquisite, deliberately talented, hopelessly devoted.

Ladies and Gentleman (yeah, GeekHiker, you’re still the only guy brave enough to hang out here), it is with great pleasure and little pants wetting that I introduce you to The ABFF. Love her as much as I do, or I’ll sock you.

More McYoga

"Twist your arm, twist your legs like ropes."
"Twist, twist. Like pearls. Like a string of pearls."
"Sit Japanese style."
"Make your leg strong like concrete. Like a lamppost."

My friend Eden's older brother's first book comes out this Tuesday. It looks like a must read.

McBikram

I was completely disappointed with my first experience of bikram yoga today at the Rain City studio. The teacher recited from a script and repeated EVERYTHING twice and talked a mile a minute. She did not model any poses and made no adjustments on anyone, including newcomers. When asked after class, she stated that bikram teachers do not have permission to touch and cannot make adjustments. Also, it is a yoga style where the teachers do not move through the asanas with the students.

This raises some red flags for me - as a student, I look for a teacher's ability to teach effectively and for evidence of their knowledge base.

The script was awful and full of grammatical errors.

"Complete relax."
"Touch you knee with your forehead exactly."
"You should look like a Japanese sandwich from the side."

Savasana was torture. "Relax the feet. Relax the feet. Relax the calves. Relax the claves. Relax the knees. Relax the knees. Relax the arms. Relax the arms." All the way up the body to the eyes and forehead. It must have gone on a full 2-3 minutes. Everything repeated twice. Everything repeated twice. Fucking torture. No "OM" and no "Namaste."

There were about 25 people crammed into a 105 degree room of perhaps 700 square feet. We were crammed less than half a foot distance from one another. And I was sandwiched between a 6-foot-tall woman and a tiny female who was clearly experienced in bikram. My neighbors did a poor job of staggering themselves and as a result, we constantly bumped into each other, touching sweaty body parts. The woman next to me dripped on to my mat. Aversion, oh aversion.

Exhale yoga drew from bikram somewhat, but is a million times better.

It's opening weekend for the new Daron Aronofsky film The Wrestler signaling Mickey Rourke's cinematic comeback. I am really excited about this film. 1) I used to love watching pro wrestling - as a kid, I would watch television matches on Sunday mornings with my dad; one of his few days off, and one of our few father-daughter activities. My favorite wrestlers were Rowdy Roddy Doyle. Hulk Hogan was always embroiled in a battle with Randy Savage. I'm not sure who's side I was on. I think Jesse "The Body" Ventura did commentary in those days of the WWF. The WWF was way better than GLOW. 2) I am fascinated by all things Mickey Rourke - I rented "Wild Orchid" on Kort's Hollywood Video account while I was on retreat in Port Townsend. I'd be too embarrassed to suggest that we watch it together, because it's an atrocious piece of acting, and it's the final sex scene in the last five minutes of the movie for which the movie is infamous, along the lines of Vincent Gallo's Brown Bunny. Kort and I sat through that one in Boston, and Kort didn't let me pick any movies for a long time after that. If you want to see a sensual movie set in Brazil, just rent Black Orpheus Oh, Mickey, what happened to you? You are still beautiful to me, even with a ruined face.

The kind staff at Urthona have accepted four poems from Adamantine for their next issue, due out end of year.

Yoga outreach

I was at Rain City last Friday when I noticed a little brochure on volunteering to teach yoga in the prison system. I couldn't remember the URL on the brochure and went home and googled a few days later and arrived here, when actually, I was looking for the local incarnation of a prison-based program. I am really floored by this - poetry has been doing outreach work for many years thru organizations like PEN, but this was the first I had read or heard of yoga going inside the prisons. It seems like a wonderful idea - focusing on the body and the spirit and the mind. The idea of freedom wherever you are. The Samaraya Center where I am looking into doing teacher training this year has a required volunteer practicum - it can be completed at the center, but it can also be done elsewhere. The yoga in prison program seems like a great challenge on so many levels and in line with the idea of bringing yoga to the masses and people who could really benefit from the practice - i.e. not middle-aged, privileged ladies undergoing a mid-life crisis as witnessed at the Seattle Center, but individuals engaged with much more serious exploration.

Vinyasa Instruction for R.Y. Yoga

"Palpate the shoulder blades with the breath."

"Stand up tall, like a flower pot."

"Let all that oxygen swirl up into your shoulders."

My goals for '09:

- get certified as a yoga teacher
- graduate from the Museology program
- write and sell a children's book
- buy a house

Losing a wool mitten isn't as bad as say losing a diamond (which I've also done) but I am feeling less than mindful. This morning I trekked back out to Greenlake and did the full loop reluctantly, looking for my mitten, realizing that it is the exact color of pine needles and winter grass, making the task even more herculean.

I don't think I can underestimate the effect of Sex and the City on the BF. The fact that Carrie Bradshaw is a writer on the series... I think there is something key here about her profession - teaching other's to tell their own stories.

Yoga - I have practiced Anusara, Ana Forest, Iyengar, Hatha, Bikram, and Ashtanga. I finally have a sense of what these different schools focus on and what works and doesn't for me. It's taken me a long time to really develop a personal practice, but now it's become a part of the routine, much like writing. The heart was missing from Iyengar for me - both the heart and spirit. Bikram is a good workout, but it also leaves something to be desired. Can anyone explain to be the difference between Ashtanga in the Pathabi Jois tradition vs. the Patanjali lineage?

I transcribed a great oral history over the break of an interview with Al Young, a Chinese-American world championship race car driver. He donated his race car, the Challenger, to MOHAI and was interviewed about this object and his experiences in the sport of race car driving. Al talked about having an undiagnosed learning disability and doing poorly in junior high and high school (after being identified as a gifted learner in elementary school). He talks about his ADHD and how he had to learn to read while walking and moving to be able to focus. Yet this disability came into play in helping him in race car driving. When the lights would flash for the race to start, you have a thousandth of a second to leave the starting position, and for him, it would all play out in slow motion. His oral history talks about women in the sport, not just bathing suit models, but female race car drivers who beat men, and how they had a distinct psychological advantage over the men - because it's not a sport about "strength." Cars interest me about as much as sports, but this was a wonderful oral history of one of Asian America's little known heroes.

Reading Working the Woods,Working the Sea from Empty Bowl. Poems from treeplanters, loggers, and salmon fisherman, a literature of the "back-to-the-land" movement. One of the writers in the book tells of his days planting trees in word patterns to write out radical and poetic messages. It reminded me of David Antin's cloud poems, but ever more radical and activist. A sort of performance poetry meets land art meets environmental activism.

Mike O'Connor's The Basin is the best book I've read all year.

Tomorrow is 2009. Cripes!

Classes for the winter:
- Collections Management with lab at the Wing Luke Asian Museum.
- Thesis credits for continued work on the chop suey project.
- Educational Leadership

Here's to setting an intent: I want to be in Taos in Summer 2010 at the Wurlitzer.

It is hard to find a healer. The person I wanted to refer to my friend in Leonardtown, MD, has uprooted to Rochester, NY. The person I wanted to refer to my friend in Austin, relocated to Dallas, buying the practice of the woman who wanted Kort to take over her business. She left Dallas to find a cure for her aging boyfriend's macular degeneration and imminent blindness. Sharon absorbed the business of a Japanese acupuncturist who left Dallas to go to medical school in Mexico, to only drop out and later return to Texas. My acupuncturist left to pan for gold in Durango after considering a romantic stint on a cruise ship fighting Somali pirates. My current healer is MIA - he wasn't really taking new patients, and is in the process of closing a yoga studio. This all teaches me something - it's not right to keep moving Kort and I around - as I have been given the lead in the last year or two. Kort needs to be rooted in a place to build healing relationships with his clients - to lose your healer is a painful experience, at best, a difficult transition. I think I've lived it too many times this year to feel like we can keep doing it.

Thanks to David Horton for publishing an excerpt of Adamantine in Work 12 which is now available as a PDF file here. I've got tons of contributor's copies - if you want a hard copy, give me a shout.

New Year's Resolutions

I re-set my goals every year. This upcoming year, the list seems lengthy...

- drink more water
- eat less processed sugar and wheat
- read more (poetry)
- be able to lift my body weight/improve my chaturanga
- take up/practice a musical instrument (piano, guitar, vox)
- keep the plants healthy
- achieve unassisted headstand w/out wall
- learn to cook 5-10 new recipes/standards
- be more involved with sangha
- revisit Port Townsend
- stay open-hearted
- publish Adamantine
- funding from Artist Trust
- love well
- visit parents more
- finish school
- continue with oral history work
- make more fotos
- take another retreat
- develop my prose
- reconsider my relationship to social networking and the internet
- go off the grid more often
- explore new collaborations w/ old friends
- revisit Colorado

A very good poetry sale at SPD.

Spent my last morning in Port Townsend before K drove in to pick me up before the big blizzard dumps snow on the peninsula. It is another world from Seattle, indeed.

Wildlife sightings: 7 deer, numerous crows, 1 pigeon, several seagulls, 1 starfish
Bug rescues: 2 ladybugs, 3 houseflies

I stayed in SUD cabin 261, great light, a cozy little cottage, much better heated than our house in Seattle.

I can see myself living in few places - a handful of places over the years have called to me - Port Townsend, is definitely one of them.

Reading at Northwinds got cancelled due to inclement weather. A good reason to go back.

Thanks to new friends Mike O'Connor and Ling-hui Liu for the good company during my short stay.

Adamantine is finished. I'm happy with it, and tremendously proud. The minute that all shifted, I relaxed into vacation mode. Scribbled notes for a few prose/family essays, but having finished what I set out to do, I felt at ease finally.

The next two quarters will go quickly and be pretty intense, to finish up in June at UW, in the nick of time.

Onwards!

passing

my friend mourns
each day since her babe
was born,

Liam’s first day
on earth, his sixth
month of life,

this much
self-reflection
I can’t fathom, when

I catch sight of
your wool-capped figure
descending the snow-

covered path winding
away from my rooms,
aware then that

there will be a day
when you no longer
climb the stone steps

back to this heart

manuscript complete
the working retreat becomes
overdue vacation

***

too much talk during
savasana when a body
scan would be enough

***

after first/last Nia
class, feeling all the wisdom
traditions diluted

What happens to snow when it falls in the ocean? Why doesn't it freeze?

I regret not bringing a hat and snow shoes to Port Townsend.

I found an ancient Hitachi black & white tv buried in the bedroom closet of my cabin. Trying to watch the season finale of Biggest Loser without any picture and just sound, is like eating cake made out of Nutrasweet or some god awful substitute. Just not the same.

The fireplace in the Ft Worden Commons is operated by gas - those logs in the fireplace are fake! Someone just flipped the switch.

I took a Nia class at Madrona. It wasn't for me.

rope trick

picture a line in the sand
then imagine that edge
as a hempen rope

move it near or apart
from you, or lift the border
& lay it down

around your double,
so that you merge to make
a new center

Well, Adamantine has been undergoing some Frankenstein/samurai surgery. It's now a very different animal, yet very much the same.

What I've been reading:

Sara Suleri's Meatless Days - linked essay collection, highly lyric, somewhat overwrought. Compelling family stories exploring love and loss, obscured by the intellectual quality of the prose.

CS Perez's Unincorporated Territory - magnificent

Bachelard's Poetics of Fire - the poetry of intimate spaces: houses, rooms, and corners

Mauss' The Gift - a study of gift exchange, Lewis Hyde's book by the same name is much more relevant to poetry and creativity, though this book traces a number of cultures that engage in gift exchange

Sontag's On Photography - essays on Diane Arbus, August Sander, and the authority of photography

Joseph Goldstein on Buddhism practice - more

Cherrie Moraga plays

Note from the department of programming

My best friend and I are planning a blog swap. I will not say when she will be guest blogging, as I don't know when. You may or may not notice.

new haiku

stranded w/out nail
clippers, I resort to using
the kitchen shears

new gelato flavor
at the corner market,
small town pleasures

why must frozen
yogurt in Seattle taste sour
as normal yogurt?

wanting to reach through
the phone & pull him close
here next to me

nearly invisible:
the carrot yellow lotion
splattered on mustard walls

emotional eating
not just for boredom but
writer’s block too

panning for gold
in Durango, he sets up
his first business

dissed by Santa on
the Polar Express, he gets
into the Xmas spirit

leafing thru lit journals
I want to find something to
respond to; keep reading

after so many
sleepless nights, I’ve slept in
almost every bed

Revision

blind spot

when I turn back to stare
at the man poised at the street

crossing, long after
the light has gone green

only then do I see
the round sticker affixed

to his chest

I am deaf and blind
in big white letters

paling in comparison to
his outfit: the oversized purple shirt

beneath the orange safety vest
in his right hand a retracted

walking stick; the way
he doesn’t move, lost

in thought, I think,
the way I lose

myself in daydreaming
dumbstruck, I am

without words when
I realize there is no other

way to communicate
but through touch &

I do not have permission

when I lay my hand
upon his arm; see him

give a start; cross
traffic, just as the red palm


begins to flash, I
place myself between

his body & the hostile line
of humming cars queuing;

when we reach the other side
he’s ready for me

to let go
this is the practice

to mirror thought
with action, what I wish

for every effort, each
poem, this intention

why I like Mike O’Connor

when I ask Mike if he can
give me a lift he answers
SURE! w/ an easy smile,

Let me find a ride first –
my car’s in the shop.

this is not my story

cereal boxes in the kitchen
cupboard nibbled through
the sudden appearance of

droppings, a mouse in
the house, her lover says
it has a very tiny heart,

you need only chase
it until it tires; he knows
the hearts of small creatures

you see, having chased down
a few chickens in his youth,
accustomed to how birds wear out

easily - the human heart is
a wholly different animal,
we must know when to give in

before the other gives up

altar

change comes
whether or not
I hold

true inside
how I see
sometimes

a room/poem/altar
things set in concrete
fixed as though nothing

can ever speak –
the iron-coiled figure
I join to my shrine

a keepsake that asked
for a just memorial,
to mirror his place

inside the stone of
my heart the stone
of my heart

requiescat

on campus, co-eds mark
remembrance by wearing
“Free Amanda” shirts,

localizing their support
for the classmate jailed
in Perugia, entangled in

the murder of her flatmate

***

in the center of Red Square
the flower vigils have stopped
no more bouquets mark the spot

where In Soo Chun doused
himself in gasoline &
set himself on fire

a memory like a burning body
can’t be put out with water
bottles/jackets/fire extinguishers

***

that last week in October,
long after they pronounce him
dead at Harborview,

I hunt for his name
the death of a 61-year-old
immigrant laborer

won’t make headline news
unnamed in the UW Daily,
I find his identity in The Stranger

learn he was assigned
to the Ethnic Studies building
to empty trash baskets

scrub toilets, mop floors
when no one is looking

I lie down to sleep

***

what part of him failed
out there, the young initiate
who believed what he was

seeing: the death ritual
unfolding before his eyes
contact made

a moment before
cauterized flesh covered
ninety percent of Chun’s body

the police made him
stop praying over the corpse
noted him on the record as

a “person of interest”

***

these messages that arrive
from the administration:
170 million dollar shortfall

& twenty percent cuts
school-wide, the campus
health clinic extends

its hours, not its outreach
to accommodate those that
are affected, what counsel

mandated to turn long-term
cases outside the community
meet new patient quotas

***

we save a few
we lose a few

we lose a few too many
we lose a few too many

we lose

on the dirt road leading out
of Tamarindo a roadside
gasolinero puts up a custom-
painted display: stylized

orange flames, a flexed
bicep – bilingual the seller
reasoned to command
a better title

Pura Vida

Pura vida is what
the shopkeeper’s wife says
when Tom makes an offer
on a different sign, folk art

to his eyes, the weather-
beaten board, faded, full
of typos, to the Ticans
just another gringo loco

doesn’t even check
first with her man knowing
argument will ensue; let some
other actor lay down

in this gender war, cultural
contretemps over what seemed
an easy enough barter: a new sign
to replace the old –

picture a fistful of flaming
wrenches scripted in both
ingles & Spanish

a perfectly good sign
gone missing, the patriarch’s
shock to find himself cuckolded
by his woman and this outsider

demands that justice be restored,
along with his property;
Tom wracks his loss
up to a few days of labor

at least he’s not wedded
to this grease monkey who now
owns not one, but two signs
and just one shop

semiotics

the wooden notice hanging
in my friend’s Brooklyn 3-story,
hand-painted in childish
block lettering states simply

SE REPARA LLANTAS

Centrum

Not just a multi-vitamin...Centrum is an artist residency program in Fort Worden, two miles from downtown Port Townsend. My renovated cabin is a close neighbor to Copper Canyon and the Madrona Mind-Body Institute. I have a view of the ocean and from my front room, I can see the waters moving. I've been reading, sleeping, and doing some writing, but there are some definite shifts happening in my creative voice. The spaciousness has allowed me to arrive at a point where I was finally able to process why I left anthropology for museum studies.

Port Townsend is a Victorian seaport town full of hippies, retirees, and interesting people with names like Tarani, Nala, Tinker and Sweethouse. If I thought the Gene Juarez Academy in Seattle attracted people with interesting names (they actually choose their own studio names - i.e. Astrid, Stella, Gwynneth) - Port Townsend attracts a whole different breed. The town has four excellent thrift/consignment shops and a food coop. Multiple yoga studios and CAM practitioners in abundance. Small town living, good for the country-hearted country mouse.

salivating at
ropes of seaweed
washed up on the waterfront

that angry fly just
gets angrier, can’t see how
the door just opened

after three years of
practice, I kick into head-
stand, my spine holding

first day of writing
retreat: burn sage, invoke muse
& walk the land

day two of writing
retreat: I sleep & read
& sleep some more

looking before
leaping is not quite the same
as just simply leaping

warming my cabin
metal heat coils rising like
Van Der Rohe’s corn cobs

like a game of
musical chairs, trying to find
the writing sweet spot

starting to consider
caffeine options after over-
sleeping three days straight

On December 18, Northwind Reading Series will feature Shin Yu Pai and Tim McNulty. The readings will start at 7 pm in the Northwind Arts Center, 2409 Jefferson Street, Port Townsend, WA.

Shin Yu Pai is the author of seven books of poetry, including Haiku Not Bombs (Booklyn Artists Alliance), Works on Paper (Convivio Bookworks), Sightings: Selected Works [2000 - 2005] (1913 Press), and Equivalence (La Alameda). Her work is anthologized in America Zen: A Gathering of Poets and The Wisdom Anthology of North American Buddhist Poetry. She lives in Seattle and is currently involved in Centrum's Creative Residency Program.

Tim McNulty is a poet, essayist, and nature writer. He is the author of two collections of poetry, In Blue Mountain Dusk (Pleasure Boat Studio) and Pawtracks (Copper Canyon Press), and eight chapbooks, including Last Year's Poverty (Brooding Heron Press), Reflected Light (Tangram Press), Through High Still Air, A Season at Sourdough Mountain (Pleasure Boat Studio), and out this month from Port Townsend's Empty Bowl, Cloud Studies. Some Ducks, A Cycle of Poems for my Daughter, is due from Pleasure Boat Studio early next year.

His award-winning books on nature include: The Art of Nature, Washington's Wild Rivers, Olympic National Park: A Natural History, Washington's Mount Rainier National Park , Grand Teton: Where Lightning Walks, and Grand Canyon: Window on the River of Time. Tim has received the Washington Governor's Writers Award and the National Outdoor Book Award. He lives with his family in the foothills of Washington’s Olympic Mountains.

The readings are free and open to the public. Donations are gladly accepted to support Northwind, a nonprofit organization dedicated to connecting the arts to our community

I leave on Sunday for a 14-day retreat in Port Townsend at the Centrum Center in Fort Worden National Park. Reading at Northwind Arts on December 18 at 7 p.m. with Tim McNulty. I am a bit nervous about the accommodations - I don't know if I will have my own cottage/space, or if it will be one big central building housing multiple sleeping rooms for AIRs with a shared bath and kitchen. Ideally, I'd like my own space, like in P-town or MacDowell. Where my space is my space to fill with words, noise, mess, and whatever. But that's not always how it works out. But things worked out pretty well at Soul Mountain last year, when Chip Livingston was my downstairs neighbor and we shared a kitchen and bath. Either way, extreme privacy or semi-private could be just fine and I'll need to be flexible, but I will keep my fingers crossed that I can lounge around the building in my sleepwear if I choose to...

Last day of my internship at Densho today. I got to close out my quarter by interviewing the lovely and amazing Kay Aiko Abe. Here's a woman who's been feeding the homeless in Seattle for 17 years, completely unfunded by any charitable organizations. She uses her social security payments to buy food to help feed the homeless. She is in her 80s and has had an inspired life. Interned at Minidoka in her teens. When they got out of the camp, her family had nowhere to go and she felt a profound sense of homelessness. This early experience helps her to identify with Seattle's poorest populations. She left the Densho studio to go pick up chicken to cook for tonight's offering. Four nights a week, Monday through Thursday, she serves 200-300 people and has rotating teams of volunteers from area churches to help cook and serve. Kay's eye sparkle with light and compassion and absolutely lit up my spirit. Even in a recession, she said, they have enough food. They never run out of food. I don't share Kay's religious faith, but her stories renewed my faith in basic goodness and doing good.

Happy 67th birthday to my father.

Is it just me or is the new movie Bolt a contemporary variation on The Incredible Journey story?

Entering the last week of the fall quarter at UW. The university declared two weeks ago that it has a severe budget deficit and will be making university-wide budget cuts. Twenty percent across the board. This will mean the elimination of staff, faculty, and programs, and a continuation of the hiring freeze.

I here it's bad in California too. The axe will fall at CSUSB tomorrow.

There is no wi-fi at the Centrum Center in Port Townsend. That could be really good for my writing.

I managed to spend nothing on Black Friday. I don't think I will be replacing my digicam by the time I leave for retreat.

I am seeing a new healer who practices Ayurvedic medicine and trained under David Frawley. His intuition, languaging and general abilities are pretty uncanny. My work is to reconcile the unreconcileable - i.e. the blessing and curse of being a writer and of being Asian American.

I should be done with school by June. In the mean time, I'm practicing living in the here and now, and the reality that is not my imaginative writing life, but my everyday life.

K and I looked at a beautiful practice space that just opened at SPA(CE) down the street from us. We really liked the owner of the space and I am keeping my fingers crossed that K elects to rent a treatment room in the spa for 1 day a week and start his practice here in Seattle. I have committed to splitting the rent on the space as an incentive.

Items I am taking on retreat with me:

CS Perez's Unincorporated Territory
Bachelard's Poetics of Space
Sontag On Photography
Shiva Rea Yoga DVD
nagchampa incense
makeshift shrine
books to sell at Northwinds reading
yoga mat
a film-based camera

I am now able to achieve an unassisted headstand against any wall.

This is a lecture-heavy week for me - going to presentations at/around the college. On Monday, I went to a Tak Fujitani lecture. He used the word "hegemony" about three times in one minute. Such is academia. Sigh. He talked about racism and its subtler forms. That the Japanese American internment was framed in terms of military necessity/national security, but that really, it was a disguised racism. And he warned the audience to be vigilant of the evolution of racism in a post-Obama moment and then made an empassioned argument against area studies.

Left that lecture and went to hear Cynthea Bogel talk about the import and evolution of mandala painting in ancient Japan. She talked about the esoteric, tantric path of Shingon/Mikkyo Buddhism popularized by Kukai, and the ritual tools that he brought back from China - they included portraits of his tantric masters, as well as mandalas/visualization tools, sacred texts, and objects - all purchased with the funding of a government grant that sponsored his travel abroad. Cynthea's got a book due out from UW Press next year on Mikkyo - I confess that I hadn't learned about this particular Zen Buddhist sect, which seems to have strong parallels to Tibetan Buddhism - mantra (sound/chanting), mudra (gesture), and mandala (contemplation/visualization).

Went to hear and see Annie Leibovitz talk last nite at SAL. She was completely unpretentious, funny, and very much herself - highly personable. She talked about her new book and how it was a project in finding her own voice, post-Sontag. That voice is clean and spare in its prose, to the point, but also heartfelt and honest. Her introducer talked about Leibovitz as pragmatic (would rather do than theorize the work), and connected that pragmatism with an "American" tradition. I'm not sure what's particularly pragmatic about American-ness, but I wonder if she was attempting to draw some kind of connection between Leibovitz's work and one of her influences/idols, Robert Frank, who of course, produced "The Americans." What I loved about Annie's talk - she shoots celebrities and famous people, but reframed the conversation in terms of how iconic-ness is born in each of us in being who we most are.

K and I found our way over to the Seattle Shambhala Center on Monday for their regular open sitting practice. The center is in a residential neighborhood in Fremont, not far from the Japanese Gardens, and is basically a converted residence, with two meditation rooms - one downstairs for classes and one upstairs (a large open hall-type space) for group sitting. Coming up the stair to the meditation room, I was reminded of climbing the stairs of the Lincoln Building at Naropa - the walls adorned with Trungpa's calligraphy. I had a good vibe about this place - the sangha here seemed mostly male, and white. Not a whole lot of cultural diversity, but that seems fairly consistent with Tibetan Buddhism in the west. We met a guy who had just moved to Seattle in June and connected with the Shambhala Center right away. It took over a year for K and I to find our way to this group and I wonder if any of the upheaval and transition might have been eased by joining the community sooner. We sat for 45 minutes, and it reminded me of the days when we would practice yoga together at exhale. Looking over to see my partner - a good feeling to have a shared practice. I'm also very interested in the Nalanda West Center here that is the seat of Ponlop Rinpoche's N. American presence and hope to spend some time exploring it in the near future...

Wow, CU Boulder received 190 applications to their opening for a creative writing faculty member, poetry specialty. Tough job market...

Upcoming readings

Cornish College
Seattle, WA
November 19, 4:30 pm

Northwinds Gallery
Port Townsend, WA
December 18

crossing the floating bridge, remembering Bellevue's ruined strawberry fields

seattle, not boston, and still we both wear our don't-fuck-with-me faces

thick carpet of leaves covering the sidewalk deadens my footfalls

Even after all this time the sun never says to the earth: You owe me. Look what happens with a love like that: It brightens up the whole sky.

- Hafez, courtesy of Norbu

Benefit Party hosted by the Friends of the NW Chocolate Festival

Hi Friends of Winter, Chocolate and Great Parties,

You're invited to Winter Warming in the House! featuring mojitos, lots of delicious chocolate, and Mystery Micro-brews.

Saturday, November 22nd, 2008 8pm-1am
257 NW 42nd Street [the Fremont House]

You're most taste-fully invited to:

Celebrate the election!
Welcome winter!
Bid farewell to the summer, (on that note,we'll feature a classic summer cocktail, the Mojito).,
Share a local beer with friends!
Win a cool prize in the raffle!
and Co-create the indoor winter party culture in our community!

Along with your splendid self, BRING CASH!** (no need to BYOB, we got that covered!)
$5 donation at the door = your first drink/beer and a ticket for our hourly raffle of excellent party prizes!

WHAT'S THE $ FOR?
This is a Benefit Party hosted by the Friends of the NW Chocolate Festival. The NW Chocolate Festival is a community-centered event that incurred huge debt to bring the first-ever chocolate festival to the Northwest in September. We Friends have decided to host kickin winter parties to make sure there can be another chocolate festival very soon. In that spirit, we will be providing some serious chocolate and special treats for you to nibble, chocolate!

This is a fundraiser party, please bring cash for the bar with Rum Mojitos for $5 per drink and micro-brews for $3 per drink.

Mark your calendar now, and yes bring friends!!

November 22nd, 2008
Saturday 8pm

We are super-excited to launch the Winter Warming Party series for our awesome local community. Come meet people, dance your booty off, and drink indoors at the best house-party in town.

Much Love!

See you on the 22nd,

love,
The Friends of the NW Chocolate Festival

Merwin redux

I went to the W.S. Merwin reading at SAL last week. The program started with a 20-minute Q&A conversation between the poetry series curator and the poet on stage. I guess typically the format is reverse - a reading followed by talk. Merwin read for about 30-40 minutes from his new Copper Canyon book. The new collection is split into three sections - I am blanking on what the first and the third were, but section two was a collection of elegies for the poet's dead dogs. I found the lyric poem Lullabye particularly beautiful and hope that someone (i.e. GP) sets it to music (preferably for alto). Merwin talked a little bit before every poem that he read and read at a glacial pace. These were good lessons, to slow it down and to have a conversation with the audience. His new book includes just one translation - a short fragment by Hadrian.

Homes in ABQ appears to be a lot more affordable than property in Seattle. Add to this that Vasant Lad's Institute is based in the Land of Enchantment, and I think Kort and I may have a post-UW plan.

The Stranger and several other newspapers have published a few details on the death of man who commit suicide on campus two weeks ago, by dousing himself in gasoline and setting himself on fire. His name was In Soo Chun and he was a 61 y.o. Korean immigrant employed by the custodial department at UW for a full year, before he was terminated from his position.

"The value of doing something does not lie in the ease or difficulty, the probability or improbability of its achievement, but in the vision, the plan, the determination and the perseverance, the effort and the struggle which go into the project. Life is enriched by aspiration and effort, rather than by acquisition and accumulation." Helen & Scott Nearing, The Good Life

What interests me now

is not poetry, but living some version of the good life.

Lesson of the week:

The only thing guaranteed in life is death. Friendships, love, vegetable gardens, contracts, and promises go awry and things go from good to bad to good to bad again. We live unresolved lives. Relationships are born. Relationships die. We all get sick. We are all suffering and heading towards an undeniable death. Fame, poetry, money, recognition, publication, exhibition, and certain forms of education, etc. do little to stave off this reality. I look you in the eye, Death, and will make you my friend.

decaying bundles of flowers in red
square mark where he doused himself
in gas, set himself aflame

There are certain things that I believe that every human being must learn to say from the heart and hear with an open mind, over the course of their lifetime. They include:

- Please
- Thank you
- No thank you
- No
- Yes
- Give me some time to think about it
- I am wrong
- You were right
- It's not about who's wrong or right
- I'm sorry
- Please forgive me
- I forgive you

Everyone, including myself, is a work-in-progress sometimes where these finer points of communication are concerned.

I cast my vote at Greenlake this morning where the community center was handing out old-style paper ballots. The volunteers were perky and enthusiastic people which helped to lift my mood. I was offered the option of having a paper ballot in Chinese. Apparently, Greenlake is a bilingual polling station. I declined and then the poll worker promptly apologized to me saying it was part of their training to at least offer. It made me wonder if bilingual voting is available at all in my parents' area of Southern California. When we talked on the phone a couple of weeks ago, my dad made the statement after offering several negative opinions about one candidate in particular (the one I endorse) that it was "none of OUR business" - plural. My dad's been a U.S. citizen for what must be decades at this point, but his ethnic and political identification is still with his motherland to the extent that he doesn't see a responsibility or connection to the politics in this country which inform his social security, taxes, healthcare, etc. If he knew that he could have a Chinese ballot, I wonder if that would make any sort of difference, though he is fluent/bilingual - if that gesture at inclusion would mean anything to him. My parents' attitude towards politics in the U.S. had a large impact in my own sense of agency. The first time I voted was in the last election four years ago. I made Kort go with me to the polling station and I voted blanket Democrat on the electronic ballot. In Texas, our minority votes didn't really carry any weight one way or another, but here in Seattle, I found myself really caring about the propositions on the ballot. I'm glad to have logged my vote and am relieved too to move on.

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?