Jesmimi

late, as ever

2011-12-30T19:02:00.001-08:00

So, I won. I don't know what to say about that right now: I don't think I ever will. I owe a few folks interviews, and I'm procrastinating on a deadline, but I need a poem right now. How about this one?

Poem Written in A Copy of Beowulf

At various times, I have asked myself what reasons
moved me to study, while my night came down,
without particular hope of satisfaction,
the language of the blunt-tongued Anglo-Saxons.

Used up by the years, my memory
loses its grip on words that I have vainly
repeated and repeated. My life in the same way
weaves and unweaves its weary history.

Then I tell myself: it must be that the soul
has some secret, sufficient way of knowing
that it is immortal, that its vast, encompassing
circle can take in all, can accomplish all.

Beyond my anxiety, beyond this writing,
the universe waits, inexhaustible, inviting.

--Jorge Luis Borges

National Book Award Finalist

2011-10-14T11:22:00.000-07:00

That one, my friends, deserves all capital letters.

The little-book-that-could has been nominated as a finalist for the National Book Award. I never thought this would happen. I actually thought that I'd spend the rest of my writing days sending my book-children out into the world to be admired by a few, scorned by a dozen, and muttering to myself in this Blogger corner.

Whenever I speak to audiences about my fiction, inevitably I'm asked about rejection. How many times did you face rejection, they ask. And I tell them: many times. My first novel was dead in the water for 3 years, three years of submission and rejection, and I had exactly one story published during that time. I was working at the University of New Orleans during the years following Hurricane Katrina. Driving through New Orleans East for work, through that wasted landscape, the houses rotting and spray-painted, the empty streets, the waste from the flood still sitting where the water deposited it when it receded subdued me so thoroughly I didn't write a new sentence for 3 years. Fine, I thought, I'll shut up now. I told despair: You win. I began looking up the pre-requisite courses I'd need to enter a nursing program, began plotting my return to school, my leave from writing.

And then Doug Siebold of Agate Publishing said yes to Where the Line Bleeds. Two years later, my editor at Bloomsbury Publishing said yes to my second novel Salvage the Bones. And now, the folks at the National Book Foundation have said yes.

So many can tell you no, I tell my audience, but you only need one person to say yes.

Say yes: read Salvage the Bones.

2011-08-31T22:06:00.000-07:00

My second novel, Salvage the Bones, is out today. The cover is beautiful, isn't it? I always imagined that I'd do an interview for the novel, and a special picture would accompany it: me, hair wild, wearing a tank top and cut off jean shorts, barefoot, Mississippi green wild all around me, holding a leash while a dog, big and red, stands at my feet, mouth open, teeth white. Both of us, grinning. I'm getting generous reviews and given several good interviews, but this hasn't happened yet. I'm still hoping.

This is the story of a girl growing up in a world of men, a tale about her brother and his pit bull, a novel about a family in the maw of Hurricane Katrina. This is about tragedy: this is about hope.

Go now. Buy it. Read it. You'll love it.

the small stuff

2011-07-22T11:25:00.001-07:00

Why isn't anyone connecting the dots between global warming and the recent heat waves? Why isn't anyone doing anything? Well, I can't say no one is fighting the good fight because my friend Sourfish is: check out her blog at http://nosweatclimatechange.blogspot.com/.

The heat actually hasn't been so awful in southern Mississippi. It's been raining a lot (another symptom of global warming, I know), which means it's been fairly cool here for the past week or so while the streets are melting in New York City. I'm off to write a few letters and do what I can to join the fray for awareness about global warming.

nearly there

2011-07-07T22:00:00.000-07:00

I have two small sections left to write (they will appear in earlier chapters of the manuscript), but I basically completed the first draft of my third book today. This is what I listened to when I finished the memoir. On repeat.

The end is still a bit slippery, and the entire thing is rough as hell and I need at least a week to go through it so I can make it presentable before sending it off to my first round of readers, but still: I did it. Hardest thing I've ever written. I think I've aged a good ten years during the process because I look haggard as hell; I lost hair, stopped eating, and my skin is dry and itchy and irritated. And who knows if it's good enough, or worthy enough, for the men I'm writing about, for the community that I'm writing about, for the enormity of what I'm attempting to put words to? But I tried, and I did it.

them boys

2011-07-06T12:38:00.000-07:00

is DOPE.

(via http://oyinhandmade.tumblr.com)

boundaries

2011-06-30T18:06:00.000-07:00

Boundaries
by José Emilio Pacheco

All that you have lost, they told me, is yours.
and no memory remembered that, yes, it's true.
I was alive, I loved, I uttered words
the hours erased,
I felt a profound pity
for the years to come.

All you destroy, they told me, injures you.
Traces a scar forgetfulness won't cleanse;
is born again each day within you,
spreads beyond
those salty walls unable to contain you.

All you have loved, they told me, is now dead.
And I can't describe it quite,
but there's something in time
that has sailed away forever.
There are faces now I'll never
see in my mind again;
and perhaps there's a mirror, a summer, a street
that already go under the echo of one more futile shade.

All you created, they kept repeating, is false.
No god protects you,
only the wind is your shelter.
And the wind, as well you know,
is a boundless vacancy,
the sound the world makes
when a moment dies.

all you have lost, they concluded, is your own.
Your sole estate, your memory, your name.

You won't have, now, the day
you once refused.
Time
has left you on the shore
of this night
and perhaps
a fleeting light
will drown the silence.

(translated by John Frederick Nims)

i'm in marvin's room

2011-06-28T23:10:00.000-07:00

I love this song. I've been listening to it on repeat for weeks. I even like the chopped--not slopped--version, but maybe that's because I like chopped and screwed music in general. I should probably be ashamed to admit that I'm such a stan for Drake, but there's something so dark about his music, so moody and elemental. I feel the same nebulous wonder and longing when I listen to Sade. "I'm lucky that you stayed on. I need someone to put this weight on." I feel you, Drake. Damn, I feel you.

What else? Well, I've been writing, of course. I'm approaching the end of my third book. The memoir. I spoke at the Movers & Shakers luncheon at the ALA convention in New Orleans this past weekend. I spoke about my second novel, Salvage the Bones, and the memoir, about survival and savagery and love. I said, "You are a savage. You salvage the bones of what you have: canned goods, the husk of a house, the memory of your brother's life, of your friends' deaths, and you create meaning. You make a future from it. You tell your story. You survive."

And then as people stood and clapped, I almost began crying. They heard.

Drake ~ Marvins Room (Official Video) from OctobersVeryOwn on Vimeo

i hope

2011-06-25T18:22:00.000-07:00

I hope she makes it through her addiction. Those videos of her doing the junky-shimmy at her European concert currently circulating are so depressing. It's hard to realize she's the same person because she was such an artist in this video, so alive and fierce.

P.S.-Sucker Punch

2011-04-19T19:31:00.000-07:00

I saw Sucker Punch.

I was bored; I didn't care about the characters. I wasn't even impressed by the action. I love girls kicking ass, but I never found myself rooting for them through any of the fight scenes. The problem is that the story is never rooted in real life. In order for those warrior/stripper fantasies to be compelling, they must have a counterpoint in reality. (I can't believe I just typed that sentence.) Because I don't know what's happening to these tough young women in the real world, well, I have no idea who these characters are and I can't understand what's at stake. And not being able to understand what's at stake is the kiss of death for any story.

But I hear Hanna gets it right.

hello? are you there?

2011-04-19T19:10:00.001-07:00

My friend Elizabeth has inspired me to come back here, to say something again, after months and months of not doing so. She has an amazing blog, which you should definitely read. Like now, at http://www.nosygirl.net/ .

I've been living in Oxford, Mississippi for the past eight months or so, moving from lonely place to lonely place, writing in frustrating spurts, teaching, sleeping with samurai swords, and running. I've been working on my second and third books, and also looking for a job for next fall.

I spend too much time alone, even when I am busy. Especially when I am busy. I like Oxford. It's taught me important things. My students are lovely and the literary community in Oxford is lovely, but the life of the nomad is not for me. Neither is the life of the hermit, which I currently am. I am ready to go home.

That said: an excerpt from Death in Spring by Merce Rodoreda, which I am currently attempting to work my way through for the second time.

"Another summer ended. It was as though all the dead autumns were the same, with their relentless insistence on returning. Autumn was here again. Nailed to the rock wall, from the ground to the top of the cliff, autumn was a surge of fiery leaves that would be snatched away when the sulphur-bearing wind returned, grown old and icy. Leaves fell on the village streets and on the river that carried them away. Swirling in whirlpools, they drifted to the clock tower, as far as Pedres Altes. They tumbled down, still bearing the scent of their former, tender-green selves. The sickly stems that had held the leaves all summer were now devoid of water, and they thudded to the ground as well. The leaves were blown down and swept away. We waited for the last to drop so we could rake them into piles and set fire to them. The fire made them scream. They screamed in a low voice, whistled even lower, and rose in columns of blue smoke. The smell of burn leaves pervaded houses and air. The air was filled with the cessation of being."

Beautiful.

trailers

2010-11-12T16:42:00.000-08:00

I want to see this.

And this. What can I say? My tastes are varied; I love French animation as much as I love women who kick ass.

don't go to Crystal Lake

2010-10-19T21:29:00.000-07:00

I've been working for the past week straight in a room in the house that has been affectionately dubbed "the old man cave." Replete with maroon and gold upholstered sofas and armchairs, it also happens to be the one room in the house that contains a TV. Thus: old man cave (a brilliant University of Mississippi MFA student came up with that phrase: I take no credit). Because HBO has decided to play Boardwalk Empire for at least ten hours of every day, I've been relegated to channel surfing while I work. And since the last couple of days of television programming have been a wasteland, I've spent the last 48 hours intermittently watching Friday the 13th, Friday the 13th II, III, and tonight, IV, on AMC.

That's a whole lot of stupid. In the first film, before the first hapless victim of Voorhees justice arrives at the renovated camp, she's told by the local townspeople that people died at the lake years ago, yet she still continues her journey to the camp. She trots her shiny-haired, grinning self out to the road, hitch-hikes with a woman who we later learn is Jason's mother, and well, dies. Surely the townspeople told the other kids that people had died at the camp, but since we don't see it on film and it's not canon, I'll give them their mistakes. They were victims. They died awful deaths. But why in the hell did the next camp directors and counselors show up at Crystal Lake just five years later? Let me get this straight: someone died at the camp many years ago, and then five years ago, when a group of folks came out to the camp to open it again, more people died, lots of people, and the killer was never caught.

There are nine Friday the 13th movies. Nine. How many unsolved murders on one lake have to occur before potential camp directors, counselors, and vacationers realize it's not the place to spend their summers? I ask myself this and then the corners of the old man cave start creaking, and there are noises in the kitchen, and I am freaked the hell out. I'm probably talking shit about the Friday the 13th movies because I saw the first when I was young enough to be snuck into a drive-in theater by rolling myself into a ball between my mother's shins and having the carpet rug thrown over me as I crouched beneath the dashboard. Don't move, my parents said. Be quiet. After we parked, I perched on the armrest between my parents and watched the campers die. Later, after the movie, I had nightmares about the girl Jason murdered in the bathroom.

I should watch something else, shouldn't I?

salvage my week

2010-09-29T12:47:00.000-07:00

This has been an awful week. And it's not over, unfortunately: it only heralds the beginning of an awful month--October. But watching Mike fumble all his dance moves and Wayne Brady do his best Bobby Brown impersonation is hot chocolate for my soul.

Every Little Step with Mike Tyson & Wayne Brady from Mike Tyson

Confession: listening to this song still makes me happy, just as it did when I was around 12 and all I wanted in the world was to grow up to be as tall and gorgeous as the lead singer in The Good Girls (video below). It seems my junior high years were a wasteland of misdirected longing informed by the synthesized, saccharine world of early 90's R & B.

P.S.--I'm pretty sure I owned that black unitard with suspenders that the girls wear while they're performing at the school dance. I'm pretty positive I thought I was the shit when I wore it to the local church bazaar when I was 14, too.

a poem to say hello

2010-09-25T11:10:00.000-07:00

How about a poem to say hello? I know I've been missing, but I'm finally settled in one place (well, for the next nine months at least), so I can resume talking to myself on my blog. And to answer: I left San Francisco in late June, was home on the Coast of Mississippi from late June to early August, and recently moved to Oxford, MS, where I'm writing and teaching at Ole Miss for a year.

It's good to live and write at home. I've missed the South. But it's also hard, partly because I'm working on the hardest book I've ever written. And I'm not surfacing on the internet at the best time, I suppose. My brother's anniversary is this coming weekend: loss drains me. So have some Neruda: he speaks of grief, and I hear him.

Walking Around by Pablo Neruda

I don't want to go on being a root in the dark,
insecure, stretched out, shivering with sleep,
going on down, into the moist guts of the earth,
taking in and thinking, eating every day.

I don't want so much misery.
I don't want to go on as a root and a tomb,
alone under the ground, a warehouse with corpses,
half frozen, dying of grief.

(translated by Robert Bly)

the freeze-down

2010-06-20T00:14:00.000-07:00

Before Hurricane Katrina swept across the Gulf Coast and razed the buildings closest to the beach, my sister worked as a hostess at Outback Steakhouse in Gulfport. It was in a small shopping complex on the beach. It was situated at the back end of a large parking lot in an innocuous storefront. At the front of that large parking lot was a nightclub called Illusions, which we fondly called "Delusions." We went to Illusions often, drank neon blue drinks, sat out on the front deck that rimmed the building and talked shit while the weak tidewater of the Gulf of Mexico pulsed blackly across the highway, wave-less. Once, there were so many of us on that deck leaning on the railing that it pulled away from the front of the building like a broken zipper.

I'd often pick my sister up from work, and on one of those nights after work, my sister told me a story. She said that when the customers in Outback lingered over their dinner too long in the evening, when it was 9:30 pm and there was still a long wait for a table, the staff in the restaurant would turn the temperature on the thermostat down so that the AC pumped cold air. This made the diners uncomfortably cold, which was the signal for them to leave. The staff called this tactic the freeze-down.

It's 53 degrees here in San Francisco tonight: I think the city is trying to tell me something.

I will miss Stanford, all the wonderful writers and people I met in the program, my Krav Maga gym and the friends I met there, access to affordable, good acupuncturists and massage therapists, independent film, cheap concerts by some of my favorite artists, delicious Japanese and Senegalese and Thai and Ethiopian and local/organic fresh food, the ocean's constant shhhh, creaking redwoods, and driving on the 101 from Bernal Heights to my apartment while "I Know" plays and the vista of downtown unfurls across the horizon, alight with so much possibility.

I'm moving back to Mississippi on Monday.

packing

2010-06-14T22:55:00.000-07:00

I'm packing for my move back home to Mississippi. I am very close to piling everything I own in the claw foot tub in my current apartment and setting it all ablaze like Ms. Lisa "Left Eye" Lopez.

I have seldom been this tired, and I have a full week ahead of me. It is my last week of Krav Maga, of having access to all the shops that San Francisco has to offer, plus I have around fifteen billion boxes of books to cart to the Post Office, laundry to do, clothes to drop off at Goodwill, more boxes to bring to my cousin's house for "rigged" shipping, and friends to see. I think I'm going to sneak off on Sunday and go to the Armstrong Redwoods, take a little pilgrimage before I leave to the big trees that make me dizzy when I try to look up at their tops. Or Thursday, perhaps? I must go.

in dreams

2010-05-27T21:18:00.000-07:00

The Seven Ages by Louise Gluck

In my first dream the world appeared
the salt, the bitter, the forbidden, the sweet
In my second I descended

I was human, I couldn't just see a thing
beast that I am

I had to touch, to contain it

I hid in the groves,
I worked in the fields until the fields were bare--

time
that will never come again--
the dry wheat bound, caskets
of figs and olives

I even loved a few times in my disgusting human way

and like everyone I called that accomplishment
erotic freedom,
absurd as it seems

The wheat gathered and stored, the last
fruit dried: time

that is hoarded, that is never used,
does it also end?

In my first dream the world appeared
the sweet, the forbidden
but there was no garden, only
raw elements

I was human:
I had to beg to descend
the salt, the bitter, the demanding, the preemptive

And like everyone, I took, I was taken
I dreamed

I was betrayed:

Earth was given to me in a dream
In a dream I possessed it.

what I carried through the city

2010-05-25T00:10:00.000-07:00

I was in New York City at the end of last week and during the weekend. While I was utterly miserable while I lived there from 2001-2003, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I loved the city during this visit and my last visit (during December 2008 for a reading at BAM through A Public Space). Of course, there are reasons I was unhappy while I lived in NYC: my brother had just died months before my move there, I was poor, I was in a toxic, bad relationship. The city had no sympathy for any of that.

Now when I visit, I feel differently, not so beat down. Of course I carry my brother's death, the failed relationship, my poverty with me, but-- now I can wonder at Harlem, Central Park, Midtown, the Village, Brooklyn. Even the smell of the subway was familiar, comforting, almost. I became who I am in that place. I'm grateful to the gauntlet in a way, proud to have spent some of the hardest years of my life in New York City, thankful for what that terrible time taught me about how strong I could be, what I could endure and become better through. Now I can enjoy dinner in a small Mexican restaurant in Fort Greene with some of the best friends of my life, with the Spring night cooling outside the windows, the trees rustling, the red buildings lighting up, the sidewalk simmering, the trains rolling past under the grate, and not feel as if I am being swallowed by the mouth of that relentless, roiling city.

Still, the relentless push of the people towards one another, the relentless push of those buildings upward, made me want poetry. How about this?

The Sixth Night: Waking by Muriel Rukeyser

That first green night of their dreaming, asleep beneath the Tree,
God said, "Let meanings move," and there was poetry.

At that dinner in Fort Greene, one of my friends asked me who my favorite poet was and I blanked. I finally fumbled out Li-Young Lee with El's prompting, and then stumbled onto Louise Erdrich after that. I think I'll have to add Muriel Rukeyser to this list. Beautiful.

New York City

2010-05-22T21:05:00.001-07:00

I was in Fort Greene earlier today. I'm in Crown Heights now. Tomorrow, I'll probably be in Manhattan again. I was run ragged in meetings on Thursday and Friday, and I'm happy that I was able to chill in my old hood (Ft. Greene) today with an old friend (Ms. J). I think I finally understand why New Yorkers are bitter about the way the city constantly changes: I lived in New York for 2 1/2 years, and it's been 7 years since I moved away, and I think I've reached the threshold for being able to remember my way around. This city is a different beast now.

reading grief

2010-05-11T23:00:00.001-07:00

Earlier this afternoon, I read Donald Antrim's essay from the New Yorker about his grief from his mother's death called "I Bought a Bed." I then read the first 70 pages of Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking. I can barely bear to read these things; longer pieces on death and loss steadily grind my armor down so that the open wound of my sorrow is exposed, which makes me cry.

Poetry helps.

Lullaby

I would not sing you to sleep.
I would press my lips to your ear
and hope the terror in my heart stirs you.

--Reetika Vazirani

N.E.R.D. concert video

2010-05-11T22:56:00.000-07:00

This is a video made by the Kin folks at Microsoft: the Kin is the new Microsoft phone and it's supposed to be amazing and integrate all your social networking media in one place. They sponsored the show in San Francisco on Saturday. This video does nothing at all to capture the sweaty, frenetic energy of the crowd and the performers.

KIN: N.E.R.D. & Asher Roth in San Francisco from We Are Always Here on Vimeo.

I'm the light-skinned ghost in the front row (I like to call that my San Francisco pallor).

Buffy, Angel, teenage hysteria

2010-05-03T00:26:00.000-07:00

(image borrowed from videogameblogger.com)

Last year, I fell in love with Dollhouse even though I didn't know much about Joss Whedon's work, and I'd never watched a full episode of Buffy. About a month ago, I decided to watch Buffy from the beginning. Oh, the magic I was missing! I've managed to burn through six seasons on Netflix. I'm gobbling up the seventh season now. How I missed seeing a woman kick ass on my TV screen. I'm in love.

But the news that Angel, government name David Boreanaz, cheated on his wife breaks my heart. Really, Angel? Really? As soon as I type those words, I'm aware of my reaction, of the fact that I'm conflating the character and the actor who plays him. And this makes me think about the nature of fiction, of film, of reality and fame, and while I can't come up with any valuable conclusions on why I'm conflating the actor with the character, the creator with the creation, I can resolve to continue loving the character and ignoring the antics of the actor, who inevitably disappoints.

That is to say: the current culture of fame exhausts me. I don't want to know that David Boreanaz slept with one of Tiger's mistresses. I don't want to wonder why said mistress needs a celebrity lawyer. I don't want any of it. Give me Buffy and Angel and Bones, and keep the insanity of your bizarre, solipsistic personal lives to yourself, famous people. Please. I'm begging you.

Joss Whedon makes it easy for me to love his characters because they're so full-bodied. I love Oz because he's so scrappy and sweet. Willow and Tara were endearing near the end of their relationship (Tara, the one outlier, was like a wet cotton ball; there are few things that annoy me more than wet cotton balls). Zander is sometimes really, really funny. I'd stalk Angel if he existed. Buffy is kick-ass awesome. Dawn has the perfect scream. Spike is hot. And the 7th season blows without Giles. There. I said it. I'm so invested in the continuity of the story that I'll admit: yes, I'll probably buy the Buffy Season 8 canonical comics. Scratch that, I will. Jesus, I'm a nerd.

Speaking of nerds: I went to a free, impromptu N.E.R.D. concert this past Saturday in San Francisco. While Pharrell sang "She Wants to Move," he leaned over into the front row, shook hands, grabbed arms, crooned to the women shoving and reaching for him before addressing me for a line, for two lines, crouching closer, caressing my temple, my hair, from the top of my head to the bulb of my skull and down to my neck before moving on to another ecstatic fan, and I swooned.

Logically, I know the concert was about performance and engaging the fans, but on Saturday the groupie in me responded to Pharrell as a teenage animal with weak knees and supplicating palms raised plaintively like why? I'm surprised I didn't faint, and I'm sure I looked like I might cry. Pathetic. I know I'm conflating the creation and the creator again, but when I'm at a concert and I'm sweating profusely, shouting lyrics, being smashed into the railing before the stage, following the singer's every command (put your hands up! jump! make some noise!), the music floods my brain and makes me mindless. So, it seems that while my edict about separating the character from the creator is firm for film, it meets music and it dies.

Simply put: I'm a hysterical teenage girl for N.E.R.D. and a number of other musicians, perhaps most notably, Prince. I cried the first time I heard him play Purple Rain in concert. And the second time. And the third time, too. There's something about the relationship of the fan to the musician that encourages that. There's an undercurrent to these types of performances that reeks of sex, or of a hint of availability, or of familiarity. In the first Prince concert I went to in California (it was around 98 or so, which means it was before he lost his delicious dirty mind), Prince leaned over, palmed his ass, and asked the audience, "Do you like my ass?" I saw Ginuwine in concert in New Jersey once and he flirted with the women in the front row. I saw Common last month in Mountain View, CA, and he dedicated an entire freestyle to a random girl in the audience. I know this, and yet I still feel like I'm suffering from a failure of logical thought and intellect when I swoon at concerts. I'm resigned to my part in that interaction. I sometimes relish it. But keep it out of my film, my TV. Don't tell me who Anthony Stewart Head is having sex with, because really, I don't want to know.

But here's where the quandary of the relationship between creator and audience gets really interesting for me: what about fiction? About writing? What is the relationship between the writer and his or her audience? I do think that fiction fosters a sort of familiarity, that readers, if they respond to a work strongly enough, can feel that the author is someone they'd like to know, could be friends with in everyday life, would like to have a beer with. That this writer knows their life. I read The Color Purple in high school and immediately wanted to know the woman who'd written a book that affected me so strongly, who made one poor Southern girl recognize the pain and beauty in another poor Southern girl as I read. But then she spoke at the university I attended and I was too shy to speak with her, and she seemed absentminded and distant, and suddenly, the author had little allure for me: the heat, the love, the attraction, was for her work. But I've met other writers whose work I admire, and they are lovely human beings, and they are the folks I most love to have many beers with. And it is always a pleasant shock to encounter readers who've enjoyed my work, who find something to love in it, who leave the reading of it richer than when they arrived, and I've spent many hours speaking with them over a beer or two, sharing something of who I am with them. And for some of them, knowing me and reading the book enriches the reading experience. And I am always happy to encourage this. But who knows? Perhaps if I became insanely popular and famous, I'd be a narcissistic terror to my audience, but if that was the case, I think I'd be a worse writer as well. Writing fiction requires me to be open and intuitive about human desire, love, belief, hope, and fear, and it'd probably be difficult to open myself to witnessing the spectrum of human emotion unfold around me if I were an egotistical, dismissive asshole.

Then again, I'm a woman who is still tenderly touching her concert bruises and blushing at the memory of the direct gaze, the insincere caress, and her nerdy hysteria, so what do I know?

so you know

2010-04-18T01:53:00.000-07:00

April is National Poetry Month. This should explain why I've been posting so many poems lately. This and the fact that I'm working on a new project that is making me alternately giddy and despondent. This is why I am up wrestling with my writing at 2 am. Anyhow, here are two sections from Patricia Smith's poem "Tankas." These excerpts are from her amazing book about Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans called Blood Dazzler.

I have three children,
but only two arms. He falls
and barely splashes,
that's how incredibly light
he is--was. How death whispers.

I found my sister
whirling in the peppered blue,
my father under rock,
and then myself, fingering
the hard barrell of a gun.

I believe in the necessity of poetry. Call me a fool, but I think we need poetry to understand our humanity, and I think that it enables us to believe in something beyond our humanity. I guess this also means that you can call me delirious and sleep deprived. Oh well. I'll stand by this in the morning.

a poem by Deborah Garrison

2010-04-17T00:35:00.000-07:00

On New Terms

I'd like to begin again. Not touch my
own face, not tremble in the dark before
an intruder who never arrives. Not
apologize. Not scurry, not pace. Not
refuse to keep notes of what meant the most.
Not skirt my father's ghost. Not abandon
piano, or a book before the end.
Not count, count, count and wait, poised--the control,
the agony controlled--for the loss of
the one, having borne, I can't be, won't breathe
without: the foregone conclusion, the pain
not yet met, the preemptive mourning
without which
nothing left of me but smoke.

--Deborah Garrison

Two poems by John Berryman

2010-04-12T20:13:00.000-07:00

To Bhain Campbell
I told a lie once in a verse. I said
I said I said I said "The heart will mend,
Body will break and mend, the foam replace
For even the unconsolable his taken friend."
This is a lie. I had not been here then.

Epilogue
He died in December. He must descend
Somewhere, vague and cold, the spirit and seal,
The gift descend, and all that insight fail
Somewhere. Imagination one's one friend
Cannot see there. Both of us at the end.
Nouns, verbs do not exist for what I feel.

meeting lovely writers at AWP & getting smashed with NASA

2010-04-11T19:22:00.000-07:00

I went to an AWP convention (for the first time) in Denver late last week. You know, I've been a member of a few writing communities: Ann Arbor's (because of the University of Michigan) and Stanford's (because of the Stegner program), and in each community, I continually found myself flabbergasted at the camaraderie I experienced there between people who love words. AWP was like both of those programs--on crack. At 2 am on Friday night, I actually stood in the middle of a room (granted, it was a bar, I was thoroughly drunk, and many of my writer-friends from Michigan, Stanford, and the South were there) and happily thought, "These are my people."

On Friday morning, I was part of a panel on place in fiction, talked to a few black women writers (one from New Orleans: go Angele!), wandered around the book-fair and looked at beautiful literary journals, and then crawled back to my room, exhausted, to nap and doze to a movie about World War I. That evening, I ate surprisingly good Cajun/Creole food (in Denver!), drank beer, sat in a rooftop bar and talked smack with my Stegs, met the lovely folks from the University of Mississippi, and then was forced out by cops from the rooftop to the bar in the first floor of the hotel, where there was a flurry of networking and drinking going on, which is where I had my revelation.

You think I stopped there, don't you? Oh no, I didn't. After the cops cleaned us out of the first floor bar of the hotel, I walked with my friends to a hipster diner, which had run out of fries, and had breakfast. Then I ran back to my hotel, threw the rest of my crap in my bags, and hustled downstairs to catch my shuttle to the airport. My flight was at 6 am. I did a sort of jerky doze for 2 hours on the plane, since I'm terrified of flying and had only taken one Xanax, which means that every time we hit turbulence, I was convinced we were due for a crash-landing in the damn Rocky mountains. Once we landed in San Francisco, I drove home and went to sleep for four hours. I then rose, dressed, and barely made it to NASA's Bay Area party, Yuri's Night, which celebrates the voyage of the first human in space with multiple music performances, airshows, science projects, food, and models of rockets and airplanes, down in Mountain View.

Why did I do this, you're asking? It's because N.E.R.D. was performing. And 5:30 pm found me six people back, stage left. My only complaint is that the show was too short. Shae had mad energy, Fam's grill was blinding and he grinned hard when they performed a snippet of "Shots," Chad was cool as ice on the keyboards, and Pharrell, well Pharrell was obscure and nerdy and handsome and charismatic as ever. How obscure? He said, "I think NASA should be the White House," at the end of their performance. It wasn't until I'd watched the airshow, terrified, wandered into the hangar to listen to a DJ spin otherworldly beats on his turntables, then wandered into the larger hangar to sit in on two lectures about SETI and the search for habitable planets that I realized just what Pharrell meant by that comment...I think. Common came on later and rocked it: lots of freestyling, lots of hits, lots of energy, and he played for the entire hour, too. NASA knows how to throw a party! (I bet you never thought you'd read that sentence.) The only mildly upsetting part of the night (besides the fact that I could have taken a pic with Pharrell and Fam but didn't because I didn't have my damn camera) was how confused I was by the mix of folks who were there: I couldn't tell if the costumes that people were wearing were costumes, or if those were their regular clothes. It was as I was mesmerized by a tall, broad girl wearing pink panties and a green dinosaur's tail making out with her boyfriend in the DJ hangar that I realized that I was sorely under-dressed. I wish I had pictures for you, but because of the aforementioned missing camera, I don't. Ah well, this is what words are for, yes?

This means that I passed out last night and slept for around twelve hours. However, I've been up for around 8 hours now, coming down off my post-AWP, post-concert high by listening to Full Crate & Mar, two artists from Amsterdam who I've recently discovered. I've watched their "I Said" this video at least five times today, and I might watch it again just for the hell of it because it's so beautiful. Mar looks a little like Val Kilmer (and a lot like this guy at home I know), and this video looks like a really messy break up, but boy, the music is spectacular and when I watch the video, it feels like love. Enjoy.

Full Crate & Mar - I Said from Nalden on Vimeo.

(That said, I do wonder what I'd do if as my boyfriend was breaking up with me on a rooftop, his friend came over, put his hand in my face, and started shooting musical sparks out of his fingers. I'd probably look as bewildered and heartbroken as the girl at the end of the video.)

wrestling on SyFy?

2010-04-07T00:39:00.000-07:00

Maybe John Evans can answer this question for me: why did SyFy show wrestling for two hours tonight? How is wrestling in any way related to science fiction? Perhaps I should have watched. Perhaps every wrestler on the show has to have a science fiction related costume? Alien warriors, predators, bulb-headed martians? And the women who are their sidekicks must wear metallic bikinis and paint their skin green? Probably not, though. From what I saw, it was plain old wrestling: large men who are pumped-up on steroids wearing neon green and orange and yellow bikini trunks, who also sweat a lot and scare me.

Except the Rock. Have I mentioned my love for the Rock? (No input needed here, John.) I love the Rock. Sigh.

Suddenly, I feel in need of saving.

*smacks head*

And now I see the sci-fi connection! Well played, SyFy. Well played.

a P.S. (sorta)

2010-04-05T00:43:00.000-07:00

So, I took the Lawrence poem in my last post from The Art of Losing: Poems of Grief & Healing, which was edited by Kevin Young, and published by Bloomsbury--my second publisher.

This is the good news I was alluding to around two posts ago. My second novel, tentatively titled Salvage the Bone, should be appearing in fall of 2011, and a nonfiction work, partly about my brother, will be published shortly afterward, both bought forth by the wonderful folks at Bloomsbury.

There are at least two places I tear up whenever I watch The Neverending Story. (Just follow me for a moment, here.) The first is when Artax sinks into the Swamp of Sadness and dies. I've cried at that part every time I've watched it since I was around seven or so, and I saw it for the first time in the library of DeLisle Elementary School. The second part that I cry at now that I am an adult is when Atreyu meets the rock-biter at the end of the film, just as the last bits of Fantasia are being ripped asunder by the Nothing. The mountainous rock-biter sits with his legs spread, his hands lying palm up in his lap, and he is crying. He looks down at Atreyu and says, "They look like big, good, strong hands." He tells Atreyu that when the Nothing came, he was not able to hold the racing snail, the nighthawk, the stupid bat, that the Nothing ripped his friends away from him. The Nothing erased them. The rock-biter looks at his hands, his face sad, so recently convinced of his feebleness, his failure, and he says, "They look like good, strong hands, don't they?"

Let's hope I can hold on to my stories and tell them well. Let's hope that these are good, strong hands.

silence-haunted

2010-04-05T00:28:00.000-07:00

Silence

D.H. Lawrence

Since I lost you, I am silence-haunted;
Sounds wave their little wings
A moment, then in weariness settle
On the flood that soundless swings.

Whether the people in the street
Like pattering-ripples go by,
Or whether the theatre sighs and sighs
With a loud, hoarse sigh:

Or the wind shakes a ravel of light
Over the dead-black river,
Or last night's echoings
Make the daybreak shiver:

I feel the silence waiting
To sip them all up again,
In its last completeness drinking
Down the noise of men.

All of that is to say that I miss my brother. Strongly and darkly. This poem speaks to a loss that I can hardly bear. Lawrence may have been a sexist jerk, but the man knew loss.

Janelle Monae, more talking to myself

2010-03-11T13:18:00.001-08:00

I have wonderful book-related news, but who feels like writing about these things right now? Not me. Instead, I'd rather post links. I know that's what you don't come here for, but um...that's what you're getting. If you're even there. Mostly, this blog has become my own cyber experiment in schizophrenia. "Let's see how long Jesmyn can sit in this virtual room and talk to herself." Oh, I was a weird kid, Internet; I can do this for a long, long time.

I'm going to see this lovely android in San Francisco on March 21. I heard that she kills in concert.

Her voice isn't as smooth when she sings live, I guess dancing makes that difficult, but she has ridiculous energy and charisma that make up for that.

lessons

2010-02-05T12:20:00.001-08:00

I take back everything I said about finding several pieces of clothing from Victoria's Secret that I just had to own. I ordered those necessary items online last week: a turquoise linen cardigan, a tribal print romper, a shirt, and a neon red bathing suit. Everything but the shirt is going back to the store.

The problem is that there is a fundamental disjuncture between what the clothes look like in the catalogue or online and how they fit in real life. Why do they not carry any of these items in their stores? The shirt was a little roomy, but it still resembled the picture and fit as pictured online. However, the rest of it was a total wash: the cardigan had ill fitting baggy pockets, the romper was too short in the crotch area and had an empire waistline, which meant I looked like a pregnant toddler, and the neon red bathing suit was actually bright pink. I hate bright pink. So today it's all going back to Victoria's Secret, and I've learned my lesson: I'll stick to...ahem...underthings, and leave Victoria's Secret clothing to the romance novel heroines.

pure love: i'm jealous

2010-01-26T01:52:00.001-08:00

Dimlite – Roo (A dedication) from Ehstrawlogy Produkte on Vimeo.

This beat is pure love. I'm so jealous of Roo. Whoever you are, Roo, you're very, very lucky. (I've never encountered anything by Dimlite, but now I want to listen to everything he's ever produced so I can find gems like this.)

shameful little secrets

2010-01-25T00:31:00.000-08:00

As I was perusing the br...well, the "undergarments" available online through Victoria's Semi-Annual Sale, I had a brain spasm and clicked on the clothing section. I then immediately saw several items that I compulsively dumped into a Victoria's Secret wishlist: among the gems I covet are an all-in-one romper, a glittery cashmere shirt, and a tie-dyed green maxi dress. This admission causes me deep shame because I've always looked at VS catalogs and thought that the clothing was inspired by the company's closest approximation of what a romance novel heroine would wear. My estimation has not changed.

So, what am I? Simply put: a country bumpkin with really bad taste in clothing. I always joke around with my girl/friends that I secretly am attracted to the brightest fuchsia lipstick, the gaudiest prints, the worst cuts just because. It's like my bad taste is ingrained. Genetic. And it shows itself in the way that I style my hair. I can fight this urge to look like a Fresh Prince of Bel-Aire extra who's been dismissed from the set for her bad taste in acid-washed denim overalls: most of the time I pick funky, semi-timeless articles of clothing--but my hair and I are always at war, and in the end, both of us lose.

(I would offer photos as proof, but I have no wish to subject you to several pictures of myself with a side part wherein my forehead has become a ravenous optical beast and chewed up the entire frame of the photo. That is the horror of the side part curly hair. Fine, I relent. The ravenous forehead:

P.S.-The cutie in the orange shirt is my cousin Sarah.

Meanwhile, the middle part curly hair looks great. Why did it take me 32 years to figure this out?

The middle part straight hair [I will spare you that picture] unleashes the square block that is my wide forehead and rectangular jaw; this look infers that I can split rocks with my teeth--I have split a hard plastic mouthguard with those very teeth while suffering from bruxism, but that's fodder for another entry. Guess how often I wear my hair like this when it's straight? All the time. And what am I, twelve? Does my forehead actually need this much blogger/mental space?)

That, my dears, is shameful little secret one: yes, I am a Fresh Prince of Bel-Aire extra reject.

The second shameful little secret is that I've wasted approximately 80 hours of the past two weeks watching the complete Farscape series.

This is why I am a true nerd: I am two discs away from completing the series, and I have actually cut down on my watching in order to stretch the pleasure of indulging in space opera out. And unlike my secret attraction for horrible prints and fuchsia lipstick, I am not at all ashamed of my love for Farscape; the show is frelling awesome. I have two niggling questions that have been bugging me, though: why, in moments of panicked crisis, just as the latest Peacekeeper marauder or Scarren deathship or the latest episode's hostile aliens in enemy spaceship approach Moya (the living spaceship the Farscape good guys live on), someone in the crew suggests, "Starburst, Moya!" And Pilot, in at least 75% of these instances, says, "Moya can't starburst, she doesn't have enough power" or "Moya can't starburst because she's too weak from the damage from the pulse cannons" or "Moya can't starburst because there's a leaking toilet in the bathroom!" And second, why are a lot of the aliens the crew encounters simply human actors with bad haircuts, bad hygiene, and a few tattoos? If that's all it takes to be an alien, I know plenty. (Shit, I might be one.)

Besides that, the show is all awesome. I love the Jim Henson company and think that it can do no wrong. And who isn't in love with John Crichton and Aeryn Sun, or in love with their love, or whatever? I actually cried while watching a few episodes; yes, their love is that heartbreaking. And there, there's my last shameful little secret I will share with you tonight.

lovely lit

2010-01-19T23:12:00.000-08:00

It seems that whenever life isn't going so well, I find these beautiful bits of language that make me happy to be alive, and make me believe in beauty, in love, in all of it. From James Joyce's Dubliners, The Dead, when the husband, Gabriel, is thinking of a letter that he wrote once to his wife Gretta. He wrote:

Why is is that words like these seem to me so dull and cold? Is it because there is no word tender enough to be your name?

Swoon. And then, the very end:

It [the snow] was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furley lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

Beautiful.

the worthy and worthless

2010-01-15T19:39:00.000-08:00

I'm finishing one of those days. You know, the kind where something serendipitous happens and then something negative happens to muck it up? Of course, none of this has any meaning in the face of what people are enduring in Haiti right now after that horrifying earthquake. So first, here are places that you can go to help.

http://www.yele.org/
http://www.redcross.org/
http://www.unicef.org/

The first link is Wyclef's organization, which I'm assuming has been flooded with donations since the website was acting a bit wonky when I grabbed the link. The second is for the Red Cross, and the third is for UNICEF. There are several setups where you can text a number to a number, and this will allow you to donate $5 (it will be added to your phone bill). I've seen these flashed in status updates on Facebook, but I don't have access to them right now. I'm assuming you should be able to get the information from each organization's web page. Check it out. Give.

So, on to the worthless: my day peaked with a visit to the acupuncturist, where I was treated with a free foot massage. It was my first massage of any kind, and it was incredible. I see why people love massage so much. The therapist ran her hand down the top of my foot, and I felt it through my entire leg. I immediately wanted to propose marriage to her, much in the same way I always want to propose to Mr. Eddie when it's 4 AM and I'm sitting in his deli, drunk from the club, eating a hot fried fish sandwich and fries with ketchup and hot sauce. The acupuncture left me feeling light and airy and happy, while the massage had me rooted in my feet, which still haven't stopped tingling with sensation even now, six hours later. I then walked home to find a parking ticket on my car; I'd forgotten to move my car for street cleaning. Twenty minutes ago I drove to Krav for a knock-out bag class only to remember that the class began at 6:30, not 7:30. Sigh. So yes, I've been up and down. Now I'm at my desk for the night in sweats and wool socks about to get into this new novel's business. Yes, I'm starting something new that differs from that other new novel I was working on last quarter, which was definitely not that new novel that I wrote last year. Believe me, I realize the luxury of this, of being able to do what I love and make money at it and have people read it and respond to it positively, of indulging in maintaining my health, of sitting in my warm room in cozy clothing while listening to a Michael Jackson mixtape while I work. I'm grateful.

Do what you can. Even if that's giving, or being grateful, or whatever. And watch Mac and Jack's Vaudeville Show because even though Mike was strange and awfully twisted, the 7 year old in me still loves him and his beautiful smile (and wants him to be her boyfriend).

All Hallows

2009-12-03T23:17:00.000-08:00

This is the most recent poem that rearranged my brain.

All Hollows
-by Louise Gluck

Even now this landscape is assembling.
The hills darken. The oxen
sleep in their blue yoke,
the fields having been
picked clean, the sheaves
bound evenly and piled at the roadside
among cinquefoil, as the toothed moon rises:

This is the barrenness
of harvest or pestilence.
And the wife leaning out the window
with her hand extended, as in payment,
and the seeds
distinct, gold, calling
Come here
Come here, little one

And the soul creeps out of the tree.

One of the poetry Stegner Fellows gave this to me while they were passing out poems to students in White Plaza during the week before Halloween. It was Poem in a Pocket Day. The Stegners asked some students if they wanted poems, and the students would shy away with averted eyes or ignore them as if they hadn't spoken. Who wouldn't want a poem in the pocket? I wish I had my books of poetry that are currently in messy, disordered boxes at home: I would love to have a poem a day, again. In Michigan and New York, I would often wake and read poems before starting my day. As Blue would say, I need my "tools."

Now I'm off to watch Nature's Most Amazing Events. This disc from Netflix includes such exhilarating events as "The Great Melt," "The Great Salmon Run," and "The Great Migration." Yes, I rented this on purpose. Yes, this is my idea of excitement. Yes, I know. Don't say it.

Diary of a N.E.R.D.

2009-11-15T17:22:00.000-08:00

Oh, how I wish I could quit you.

MTV Diary of... N.E.R.D from Adrian Hylton on Vimeo.

I missed them in San Francisco a few weeks ago. They did a smaller show at USF before their gig with Jay Z in Fresno. My heart--it breaks.

American Dad

2009-11-14T13:16:00.000-08:00

I loathe FOX tv. First, the station has too many ridiculous reality TV shows. Second, FOX kills off all the good shows: Arrested Development, Firefly, and now Dollhouse--how in the hell am I going to get my Tahmoh fix? I try not to ever become invested in any of the network's shows, but still I do. When I'm up at midnight having problems falling asleep, HULU is my friend, and why shouldn't I watch fifteen episodes of Family Guy?

American Dad brings the funny. I've suffered laughing fits from several episodes. It makes no sense, of course, but how can I not laugh when Steve, the alien, and Stan, the "American Dad" and conservative FBI agent, "accidentally" get high because they are trapped in a barn full of burning weed? And they end up in a convenience store? This is one of my favorite clips ever.

Or how about when Roger fools Steve, Stan's son, into believing he's been admitted to the American Hogwarts--which turns out to be a traphouse.

Oh, it gets better.

I'm in ghetto-nerd heaven over here.

the new header picture

2009-11-13T23:03:00.000-08:00

My face was much too large in that last photograph. Every time I logged into my blogger account, I felt assaulted by my own picture. I also felt sort of King-Kong-ish, so I changed the image in my header.

That is the legendary Buddy Lee Dungaree and my little boyfriend/cousin (the boyfriend part is a joke) Jaylen about to jump off a cliff at Wolf River. Or that could be the twins from Where the Line Bleeds as younger kids, swinging from a rope out and into their river.

I miss my boys--both sets. So whichever caption you like works.

all over

2009-11-13T21:40:00.001-08:00

This is a schizophrenic post.

First, I really want to embed this slide show about "hip-hop muppets" from the The Urban Daily, but I can't figure out how to do it. So, here's a (cut and paste) link:

http://theurbandaily.com/special-features/gallery-hip-hop-muppets/

Check it out. It's funny.

I haven't updated my blog in a while, and the reason I haven't is because I've been very busy this quarter: I'm a teaching assistant for a class on some of the hardest modernist authors (I read As I Lay Dying one week, and Absalom Absalom the next week), I'm working on my third novel, attempting to revise my second novel, and still doing promo for my first novel. I traveled twice this fall for my book and once to attend the best.wedding.EVER: hi El and Lo! And on top of all this, I'm currently applying for jobs for next year. That is to say: this fall has been rough.

Anyhow, I know it's older, but I wanted to post the preview for Chris Rock's Good Hair.

I also wanted to post a (cut and paste) link to an article, originally posted at the Miami Herald, that refers to Good Hair, which I haven't had the opportunity to see yet. (I think I'll try to catch it at the Lumiere tomorrow).

http://www.miamiherald.com/living/columnists/leonard-pitts/story/1309381.html

I've worn my hair natural for around nine years now, much to the shame and dismay of many folks in my family; it's nice to see a film about natural hair in the black community be made, and also see the natural hair movement gaining steam. When I began growing my hair out nine years ago, there was no movement. The shame of it is that one of my white friends, my beloved Sarah, introduced me to the world of natural haircare blogs this year; I had no idea that they even existed. Now, I spend hours procrastinating while I peruse natural hair blogs and tutorials online. Lol. Anyhow, if you're at all interested in seeing Good Hair, read Leonard Pitt Jr.'s article. This is the most lovely paragraph, I think.

I am your brother, your father, your husband and your son. I've seen you in church with big hats on, giving children the evil eye. And at the jail on visiting day, shoring up that wayward man. And at the bus stop in the rain on your way to work. And at the dining table with pen and paper, working miracles of money. When I was a baby, you nursed me, when we were children, I chased you through the house; when we were dating, I missed half the movie, stealing sugar from you. I saw you born; I took you to your prom; I glowed with pride when you went off to school. I have married you and buried you. I love your smile. A million times, you took my breath away.

You are the rock and salvation of our people, the faith that remains when all hope is gone. So if it's about the need to be beautiful, maybe it's time somebody told you:

You already are. You always were.

It makes me tear up each time I read it.

And I know you've probably heard about Precious as well, if only because Mariah Carey has been doing publicity for it while only focusing on how "ugly" she looked in the role. Mariah, that's what the rest of us call "walking out of the house without applying makeup." You should try it sometime. Anyhow, here's a preview for Precious as well since I'm blabbing on and on about movies and inner and outer beauty instead of working on my mini-lecture I have to give on Hurston next Thursday. Eek!

And now, since I'm slowly healing from the flu, I'm about to lay up on the sofa on this action-packed Friday night and drink warm apple cider while watching basic cable; this means toggling between the Discovery channel, Cartoon Network, and old movies. I promise I'll write again, sooner rather than later.

it's not easy

2009-10-27T00:07:00.000-07:00

Happy Birthday, Joshua.

so ambitious

2009-09-28T22:56:00.000-07:00

I'm not a huge Jay-Z fan. And I'm beefing with Pharrell right now, too. But I love this song. Sometimes when these two get together, it's a sonic revelation, and I'm the sucker peon in the situation, getting rolled over.

(Edited to add: So, Warner objected to copyright content and removed the "So Ambitious" video link from youtube. And I was tempted, for about 30 seconds, to find another version of the video on youtube and link to it. Then I got pissed off and decided if Warner and Jay don't want free publicity, then fuck 'em. Besides, I'm sure you'll hear the song on the radio. Oh well, I guess "the streets" won't be "A&R'ing this," huh Jay?)

And Pharrell and Clipse?

Make me mute with admiration. I beat this song in my car for at least two weeks straight before I left home. Windows down, hot air, clear sky before the September monsoons hit, and Kalani in the passenger seat. It was as if being home in Mississippi was a feeling in the car, and it was so good.

This is why Pharrell and I are beefing. I'm mad that I have nothing but abject devotion for this man and his beats. (I know that Chad is his partner, and they're his beats as well, but Pharrell is the figurehead, so he gets all the blame.) They work me over like good literature, and who likes being a junkie? Not me. Lol.

i'm back, more obnoxious than ever

2009-09-21T03:20:00.000-07:00

I know that is an extremely big-ass, obnoxious photo of myself at the top of the page, but until I find another one better than that, you're going to have to deal with it. I am so happy to finally be able to put an image in my header that I immediately slapped one up there with no regard for what the consequences were going to be. Oops.

I spent my summer doing three things: swimming, drinking, and revising my second novel (which now has a new tentative title). It was a good summer. More on that later when it's not damn near four in the morning Pacific time. Just enjoy the tacky picture for now.

the hurricane that won't end COOKIE MONSTER

2009-06-06T13:27:00.001-07:00

I am caught in a hurricane that won't end. Being in Katrina, even fictionally, is depressing. This made my day a little brighter, though.

Obama has jokes, and so does Wanda

2009-05-11T20:44:00.000-07:00

Both of these videos are from the White House Correspondents' Dinner.

I'm a nerd. I giggled several times. I admit it. And how refreshing to hear him speak about how necessary healthy journalism is to democracy. I heart this man.

They do always catch him with his shirt off, don't they, Wanda?

poetry becasue I cannot sleep

2009-05-11T00:57:00.000-07:00

Most of the poets that I know would think me juvenile for loving Anne Sexton's poetry, but I cannot help it, I do. There is so much beauty and such sadness here.

WHERE I LIVE IN THIS HONORABLE HOUSE OF THE LAUREL TREE

I live in my wooden legs and O
my green green hands.
Too late
to wish that I had not run from you, Apollo,
blood moves still in my bark bound veins,
I, who ran nymph foot to root in flight,
have only this late desire to arm the
trees I lie within. The measure that I have lost
silks my pulse. Each century, the trickeries
of need pain me everywhere.
Frost taps my skin and I stay glossed
in honor, for you are gone in time. The air
rings for you, for that astonishing rite
of my breathing tent undone with your light.
I only know how this untimely lust has tossed
flesh at the wind forever and moved my fears
toward the intimate Rome of the myth we crossed.
I am a fist of my unease
as I spill toward the stars in the empty years.
I build the air with the crown of honor; it keys
my out of time and luckless appetite.
You gave me honor too soon, Apollo.
There is no one left who understands
how I wait
here in my wooden legs and O
my green green hands.

don't get mad

2009-05-04T11:38:00.000-07:00

I'm kind of scared to post this video to my blog since Malice has been putting people on blast on twitter, but I can't help it. I laughed out loud at the beginning of this video, and I have to give him props for saying what he says, for being honest. Also, I love his flow and regularly cosign all of his verses on all of his songs, so yeah, I'm a sucker.

Malice Video Blog 1 from Malice of the Clipse on Vimeo.

Janelle Monae: "Many Moons" Official Short Film

2009-04-28T18:26:00.001-07:00

I thought it was funny that one of the characters has my family's last name (it's Dedeaux, for those who don't know). Beautiful video, and Janelle's a real performer, and has a beautiful voice. Now that's artistry.

viral video: Pharrell vs. McDo

2009-04-24T00:09:00.001-07:00

Pharell Vs Mcdonald's

View more presentations from tblogosphere.

Here's an interesting video that Tarik Mousselmal at SCANBLOG (a French site) sent along to me about the viral video Pharrell vs. McDonalds. You should check it out. Sarah's right; I need one of these viral videos for my next book. Maybe I can get someone famous from the South to come to DeLisle and hang out on St. Stephen's Road with me and some pitbulls. We could have a squirrel barbecue, and then skinny dip in a swimming hole (yes, it all happens in the book). Who's down? David Banner? Bun B? Three 6? Maybe someone from a Northern city should come so the hook would be a city boy encountering the dirty country. Jadakiss? Common? Kanye?

Can you imagine Kanye barbecuing squirrel? Instant viral sensation.

the flights, the fly

2009-04-21T00:34:00.000-07:00

It was hot here in San Francisco. Two days ago, I woke up late after dreaming about my brother, and I puttered around the house before dressing in jeans to meet Sarah for laundry (yeah, when I dream good dreams, I always sleep longer in hope that I can jump back into the dream. We had dinner, and I hugged him. I miss my brother.) Anyhow, as soon as I stepped out of my door, I turned right back around and changed out of my jeans and into a strapless dress and flip flops. In my car, the thermostat read 87 degrees. In Bernal, Mitchell's ice cream at Progressive Grounds kept calling my name, but I had to resist; I'm such a sugar junkie, and I know I shouldn't be exposing Sarah's lovely kid to the bad shit. Lol. It was hard, though. I've been so hungry for this kind of heat. It's the one of the myriad reasons that I can't wait to go back to Mississippi for the summer and eat shrimp and drink beer and get ice cream and sweat. Hmmmm, summer in Mississippi, I miss you. (Mark Twain once said that the coldest winter he ever endured was summer in San Francisco. Word.)

The heat dissipated Wednesday, and San Francisco is once again 45-65 degrees everyday. And the only time my feet feel warm again is in the shower. But! While this heat was here, my roommate and I took advantage of it: windows open, hot breeze blowing through, lovely light moving across high ceilinged rooms. And while this was lovely, it has annoying consequences. Such as this damn fly flying in lazy, panicked, and then lazy circles in my room. Sorry, fly, but you're going to die in here. (I hate flies in the house. I wish I had my cousin E's bug zapper; it looks like a badminton racket, and it murderizes flies. Once, I zapped someone with it while they were drunk and asleep. They woke up with crazy eyes, but then passed back out. I was drunk as well. But that's a story for another time.)

When my friend bought me to the airport on Friday, I thought I was going to die. My last flight, 6 years ago, consisted of me taking vast amounts of dramamine and crying in airports and sobbing over the phone to my friend Mark, "Tell me I am not going to die." This was largely due to September 11, and the 2 plane crashes later that year. So, I arrived at the airport with a bottle of Xanax, an iPod, and my "Catcher in the Rye," The Hero and the Crown, which I have read at least once a year since I was eight years old. Still, when I stood before the security guantlet of x-ray machines and gray plastic bins and security personnel, I was still aghast that I'd committed to flying again.

The first flight from SF to Dallas was stuck in a holding pattern because there was bad weather in Dallas. We were then diverted to Abilene, TX, to get more fuel, and we ended up sitting on the tarmac for 3 hours. So, by the time we got into Dallas, which was only 30 minutes away by air, there was a standby list of over 100 people for the flight out to Little Rock, and then American Airlines cancelled the next flight, and I ended up in a hotel near the airport, eating out of a vending machine for dinner. Corn chips, cheese & wheat crackers, powdered donuts, and Red Fanta. The next day, I flew into Little Rock, and barely made it to my reading/q&a session/signing. Luckily, I had a great moderator (Carol Ann of the Oxford American), and then I wandered around the festival, talked to readers, saw another writer read and speak, and got treated to dinner. I didn't get to wander around the festival at all the next day because everything started at around 1 pm to give folks chances to attend church, and my flight left at 1:30. I was still a little shaky on the flight from Little Rock to Dallas, but I was much better on the flight from Dallas to SF. I was actually so much better, I was able to watch some movies on my iPod instead of listening to my hypnotherapy sessions on repeat, as I had done on 3 of the 4 flights (on one of those flights, the stewardess talked to me the entire time because I was sitting in the very back of the plane).

It's a beginning.

A poem for you, as Poetry Month draws to a close.

Masque
By Brigit Pegeen Kelly

My foot bleeds on the rocks
Of the shallow stream. The crows
Thick above me and at their backs
The larger graveyards. This
Is a mean task, this business
Of burying oneself before one
Is dead. The shovel always
Breaks, the weather worsens,
The spot chosen proves to be
The wrong spot, and the words,
The words of mercy one must
Mutter, possess no mercy
For the flesh: Not with peace,
Not with peace but with a sword
Is the flesh stripped back,
Its many masks flayed off,
Each mask more extravagant
Than the last....

The chief crow performs with panache
His task as smart backdrop
For the naked body dishing dirt
With a broken spade. Brokered wings
And a beaten heart. Dear God! to be
More than a light-hearted jest,
Or a hard-hearted jest....

...The light
Strikes down between the trees.
The shovel strikes dirt. If the seam
Is good. If the seam is good. Then
The heart will put on for a moment
Its royal robes and become a grave man
Standing before an open crypt
With an air of such command
The stained burial wrappings
Of one much beloved, and maligned,
And many days dead, will drop
Away. The self step blind
From its watery grave. And there
Will be: No time. Nor crow.
Nor Lazaurs. Nor Christ.
Nor the hand that writes this.

N.E.R.D @ Warfield

2009-04-16T19:50:00.001-07:00

I went to this show on Tuesday night at the Warfield in San Francisco. See if you can spot me onstage. See, I wasn't lying! Bless my country mouse heart; it's so sad that I lack the groupie gene. If I only had the courage to rub my crotch into Pharrell's onstage. Lol. (For those of you that are hard of seeing, I'm the one in grey all the way to the right of the stage who keeps pulling up her shirt by the straps and flailing about with her arms.) As soon as I hit the stage, I lost all sense of rhythm. All of it. And I actually have it, too. And yes, I did want it, and I did hope it would last forever.

I also should have posted about this beforehand, but I had a reading last night at Stanford. I read along with Dina Hardy, an amazing poet. I read part of the 8th chapter of my novel in progress, Game Dogs and Game Men. The chapter I read was chock full of explicit sex in a bathroom stall, basketball, a mob fight, and profanity. It contained the word 'dick.' After I stopped sweating, I had a great time.

This has been a great birthday month so far: first my birthday, then an insane N.E.R.D. concert, then my Stegner reading at Stanford, and then tomorrow I'm heading to the Arkansas Literary Festival in Little Rock, AK as an author. I'll be showing on Saturday at around 1:00 PM in ASI 110. Go to http://arkansasliteraryfestival.org for more information and to download a program. If you're in the area, come out!

spongebob! and johnny depp

2009-04-13T23:27:00.000-07:00

Johnny Depp is guest starring on the April 17th episode of Spongebob; he voices a surf god who Patrick, Spongebob, and Squidward ask for surfing lessons. There is nothing literary or introspective about this post; there is only pure glee. I love Spongebob.

Chocolate

2009-04-13T03:27:00.001-07:00

Nearly everyone who knows me knows that I love anything with a strong, kick-ass woman in it. As a child, I read The Hero and the Crown, The Secret Garden, The Mixed-up Files..., Pippi Longstocking, Little House on the Prairie, and Harriet the Spy over and over. I've been a fan of television shows like Xena, Witchblade, Farscape, Alias, BSG, and movies like Red Sonja, Girlfight, Tomb Raider, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Kill Bill, and Death Proof. I'm a nerd with bad taste: I know that. I will admit it. I take pride in it. I like what I like, and what I've liked consistently for the past thirty-odd years is reading or watching almost anything that features a woman fighting with verve and vision for something she believes in--questionable taste be damned.

Chocolate, an action movie from Thailand, is about a young woman who spends most of the movie taking all kinds of names. She is the autistic daughter of a pair of star-crossed lovers, and when her mother gets sick, she tries to collect from some of her mother's old debtors. This enrages her mother's former lover/partner in crime, the local Thai crime boss, and things get ugly. His men constantly attack and harass our hero, and she is a dream. All the fight scenes in this movie are real. There is little to no wire work. And Jeeja Yanin flies through the air, bending, twisting, striking, kicking, kneeing, blocking and elbowing her way through scores of men before a final, long, beautiful showdown with the crime boss and his men.

I did not know that Prachya Pinkaew, the director of Chocolate and Ong-Bak, trains his actors, grooms them to fight and assume film roles in the same way that the Shaw Brothers, the legendary Hong Kong Kung-Fu movie directors of such classics like Five Deadly Venoms, Shaolin Master Killer, Return of the Five Deadly Venoms, and Shaolin Challenges Ninja did with the stars of their films. (The last two films were my favorites when I was a kid: after my brother and two sisters and I watched Saturday cartoons, we'd watch hours of Shaw Brothers and other Kung-Fu films my Dad taped off of Kung-Fu Theater.) How can I not admire the tenacity, dedication, and talent that this requires? Yanin trained for four years to play the role of the autistic fighting machine. In four years, I'd be lucky if I could land even one of her moves.

Fine: Chocolate's plot is clumsy, a few actors are really bad, and some of the characters are laughable. My appreciation of the movie is probably further testament to the real underpinning of my nerdy fixation on all things female and kick-ass: my yearning to be free and fierce and fearless as Pippi, Aerin, Xena, the Bride. But the movie is worth watching for Yanin's performance alone, and the charisma of her Yakuza father, her beautiful doomed mother, her well-meaning, dimwitted best friend, and the villainous crime boss are the crunchy candy coating of Chocolate. Watch the trailer; be amazed.

I Love Sarah Jane

2009-04-13T00:11:00.001-07:00

I love I Love Sarah Jane.

I've been a zombie enthusiast for a few years now, and this is one of the best zombie films I've seen. And it's only fifteen minutes long. It was a short film selection at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival.

It's 28 Days Later meets Lord of the Flies. I loved that book when I was a kid. (Poor Piggy) Enjoy.

chester french and federico garcia lorca

2009-04-10T18:22:00.000-07:00

Go here.

http://chesterfrench.com/mixtape/index_homepage.html

Download their mixtape. It's good: it's full of quirky, textured production, and catchy, smart songs. My favorites are Nerd Girl (duh), Campus Kingpin, Life in LA....

OK, forget it; I can't choose. I love it all! This kind of immediate unmitigated enthusiasm is embarrassing and makes me feel prepubescent: cue twelve year-old Jesmyn with her hair in knockers and braids, glass heart earrings, overlarge teeth, wearing secondhand bell bottoms and overalls, painfully skinny and awkward, reading and playing Prince obsessively because language and music sometime make her feel right. Yes, she lives inside of me still, and yes, they bought her back. Doesn't happen often with music.

Clinton Sparks, the DJ, describes Chester French as a mixture between The Beatles and Outkast. And I can see it. I think that's why they caught me: the combination of soaring vocals, witty lyrics, adventurous beats, and bastard hip-hop/rock/alternative punch is sticky. The guest list is insane: Pharrell, Common, Janelle Monae, Pusha T from the Clipse, Bun B, Talib Kweli, and the list goes on. (Is all that heat on one album even legal?) The mixtape is peppered with skits, and every one is hilarious. And since I've been sick for the past week and a half, I really needed those laughs.

Speaking of language that makes me feel right: it's National Poetry Month. I can't promise you a poem a day, but I can promise you one right now. Enjoy.

Gacela of the Dark Death
by Federico García Lorca
Translated by Robert Bly

I want to sleep the sleep of the apples,
I want to get far away from the busyness of the cemeteries.
I want to sleep the sleep of that child
who longed to cut his heart open far out at sea.

I don't want them to tell me again how the corpse keeps all its blood,
how the decaying mouth goes on begging for water.
I'd rather not hear about the torture sessions the grass arranges for
nor about how the moon does all its work before dawn
with its snakelike nose.

I want to sleep for half a second,
a second, a minute, a century,
but I want everyone to know that I am still alive,
that I have a golden manger inside my lips,
that I am the little friend of the west wind,
that I am the elephantine shadow of my own tears.

When it's dawn just throw some sort of cloth over me
because I know dawn will toss fistfuls of ants at me,
and pour a little hard water over my shoes
so that the scorpion claws of the dawn will slip off.

Because I want to sleep the sleep of the apples,
and learn a mournful song that will clean all earth away from me,
because I want to live with that shadowy child
who longed to cut his heart open far out at sea.

From: www.poets.org

P.S.-I tried to link the Chester French webpage, but Blogger is giving me the finger.

germs for my birthday

2009-04-04T21:25:00.000-07:00

My birthday was this past Wednesday. The good things I got were: cards, flowers, workshop, dinner and some of the best virgin drinks I've ever had at a bar in the Mission. The bad things I received were: workshop and germs. Yes, workshop fits both.

I've been sick since Wednesday morning. I think I caught something Tuesday night at Krav; the class was so packed we barely had room to maneuver, and after doing various punching drills on the bags, we learned how to get out of headlocks, with partners. So with all the sweat pouring and rough breathing going on, who knows what the hell I caught.

This all means that I have been hibernating for the past few days with my humidifier on blast. This also means that I am at home on a Saturday night, in bed, blowing my nose, eating canned peaches and drinking OJ, and missing an insane Stegner party that Will is throwing. He bought special fancy sodas for me since I cannot drink due to my headache medicine, and I cannot go. This, more than the mucus, breaks my heart.

The Muppets are going to help me get through my lonely, sickly Saturday night. Here's the Swedish Chef and Animal, serenading me in honor of my mixed birthday.

pale horse, pale rider

2009-03-24T15:19:00.000-07:00

It hasn't been very literary around here lately. Here's a quote from Katherine Anne Porter's Pale Horse, Pale Rider that will attempt to ameliorate that. I read it yesterday. The main character, Miranda, is sick with a debilitating flu, and her boyfriend, Adam, is nursing her back to health.

"Miranda sighed, and lay back on the pillow and thought, I must give up, I can't hold out any longer. There was only that pain, only that room, and only Adam. There were no longer any multiple planes of living, no tough filaments of memory and hope pulling taut backwards and forwards holding her upright between them. There was only this one moment and it was a dream of time, and Adam's face, very near hers, eyes still and intent, was a shadow, and there was to be nothing more...."

P vs McDonald's

2009-03-24T15:11:00.001-07:00

This right here? Is killing me. The setup is: Pharrell's in Paris, has a layover with the N.E.R.D. crew, and wants some McDonalds. The restaurant workers are not having it, though. "Breakfast only." So Pharrell puts on a gotdamn musical in the empty, early morning McDonalds. The workers are not impressed.

I was.

Electro Rock vs TKO: Part Two

2009-03-24T01:21:00.001-07:00

I have to admit, though, that as an adult, I realized that Electro Rock (in the first movie, Breakin') was not playing. The dancer that really blows me away is the mean Hispanic guy who always looks like he's sucking on a jawbreaker: his name is Poppin Taco, and his partner's name is Poppin Pete. According to a poster on youtube.com, Poppin Taco worked with Michael Jackson and probably had a hand in teaching him/inventing the Moonwalk, which breakers call the "backslide." Ok, ignore the fact that he was called Poppin Taco (I know it's un-PC as hell), and watch and be amazed.

Breakin' Turbo Broom Dance

2009-03-23T00:53:00.001-07:00

In 1984, my brother and I thought that this was the most amazing thing in the entire world. We'd watch this scene from Breakin' over and over. We worshipped Turbo. We'd watch our Uncle Troy breakdance, and then we'd attempt to do what he did. The level of our expertise only extended as far as The Wave and The Centipede. We were proud and awesome. Ignore the strings and enjoy.

entertainment, timewasting: yes

2009-03-17T21:19:00.001-07:00

I waste a lot of time web surfing. Lately, I've made a couple of good finds. Enjoy. I'll probably link these later. (Secretly, I want you to waste your time like I've been wasting mine.)

http://www.illdoctrine.com/
Jay Smooth is a video blogger who talks mostly about hip hop, politics, and current events. He also gives viewers the best of both worlds because he's smart and funny. He did a really insightful blog on talking about racism, and a really funny one about the Budden vs. Ransom rap beef. Check him out.

http://www.playcloths.com/blog/
The Clipse, two of my favorite rappers ever, have started a clothing line called Playcloths (pronounced 'playclothes'), and they've attached a blog to their online store. Whoever is writing this blog is hilarious the way my boys at home are: sort of vulgar, quick, witty, full of hood references. I could hang out with this dude all day and just laugh. The posts on the Michael Jackson auction and the 2.5 million dollar iPhone are what did me in. Today, as I was struggling to write and losing focus, I kept wandering back to the blog, reading entries, and laughing like a deaf old man to an empty room. Good times.

http://smoking section.uproxx.com
This is another hip hop blog called the Smoking Section, which as far as I can tell, consists of multiple bloggers posting about the hip hop news that the general public doesn't hear: new artists to watch for, mixtape releases, rants about emo rappers, and every once in a while, they post pictures of half-naked girls (that was a warning, not an endorsement). However, I felt like I hit the jackpot today (on St. Paddy's!) because I found an entry on an up and coming artist named Drake:

http://smokingsection.uproxx.com/TSS/2009/03/drake-lust-for-life

You already know him. He's wheelchair Jimmy on the most recent Degrassi, and the only reason that I know who he is is because Shayne used to watch the show religiously. I'd actually fallen in love with his music a few months ago when my sister sent me a mixed CD of music from home, and I kept playing one song on repeat, Forever, which featured Lil Wayne. Well, I found out today that the artist who sings the hook and also raps on the track, and does so with a knowing, sincere, tortured, vulnerable cool, is Drake. And he's good. Listen to 'Lust for Life', the track that the Smoking Section article links, and tell me that you don't love him. I am officially a fan. (And no, this is not another example of an actor trying to be a musician and failing; Drake is actually good at both.)

P.S.--I have a small essay in the latest Oxford American (issue 64). It's called Obama I: Blood Dread and Hope. This issue is all about Race (and the South), and I'm definitely recommending that you check it out. It's beautifully made and has many thoughtful, intelligent, insightful, provoking articles in it, and I'm not just saying that because I'm in it. It's a great issue. 80% of the writers in it are of color, and it also includes two other Stegner affiliates: ZZ Packer and Sean Hill. Look for it at your local bookstore.

the rock obama

2009-03-08T16:00:00.000-07:00

What happens when SNL combines two of my favorite men, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and President Barack Obama? The Rock Obama. President Obama finally gets angry about inane Republican posturing. The first minute or so of this skit is hilarious, and The Rock, when he doesn't hamper his speech with the Incredible Hulk speech impediment, does a really credible Obama impersonation.

prince, muppets, nirvana

2009-02-26T02:26:00.000-08:00

Prince? Muppets? Together? It's like God scoured my soul, found a desire so deep that I didn't even know it existed, and satisfied it. Four words, folks: corny, hilarious, fucking awesome.

mardi gras

2009-02-22T21:56:00.000-08:00

I'm missing it this year. I was doing everything except working earlier and came across this picture, which accompanied an article on The Huffington Post about a carnival queen who painted Obama on one leg, and the word "VENDE-SE," which means "For Sale." She said it was to protest the sale of Brazil's Amazon to the U.S. She is also butt naked. (I will link, but won't post, since I don't want to offend anyone's delicate sensibilities with all that naked, painted flesh.)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/22/nude-carnival-queen-vivia_n_168923.html

Funny how carnival goes down in different locales. I saw some pictures on Facebook of friends and friends of friends and some folks that I didn't even know at the Pass Christian Mardi Gras parade. Everyone was clothed. Decent. Smiling. Holding containers of alcohol. Even though no one was exuding sex and basically naked except for body paint, and it was a smaller affair that only flirted with debauchery without full commitment, while I looked at the pictures, I was jealous as hell that I wasn't there.

Last year I went to the Zulu parade in New Orleans with Daddy, Bill, Mucus, and Buddy. Bill and I walked to a little corner bar where they were selling drinks and fried catfish sandwiches with potato salad, red beans, fried chicken. Mardi Gras music blasted from the speakers. Broad New Orleans accents, gold teeth, crimped weave, and matching short sets were everywhere. Everyone was smiling, laughing, drinking as the endless high school marching bands and black and gold floats paraded through the streets. We were up a ways from the French Quarter close to I-10 and the above ground cemeteries, the houses squeezed together, seething revelers, cars parked on medians. I ate my sandwich sitting on one of the coolers of juice and water that Daddy had bought, and I caught so many beads I looked like a mealy muscled Mr. T impersonator.

I wish I were home.

But this is a photo of my carnival that I can show you (courtesy of Tandy).

Happy Birthday, Nerikka.

Sigh.

Okay, I know you see the stars and bars on the flags in the background. (This is evidence of the abusive relationship I have with my home state.) If you promise to ignore the flags, I will. It's just another nasty reminder of the fact that we are still so backwards. Our illustrious governor Haley Barbour has been posturing lately by saying that he will refuse to accept funds from the stimulus package. Because in Mississippi, where even the casinos are laying folks off, we can afford to refuse money. I mean, we're such a wealthy, healthy state: top honors in every poll taken regarding education and wealth and employment and all that. I'm literally sneering while I type this. Sneering. Lauren V. told me that Mississippi is the only state with no state mandated and funded pre-school system in place. I am not surprised.

It seems that our President (unlike our governor) has been making moves for the good of the Gulf Coast and New Orleans as well. This, from the White House Blog at www.whitehouse.gov/blog:

Friday, February 20th, 2009 at 11:52 am

New commitment to the Gulf Coast

"We must ensure that the failures of the past are never repeated," President Obama said in a statement today, announcing the extension of the Office of the Federal Coordinator for Gulf Coast Rebuilding and his decision to send two cabinet members to the region.

Homeland Security Secretrary Janet Napolitano and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan are heading to the Gulf Coast and New Orleans in early March to evaluate firsthand the progress that's been made and assess the region's needs.

"The residents of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast who are helping rebuild are heroes who believe in their communities and they are succeeding despite the fact that they have not always received the support they deserve from the Federal government," the President said. "This executive order is a first step of a sustained commitment by my Administration to rebuild now, stronger than ever."

Some important facts:

* This August will mark the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.
* Mardi Gras is this Tuesday, Feb. 24.
* New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin was among 85 mayors gathered this morning at the White House

I love that man. Love him.

Jackson Five - Can You Feel It

2009-02-08T17:30:00.001-08:00

This made me happy today, made me feel like a little kid again. Hopefully it will make you smile.

detritus

2009-02-07T15:20:00.000-08:00

I think I just saw a kid die in a crosswalk.

I've been sequestered in my room for the past month or so. First, because I had a deadline to meet for the Stegner, and then after January 22, because I entered another season for migraines. This means a pain like a blowtorch with an icepick on the end boring into my right temple, every day at the same time, for two months straight. I am often in pain, cannot drive, and must stay at my apartment.

So I've been in my room all morning, breathing, taking medicine, drinking water, lying down, breathing. Trying to relax and fight the pain. And then I heard gunshots. Five or so.

(For those of you who don't know, I live in one of the most expensive cities in the world, San Francisco, on what used to be the most dangerous block in this city around three years ago. Now, there's usually a cop sitting at the corner every day. But since the end of '08, it seems that things have changed. Often, when I come home at night, the cops aren't there. Gunshots woke me up on Superbowl Sunday, perhaps nine or so of them. This is perhaps my fifth time hearing gunshots.)

I then dropped to my knees, put my head down. I know that if a bullet goes up, it must come down. I waited. No shattering glass or wood. And then, unlike all the other times I've heard gunfire, I heard a police siren. I walked to the front of my apartment, squatted at the bay window, and saw what had been done.

One boy, black, lay on the concrete in the middle of the intersection. He was in the center of the square made by the crosswalks. His head lay on the concrete, his back to me. A cop kneeled next to him, checking him. A group of young black boys, perhaps around thirteen or so, ran out to him in a flock, knelt next to him. The kid was not moving. He'd been wearing a black baseball cap with neon stitching when it happened, something that looked like Ed Hardy, and the cap lay a few feet from his head, brim up. Black t-shirt, jeans, tennis shoes.

The boys got up, ran back to the concrete, the sidewalk, yelled at people at the cornerstore who I could not see, where did they go where did they go? A crowd began gathering at the sidewalks. More cops arrived, and then the fire department. Another cop knelt and began pumping the kid's chest, trying to get his heart to beat. A woman ran out in pajama pants and a jacket, and she was ushered back to the curb. Another boy in khaki pants with his sweatshirt hanging like a shawl from his arms, stood at a light pole at the corner. He leaned against it as if he could not stand up, and I wondered if he knew the kid, if he is crying. He hunched over and lit a cigarette. By this time the firemen had cut off the kid's pants, his shirt. And then a fireman, well over six feet tall, red and clear in this relentless Cali sunlight, took over, kneeling over the kid, pushing, pushing. There was something elastic about the boy's chest as it rebounded with each thrust from the CPR. The kid's legs were measly, skinny, thin. He was not moving. His hat shifted a little with the wind, as if it would move desultorily away from him, but then it settled. The cops and the firemen swarmed the boy so that they looked like the muscle of the heart that wasn't beating, and then they paused to pack him up on a gurney, his arm a loose, dead thing next to his side, his hand curled into a shell, and then they wheeled him away in a truck.

Now, there are at least thirty cops at the intersection, and it is roped off with yellow police tape, which, in the steady wind, sounds like a bad rain. They are speaking with witnesses (someone outside my window says they ran that way), and pacing the block, looking for shells, bullets, where the metal hit and glanced or stuck. And the kid's clothes in a sorry little pile, his stupid hat, probably still warm from his head, sit in the middle of the crosswalk like so much detritus of a life. People walk by on the crosswalk, skirt the rippling yellow tape, are pissed and disappointed and angry when the cops tell them they have to walk one block up and over, and I wonder at it all, at it all.

What is there to say?

pillows and idiocy

2009-01-29T00:37:00.000-08:00

When I am awake during the day, I want to sleep. When I am awake at night, I can't sleep. I am in good company.

Pillow

There's nothing I can't find under there.
Voices in the trees, the missing pages
of the sea.

Everything but sleep.

And night is a river bridging
the speaking and listening banks,

a fortress, undefended and inviolate.

There's nothing that won't fit under it:
fountains clogged with mud and leaves,
the houses of my childhood.

And night begins when my mother's fingers
let go of the thread
they've been tying and untying
to touch toward our fraying story's hem.

Night is the shadow of my father's hands
setting the clock for resurrection.

Or is it the clock unraveled, the numbers flown?

There's nothing that hasn't found home there:
discarded wings, lost shoes, a broken alphabet.
Everything but sleep. And night begins

with the first beheading
of the jasmine, its captive fragrance
rid at last of burial clothes.

By Li-Young Lee

What is under my pillow? Fingers on the shallow bowl of my back. The woods, long razed, that enfolded our house like an envelope before the development and the hurricane. Swimming in freezing lakes. The open window of my mother's house that we snuck into, nailed shut. Screwed and chopped music from the trunk, a hatchback, wonder. A book that fights being written. Two long years spent at home. My brother. Pine smoke in winter. Missing Mardi Gras. Identity theft. Doomsdayers.

Not nearly as lyrical as Lee. I'm tired of laying in bed, staring at the ceiling. I just want to sleep.

Outside my window, there is a large net stretched from building to building to block pigeons from my building's windowsills. Yesterday, I saw a shadow fluttering across the blinds; when I looked out, I found that someone in the next building over had hung a rope with what looked like huge knots for handholds from their window. It hung loose and ragged. At night, like now, I hear scraping noises, men speaking, grunting. I am convinced this is part of a low tech, low IQ plan to slash the net (as has been done before) and break into my building. I listen to these noises, and I lie very still.

This is under my pillow. This idiocy.

I am squandering all of my brain cells.

thank you for all of the below

2009-01-18T16:23:00.000-08:00

The book tour and my winter vacation, in short:

The Oxford reading at Off Square Books was dark and stormy on the outside, and cozy and charming on the inside. I drank water while the audience drank wine and ate crackers with cheese and pepper jelly; it's called a slow start, and it was excellent, considering that it gave Britney time to chase the cat around the store, relieve herself, and B time to insist over and over again that he be able to sit in the ornate, ancient, big chair in the middle of the bookstore. They kept me laughing. Good times. It was my second official author reading, and we had a good crowd comprised of friends from Mississippi, relatives, readers, aspiring writers, folks who just happened to walk into the bookstore as the reading was beginning, and felt ashamed about walking back out in the middle of it. (Those are my favorite.)

The Greenwood bookstore, Turnrow Books, was beautiful, the staff welcoming and gracious; too bad the weather gods decided to piss on my parade (or snow, rather)--a winter storm warning was issued that afternoon for central Mississippi, and it was finals week. The next day, it actually snowed a few furious inches in Mississippi and New Orleans, which meant that there was no crowd. But I'm in cahoots with the bookstore manager to return, perhaps sometime in the fall, and hold a few elementary or high school classes hostage with a reading and presentation. No audience, no snack, kids--pay attention. I will get readers by any means necessary.

The signing at Bay Books in Bay St. Louis, as well as the signing at Barnes and Noble in Gulfport, made me feel even more humble and grateful. We ran out of books at both locations; I had to schedule another later signing on Dec. 23 for B & N. I was floored. Speechless. People were excited to meet me, excited to talk about the book, about DeLisle, about Mississippi. Home manifested itself, and returned some of the love that I've always had for it to me. Afterwards, I went out with my fam to Barnhill buffet, and I almost felt like I was going to cry in my plateful of cheesy starches and sticky sweets: I love everyone who sat at that table that day, and more.

The reading in Brooklyn at BAM took place on another cold night shadowed by impending snow, but the high ceilinged, steel beamed, artwork festooned auditorium was packed. Old friends from Michigan, new friends from New Orleans, and so many others I did not know came out to enjoy stories, music, short films, and art. I had another one of those moments when I realize how lucky and fortunate I am to be writing, making art, doing what I love. Afterwards, we went to Jay-Z's 40/40 club, which has the most imposing stairwell I've ever seen in any club and white seats that hang from the ceiling like bare light bulbs. It was empty. We then went to some other packed club in Alphabet City where we ran into the actor who plays the police sergeant turned lawyer on the Wire, and I officially felt that I had been a good NYC hostess since my folks from down South had a legitimate celebrity sighting. The next day, I dragged Bill and B through the subways to the Museum of Natural History (too bad the Planetarium was closed), Central Park (why are folks from the South so zealous and hardcore when it comes to throwing snowballs? Long story short: I got beamed), Rockefeller Center (where we saw a poor drunk girl dressed in a miniskirt in 30 degree weather doing things I was pretty sure she was going to regret in the morning--if she remembered them), and last but not least, Times Square. This is when I realized Heaven (the Toys-r-us megastore) and Hell (the M&M store) are both located in Times Square.

And last: if I ever get the opportunity to do an interview on TV again, I must have some media training. Or practice in my mirror. Or something. I never knew I rolled my eyes upward, as if I am spotting ideas in my brain, when I answer questions. My little cousin Jalen taped the WLOX interview, watched it over and over, and then teased me mercilessly about it for the rest of the break. Thanks, little cuz.

(I then spent the rest of my too short leisure time at home working lazily, sleeping, eating sweet potato pie and gumbo and garlic bread, trying to temper Kalani's tendency to kill cats, shooting fireworks at Buddy Lee, and laying out on the trampoline, looking at the stars. Sigh. I am homesick.)

So, thank you. Thank you for coming out, thank you for braving the weather, thank you for reading, for listening, for welcoming, for believing. Thank you.

where i'll be, with (jingle) bells on

2008-12-04T10:17:00.000-08:00

I have multiple events coming up soon. This will all happen after I endure a four day bus/train ride to Mississippi, which begins tonight at around 8:30 p.m. Hypnotherapy to cure my fear of flying, I will see you in January.

If you're in north Mississippi or south Mississippi or New York City/Brooklyn, please come out to say hello, to hear me read, to have me scrawl my illegible signature across your title pages, to delight in my profuse sweating. I will give you either a good reading or a great smile in return. I promise. (I wish I could tell you that I would flash my gold crown as well, but I cannot because I got a porcelain one a few weeks ago when I visited the dentist instead of the gold that I was promised. Sigh. Balling fail.)

1.) December 9, 2008: Reading and Signing, Square Books, 160 Courthouse Square, Oxford, MS at 5 p.m.

2.) December 10, 2008: Reading and Signing, Turnrow Books, 304 Howard Street, Greenwood, MS at Time: 5:30 p.m.

3.) December 13, 2008: Signing, Bay Books, 131 Main Street, Bay St. Louis, MS from 1-3 p.m.

4.) December 14, 2008: Signing (perhaps a Reading on the children's section stage), Barnes and Noble books, Gulfport, MS (at Crossroads Mall) from 2-4 p.m.

5.) December 18, 2008: Reading event, sponsored by A Public Space magazine, Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), Brooklyn, NY at 7:30 p.m.

I'm looking forward to seeing all your beautiful faces. Hopefully I won't have to shank any lecherous pervs on the train somewhere in southwestern Texas in order to get to your aforementioned beautiful faces. Here's to hoping.

where i have been all this time

2008-11-22T00:51:00.000-08:00

This evening, I found a note in a book, Pablo Neruda's Selected Poems, which I hadn't opened in years. In my freshman dorm, we had little notepads hanging outside of our rooms, and people would come by and leave notes. I had been using the small letter as a bookmark.

"Mimi, Why ain't you neva home? -D"

It was good to smile.

Here's the poem it was marking.

There's No Forgetting (Sonata)

If you should ask me where I've been all this time
I have to say 'Things happen.'
I have to dwell on stones darkening the earth,
on the river ruined in its own duration:
I know nothing save things the birds have lost,
the sea I left behind, or my sister crying.
Why this abundance of places? Why does day lock
with day? Why the dark night swilling round
in our mouths? And why the dead?

Should you ask me where I come from, I must talk
with broken things,
with fairly painful utensils,
with great beasts turned to dust as often as not
and my afflicted heart.

These are not memories that have passed each other
nor the yellowing pigeon asleep in our forgetting
these are tearful faces
and fingers down our throats
and whatever among leaves falls to the ground:
the dark of a day gone by
grown fat on our grieving blood.

Here are violets, and here swallows,
all things we love and which inform
sweet messages seriatim
through which time passes and sweetness passes.

We don't get far, though, beyond these teeth:
Why waste time gnawing the husks of silence?
I know not what to answer:
there are so many dead,
and so many dikes the red sun breached,
and so many heads battering hulls
and so many hands that have closed over kisses
and so many things that I want to forget.

--Pablo Neruda

living the dream

2008-11-19T23:54:00.000-08:00

The reading went well. I bribed all the Stegners and Jones into coming, so the seats were full. As I was coming down with a cold, my voice was rough, but thankfully I didn't have any coughing attacks or sneezing spasms. I rode down from San Francisco to Palo Alto with Sarah, Harriet, and Will, who all chipped in and got me a lovely present to ease me into the reading (whiskey and hot chocolate, a Harriet special). And Harriet wrapped the present with photos of Pharrell: one of him in a tie, one of him wearing a baseball cap and a scarf, and one of him shirtless. Sigh. I try not to love him. I try to remember that famous artists are all whistles and bells and billowing green smoke, all artifice, but then "I Know" comes on and he's a nerdy, beautiful genius and I'm a sucker, I'm Dorothy clutching Toto in obeisance--I'm lost.

Monday's reading was my first reading as an author from a book I've written. I forget that I've written a novel, that it's been published, that people are reading it and reacting to it, until I have to do a reading or someone says something about liking what they've read or I see the book. By the way, I first saw the book an hour before I was standing in front of the audience, sweating copiously, listing from side to side with the rhythm of the sentences. (I dance when I read; Nerissa and Kalani dance when they eat.) I haven't received my author's copies yet, so in the car Harriet loaned me her copy of the book so I could figure out what in the hell I was going to read. Sarah was patient, as the back light was on, and I flipped through the novel, feeling the french cut pages, the flaps, the big author photo, reading the blurbs, seeing that dedication. It's the first thing I flipped to in the book. The first words I had to see. For Joshua Adam Dedeaux, who leads while I follow. Just as I memorized the pattern of what I would read, we rolled into the parking lot of the shopping complex, and I saw the lights of Books, Inc. I immediately wanted to throw up, pee, and then run away in abject horror. I guess that the Jeezy I listened to beforehand to motivate me didn't make me much of a fighter, because I was damn well set on flying. But I didn't. This is probably due to the fact that Sarah talked to me like an interventionist soothes a suicide off a ledge. Lots of eye contact, smiling, and reassurance. I calmed down, realized that I had a great community of incredible writers and thinkers to read to, and could there be a better audience?

There will be more readings, but I think I will always be nervous, always listen to loud southern rap to fortify myself beforehand, always sweat, which is why I've never worn long sleeved shirts to read. And there will be more books, hopefully, and I know they will always, at the heart of them, be dedicated to him.

first readings, painful events

2008-11-13T14:31:00.000-08:00

I will read for the first time in public from Where the Line Bleeds on Monday, November 17 at Books, Inc. in Palo Alto (855 El Camino Real #74) at 7 PM. Please come if you're in the area. I can almost guarantee you'll fall in love with my boys, and the reading will be fairly short and painless, followed by a Q and A session and a signing if anyone wants some of my ink.

I have several more readings lined up in December (two in northern Mississippi at great independent bookstores, one in Brooklyn at a BAM/A Public Space event, and perhaps one more at home on the Mississippi Gulf Coast), so if you miss me this time because of location, you'll have another chance to see me soon. I'll post about these dates in the first week of December.

I went to the dentist yesterday because a filling fell out of one of my very back teeth. I also grind my teeth at night, and whenever I get drunk, like, say, on Election night and fall asleep, I clench my teeth the entire night; Election morning I woke up with some gritty material, which my dentist informed me was my tooth, in my mouth. Therefore, I need a crown. I spent half of the morning, midday, and part of the afternoon yesterday having my tooth filed down to a square nub. It hurt.

But my gold tooth comes in two weeks. After years of being hit on by dudes with gold teeth in the club, well--I am going to be the girl with a gold tooth in the club. I feel so southern. Now I don't need the grill with Mimi on it (yes, I still had dreams of going to Atlanta and getting a grill for my bottom row of teeth that said Mimi on it, three years past grills being in style) because I will have the real deal. Which you won't be able to see, of course, because it's right next to my tonsils. But still.

On second thought, maybe I do still need that grill.

loves

2008-11-11T20:47:00.000-08:00

I have to hand in the next two chapters of my novel for workshop tomorrow. In addition to that, I also have three stories with feedback to hand back, and we are supposed to have a book read (Maxwell's So Long, See You Tomorrow, which was brilliant). This means that the last few days have been damn near unbearable. I went nowhere this weekend; I was chained to my desk trying to beat the last half of chapter four of my new novel out of myself. It felt rushed, hurried, sloppy. I'm sprinting ahead of the class, barely producing work in time for submission.

But I love it. The new novel is not in any way perfect; it's saggy in some places and meandering in others and bare throughout, as all first drafts for novels are, I suspect--but I love that world. I'm in love with those characters already, in love with little Esch and her secret, with Skeetah and his dark eyes, his dogs; he is all bruises and calluses. It reminds me of how I loved the characters in Where the Line Bleeds. My secret heart loved Christophe. Of course, I would fall for the bad boy, the boy who waves girls away, who sees them as bothersome, the boy who is tough and vulnerable, the boy with a wiry husk around his beating heart. That tender beating heart that I would love to make my own. (Perhaps that love made me weak; I could not kill off that which I loved. I'd had enough of that in real life.) My sister, Charine, called me today to inform me that she was on chapter ten of the book, and that she was in love with one of the characters.

"I love him," she said.
"Who?"
"Christophe."
"Really?"
"Yeah," she said. "I wish he was real. I want him to be my boyfriend. I love him."

She says that Joshua and Laila's first kiss is cute. She cheers when Christophe stands up to Bone, when he veers toward trying to beat Bone raw for cheating Skeetah and Marquise out of their money. She tells me about the places where she laughs, and they are none of the places that I tried to use humor. But it works. The characters are living and being and breathing for her, pulling her into their world, strange and familiar all at once. When she confesses her love, I finally feel like I've written a novel.

It also makes me realize how alike we are in our predilections, for better or worse. Thanks, Dad. Sigh.

president-elect barack obama

2008-11-06T16:52:00.000-08:00

I almost didn't vote for Obama in the primaries. I called El beforehand, and we had a very long conversation. I'm afraid, I told her, afraid that he will not be a viable candidate to beat the republicans because he's black. And coming from Mississippi teaches you that being black carries a certain problem of perception. Of history.

Of learning that a white classmate would never stoop to kiss you, that security will follow you around in stores, that cashiers won't touch your hand to take money, that older white classmates will threaten you with lynching, covertly, and that another will sit on your desk while your teacher is out of the room during a test, and he will tell nigger jokes. And nobody, not your classmates who will not drink after you, not your classmates who you've been in school with for at least two years now, and most of all not you because you know he wants to see you cry or freak out or yell at him, will say anything. But you look the other one that threatened you with lynching or beating or burning, with all of the ghosts of the south on his shoulders, his jock-buddies around him, him you looked in the eye and you said, no, you won't do shit to me. Try me.

This is the history that squeezed into the corners of the conversation with El, that crowded the phone. This is blood dread, knowing that your mother and father both used to go to a segregated school, that your mother was so pretty and fair that she was chosen to integrate Pass Christian school, and that your father used to get chased from the Pass Christian memorial park by the gameskeeper when he snuck in the park. Get out of the park, you little niggers! This is bone memory, knowing that your great-great-grandfather was shot and killed by white prohibition patrollers, that somewhere in that mix of Indian-loving disowned Frenchman, rogue Spanish, wandering Native Americans in your bones, there are African slaves, passing along their memories of plotting poison and snatching joy in Congo Square.

I don't know if I can vote for him, I said. I'm from the South. The white people I grew up with will never, never vote for a black man to be president. Never, I said. I should vote for Hillary. Go for the safer candidate. History turned circles like a nesting dog too big for its bed, laid down in my heart. Lapped up all the blood. Grew fatter.

And she told me: Believe. Who do you believe in? It can happen, Jesmimi. It can. And then I thought about how much I loved El, how we lived together those years, and we were just two people who shared pain and joy and hope and ideals. How we tried to make space for art, for truth, for beauty in our work. How she was so white she couldn't tan, and I was so black my kinkycurly hair kept coming out in the bathtub and clogging the drain. How she wasn't like these people I'd grown up with. And there were probably more of her, more people who faced the spectre of race bravely, shrugged it off, looked it in the face, lived with it, lived past it, lived in spite of it. Come on, El said. She gave me hope. Reminded me of the fact that that's what nourished my daddy running through that damn park, my mama facing down those white kids, my grandmother when she was working her fingers to calloused nubs all those years to provide for her seven kids by cleaning white people's houses, those slaves, those Natives. They'd eaten hope. Starved for it. Died for it. So I voted for him.

And so did you. And he won.

(On a lighter note, he is a nerd, as evidenced by the above picture, and I love him.)

a new sho'gun of harlem?

2008-10-30T12:35:00.001-07:00

I just read this on dlisted.com. This is blasphemy--utter blasphemy.

"Who's the meanest, prettiest, baddest mo-fo, low-down, around this town? Well, apparently it's Samuel L. Jackson, because he's going to play Sho'nuff in a remake of 1985's "The Last Dragon." It could be worse, they could have cast Eddie Murphy.

The legendary Julius Carry, who played the Shogun of Harlem in the original movie, passed away in August.

Dallas Jackson will write and produce this shit. The original plot will remain the same, but will get updated. Basically, it's going to get butchered. I wouldn't be surprised if they changed Sho'nuff's name to Sure Enough. The evil warlords of Hollywood have no shame!

Samuel had this to say about playing Sho'nuff, "I'm a huge fan of the original and look forward to bringing Sho'Nuff into the 21st century.""

What's next? Breakin' 1 and 2? The Neverending Story? Legend? Beat Street? Krush Groove? Does Hollywood have no shame? In the words of Bruce Lee-roy, "They see only that which can be held in their hands." I've known several amazing writers that have written in/for Hollywood. Where in the hell are the original ideas?

where the line bleeds aka joshua's birthday present

2008-10-28T14:39:00.000-07:00

The publication date is November, but the book is available on Amazon.com now, and a few other places. I visited the listing for it on Amazon yesterday, and I was sorely disappointed. First of all, I have a few good reviews from Publisher's Weekly and Booklist; these are not listed yet, but hopefully they will be in the near future. Second, the books they have me paired with in the "buy this book along with this book for a greatly discounted price" are a little misleading. I would classify my book as literary fiction about the hood, but this is not what they have me paired with. Sigh. Anyhow, if you are purchasing the book, please read and offer a review on Amazon.com. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Now I'm off to run errands, listen to my ipod, and imagine that I am someone and somewhere else.

birthday wishes

2008-10-27T12:39:00.001-07:00

Happy Birthday, Joshua.

One day, I am going to have a party for you. I think that it is a good thing that I have this plan, because I imagine that it would make you happy to see us all gathering to celebrate who you are, and what you are to all of us. We will have your favorite coconut cake, the southern food, the cheesy balloons, the cousins out front in cars sneaking beer and blunts. But I do not know if we can bear it. How do you have a party where the guest of honor never shows up? How can we have a party for you where you never walk in the door with your lopsided grin and put De'Sean in a headlock, rib him about how big he's getting, all the while letting him know he'll never be able to beat you? Your face a little more angular, sharper, your cheekbones and jaw prominent, the handsomeness that comes with age, with maturity, set over your face like stone? The party I want to throw is the one where you walk through the front door, late from work, sweaty, and I would wait my turn to hug you, but I would: my face in your shirt, but turned to the side because I am only so high as your chest. I would breathe you in. But that is not our party. Not yet.

That book is for you, you know? All of it is always for you.

so funny it'll probably make you cry

2008-10-24T18:35:00.000-07:00

The "Wassup" guys are back, but I swear that this is the best commercial they've ever made. And yes, when they were popular, I saw their Budweiser commercials so many times it made me want to sidekick my television like Sho'nuff--but this is different. This is so good. Watch it. And smile.

voting at the post office

2008-10-20T18:33:00.000-07:00

I sent off my absentee ballot for Mississippi today. Since Mississippi consistently ranks negatively in damn near every list I've ever seen (last on Education, last on Health Care, last on everything in the damn U.S.), why was I surprised that my voting experience was ridiculously difficult? The forms accompanying the ballot were arcane and had conflicting details. The instructions weren't clear. I had to get a damned postal supervisor to witness that I was voting, and get her to sign the envelope I was sending off. And even though I already had the absentee ballot in hand, I still had to fill out an application to get an absentee ballot and include it in the envelope. Of course, the postal supervisor was rude and claimed she was too busy to watch me vote, but I harassed her into doing so after I almost beamed her in the eye with my Mississippi driver's license. I think that was the trick. A little chakram toss of some hard-edged plastic, and everyone wants to help you out.

Some guy was selling Obama t-shirts out of the back of his SUV in the parking lot of Lucky's Supermarket as I was walking through it today, returning from voting. I have to admit I got a little teary. I love that man.

And in case you didn't know, Where the Line Bleeds, my novel, has been chosen as the November book club pick for Essence magazine. Pick up the November issue of Essence (now on newsstands, and with Beyonce on the cover) to check the article out. The journalist who wrote it is genius because she made me sound much more articulate and eloquent than I actually am. Lol. She nailed my sentiments, though, problematic as they are, and distilled a two hour interview into such good quotes. Go read it, and support a Black magazine. Also, there is Obama related goodness inside. So you get a two for one.

Have I used Obama's name enough times in this post? Obama. Okay, that's enough. Now, go read. And on November 4, vote.

perhaps i won't

2008-10-15T22:28:00.000-07:00

So, I recently wrote that I might stay in this apartment for the next two years because I hated apartment hunting in San Francisco. Well, perhaps I won't. My car got broken into today. As there was nothing more than some pictures of my brother, De'Sean, and a miniature tin Spongebob lunchbox filled with pennies inside, they didn't actually get anything of value besides some $10 sunglasses. But I got an excellent $550 bill to fix my driver's side window, since my auto insurance has a $500 deductible. I also got a seat full of glass, which I had to sit on when I drove my car to the Toyota outlet to get fixed. In Redwood City. Excellent.

I also missed getting my novel workshopped because I was late for class. After class, I walked up to Tressider tonight with the other Stegners to watch the debate, which raised my spirits a tiny bit--especially when Sarah yelled "Fuck you!" really loudly at the TV when John McCain said that Sarah Palin was a role model for women. All the Stanford undergrads flinched. Hilarious. But I had mixed feelings about being back on campus, being in places that I hadn't been for eight years. A lot has changed since the last time I was at Stanford. I keep expecting to look up and see any number of my Stanford friends (and an ex, unfortunately), which never happens. When I first walked on campus, I thought: I should be okay--I'm coming back as what I always wanted to be before I left. A writer. A Stegner. A woman that knows her own mind. But there are things about who I am that I never thought would be part of me if someone had asked when I was an undergrad. And those are the things that pain me, lovingly, under those red-tiled roofs, those arches, that violet sky. Those and the glass shards I'm still digging out of my ass.

anniversaries

2008-10-14T16:37:00.001-07:00

Joshua's death anniversary passed twelve days ago. I took this picture. I had just gotten an old school, 80's Canon camera from a very nice man that I worked with at Pacific Northwest Ballet in Seattle, Washington, during the summer of '97. I was home for August before I was leaving for Oxford, England for a quarter. I was trying to learn photography. My brother told me I looked like a Japanese tourist when we walked down Hill Road and I took my camera, filling the roll with pictures of him, Aldon, Deandre, and Pot. He laughed at me, but he posed with the others, throwing up D-Town handsigns, looking serious and tough, let me snap away. He humored me. Sometimes he turned shy. The woods were teeming around us, verdant, green, pine-heavy and honeysuckle thick, and I was so happy to be home, loving him, loving it all. At the house, I thought if I put the sun behind him and took a profile shot, it would make a good picture. We stood on the porch. I told him 'turn to the side.' He said 'ok.' I shot.

When I got the pictures back, neither of the pictures I took of him were what I expected. In one, the sun flooded the frame so that his face was dusky, and rays of sunlight wrapped about him and obscured his face like a pillow. In the other, his eyes were closed. This is the other.

None of this ever gets any easier.

panic, manic, angry

2008-10-14T15:34:00.000-07:00

I said I had a few publications of my sleeve, and I do: I've posted this information on myspace and facebook, but why not put it here as well? A writer can never have too much publicity. All I want to know is this: where are my commercials? 50 Cent had a commercial for his book. Where's mine? Lol.

Where the Line Bleeds' release date is November 20. Oh yes, it is coming up very soon, and when I am not kickboxing in my living room, working on my new novel, watching Xena DVDs, surfing the internet, wandering these cold, lonely San Francisco apartment rooms (why is it always so damn cold here?), or eating brownies, I am quietly working myself into a manic frenzy at its immanent release.

I have an essay called 'We Do Not Swim in Our Cemeteries' published in the latest issue of The Oxford American literary magazine (issue number 62). It's about Hurricane Katrina. Go to www.oxfordamericanmag.com for more information. It's a damned good issue; once you begin reading it, you will not be able to stop until you've read it all, cover to cover.

An excerpt of my novel is included in the Fall 2008, number 105 issue of BOMB magazine. This includes audio of the excerpt on their web site. Go to www.bombsite.com to hear me read the excerpt. I recorded the excerpt at UNO's NPR studios two days before I got in my car and drove cross country with Nerissa.

The trip from Mississippi to California took three days. Louisiana was so green, so full of crops and swamp and bugs, and every insect in the state was plastered to the front of my car by the time we got to the outskirts of Dallas and stopped for the first night. Driving out of Texas was excruciating; we were stuck on some two lane pseudo-highway that demanded that we stop at red lights in each town we rode through. The population for one of those towns was 100; the town consisted of a stoplight, a corner store, and some abandoned warehouses. I was pissed. New Mexico was lovely, all rising mountains and trees spreading out over the wheat-colored land under a rainbow flecked sky: it made me want to abandon my crap-laden car at the side of the road and ride off into the horizon on horseback. Arizona was fir and log cabins, dust and mountains in the distance, and exhausted, we stopped in Flagstaff for the night. The next and last day, we rose and went to the Grand Canyon, which will make you believe in something if you believe in nothing. I tried to get Nerissa to climb out on this cliff and take pictures of me, but she told me that I was crazy. She also cried when we walked to the lip of the canyon and saw it for the first time. She also took at least fifty pictures and talked about stealing a rock (don't worry, Federal Government; we didn't do it). She is a closet nerd, and I love her.

Settling into the Bay Area is hell. Looking for an apartment was a humiliating, lengthy process, one so lengthy that I think that I will live in this beautiful apartment next to the projects for my entire time here. I went to a Lucy Lawless (yes, she sings) concert on September 29 and was transfixed. She is tall and athletic and gorgeous, and yes, she sings pretty well too (however, I couldn't get over the fact that I secretly wanted to see Xena. Not the actress who played Xena). I kept trying to check Ticketmaster to see if N.E.R.D. was doing a show in the Bay Area, since I couldn't catch them in the South before I left, but I didn't see any listings for them. And then I found out today, weeks after the fact, that they had a concert on September 23. And Pharrell pulled girls on stage. I am so angry. Do you know how many texts I sent on those dreary morning drives into New Orleans when I had a blueberry pancake in one hand, coffee in my lap, steering with my knee, and I said the one thing that would make life better was a N.E.R.D. concert at that very moment? And then to miss it when it happens?

And yes, I'm one of those assholes they passed the anti-texting, anti-cellphone laws for in California. But back to N.E.R.D.: this is yet another shitty addition to an already stressful move, month, and life.

I get workshopped tomorrow by the Stegners. I am preparing for a mighty reaming. You know what would make life better? A N.E.R.D. concert. Sob.

sho'nuff

2008-08-23T00:08:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, I saw that my half sister changed her heading on myspace to 'oh no, shonuff's dead.' I wondered what the hell she was talking about; she couldn't actually be talking about the legendary Shogun of Harlem from the 1985 Berry Gordy film The Last Dragon. And then today, after surfing a few different Gawker websites, I read the news: Julius Curry, the actor who plays Sho'nuff, is dead of pancreatic cancer at the age of 56. Damn.

I've probably seen The Last Dragon hundreds of times since the first time I saw it when I was eight. My dad, who is a three time Kung-Fu black belt, loved this movie. It's a kung-fu flick set in Harlem. All the good guys are black. Most of the bad guys are black, too. And the baddest of the bad is Sho'nuff, who spends the entire movie trying to make Bruce Lee-roy aka Leroy Green aka one of my first crushes, bow down and admit that Sho'nuff is the Master. We watched the movie so many times over the years that we learned all the dialogue. For fun when we were kids, we used to act it out. My dad would don this fake Chinese robe (sans football shoulder pads, which Sho'nuff wears) and fluff his hair out and play Sho'nuff. I was Vanity. My brother was Bruce Lee-roy.

One of the last times I remember watching it with my brother was one summer night while I was visiting home from New York in my twenties; we had all been drinking out in my mom's front yard in cars, playing music, so when Nerissa and Joshua and Charine and Tasha and I stumbled inside, we were really drunk. It was around 2 A.M., and Charine and Nerissa and I decided that it was imperative that we watch The Last Dragon in Nerissa's room. The opening credits rolled, and we began singing, loudly. Joshua, the trickster with the Glow, dashed in the room while we were rolling all over each other in the bed, singing and slurring, and said, "Mama's coming back here. She heard y'all singing," which made us freak out and try to shut each other up and flop around like the drunken idiots we were. And then he slipped out of the room, giggling.

Today, I still know all the lines. I irritate my nephew, Buddy Lee, whenever we watch the movie by saying all the dialogue before the characters do. We've indoctrinated the youngest into the cult of the Last Dragon: two weeks ago, Buddy Lee taught my niece the ultimate Sho'nuff command: Kiss 'Em. She kept repeating this to me as I pushed her on the swing before the sun set: kiss 'em, kiss 'em, kiss my Converse.

Go and be well, Julius. And thank you.

twenty days

2008-08-19T19:09:00.000-07:00

I leave Mississippi in twenty days. For some reason, I keep confusing the Michigan drive for the California one; I imagine driving away, and it is the Michigan drive that I remember. Kentucky and its rolling green mountains, its clean black highways cutting through the wilderness. Tennessee and its rain, its rocky cliffs, the deer feeding in droves at the side of the road. Ohio and its horizons, its sage flatness, its empty exits in the north. The tall pines of Alabama--I recently read that some species of pine can live to be 1200 years old. Driving to and from Michigan was sinking into green.

I must remember that driving to California is driving into desert. There are the flatlands and swamps of Louisiana. And then there is the dry grass, the excruciating expanse of Texas. The rocky desert creeps in the East, and then you blink, and New Mexico is gone (but the stars are incredible). Arizona is red and pink and peach; the cities of campers, of flea markets, the bleached wood--these are the whitest things in Arizona. And then, so subtle I won't even notice it, there is California. After the Mojave, there is more green in LA, in the central California farms, but barely.

When I was an undergrad at Stanford, one of the things that would drive me crazy about the Bay area was that it never rained. I mean, it drizzled, but the thunderstorms of the south were nonexistent. Lately, it has been raining nonstop in Mississippi. The clouds rise in the sky, as gray and indomitable as mountains. Thunder rolls, and lightning arcs across the sky. This is my send-off.

I am hoping the drive will take three days only. My father and I did it in forty-eight hours, and I do not wish to suffer through that again. Our trip consisted of me driving through every night, sleeping for three hours or so every morning, and transforming into a raging bitch. I wanted to kick my father in the face every time that we stopped to get gas or use the restroom. It wouldn't have been very smart considering my dad's a Kung Fu master; he would've kicked me back and it would've really, really hurt.

I have been working a lot lately; I have a few publications up my sleeve in the next few months. Updates are forthcoming.

embarrassment

2008-04-02T12:44:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was my 31st birthday. A lovely someone sent me this:

A Happy Birthday
by Ted Kooser

This evening, I sat by an open window

and read till the light was gone and the book

was no more than a part of the darkness.

I could easily have switched on a lamp,

but I wanted to ride this day down into night,

to sit alone and smooth the unreadable page

with the pale gray ghost of my hand.

Birthdays on weekdays are strange things. I'm too old to beg off from work, and whenever I happen to be off on a weekday birthday, I feel sort of useless knocking about because everyone else is at work. So, I taught; my third class of the day sang Happy Birthday to me. I blushed and squirmed. Someone in that class also urged me to go to the French Quarter: quote, "It's only fifteen minutes away." After entertaining a brief fantasy of me discreetly sipping a Victoria's Secret daq (such saccharine, unholy, alcoholic goodness) from an unmarked white styrofoam cup in my last class of the day, I demurred.

I plan on having a massive crawfish boil on Saturday at my aunt's to celebrate, replete with daqs and beer and margarita and crawfish and sausage and potatoes and corn seasoned so hot and spicy my lips go numb.I just might go to the Quarter later that night to celebrate by drunkenly dragging myself up and down Bourbon and Jackson Square and Decataur. This will be my last birthday home for a while.

I've been avoiding sharing this news like a difficult book that I committed to reading and kept putting off: I was offered a Stegner Fellowship for Fall of '08 at Stanford. I've been flailing from one emotion to the next since I received the phone call; I feel lucky and afraid and anxious. Above all, I feel thankful for this embarrassment of riches, and I hope every single one of my writer friends suffer comparative embarrassments soon.

P.S. I will miss my swamp and my pines. Also, I am contemplating taking up residence in the Leland crypt because rent in the Bay, as craigslist smacked me in the face with a few nights ago, is criminal.

shilling

2008-01-30T13:11:00.000-08:00

1. Before I attempt to sell you something, I will share. It's only right.

The Gate

I had no idea that the gate I would step through
to finally enter this world

would be the space my brother's body made. He was
a little taller than me: a young man

but grown, himself by then,
done at twenty-eight, having folded every sheet,

rinsed every glass he would ever rinse under the cold
and running water.

This is what you have been waiting for, he used to say to me.
And I'd say, What?

And he'd say, This--holding up my cheese and mustard sandwich.
And I'd say, What?

And he'd say, This, sort of looking around.

--Marie Howe

2. And so, on to what I have been waiting for: my short story, 'Cattle Haul,' is in the most current issue of A Public Space literary magazine. Go to your local bookstore, pick it up, and check it out. And also: my novel has been accepted for publication by a small publisher. If everything happens as it should, it will be debuting in Fall '08.

3. Get your hands on Kanye West's album 'Graduation.' Listen to track number 4, 'I Wonder,' while riding around in your car when it's raining so hard you have to park at the side of the road because the windshield is a whitewash, when the sun is setting over the winter-still bayou, when it's so dark and late even the possums aren't toeing the road. Ride with me and Kanye, and wonder if you know what it means to find your dreams.

4. Does everyone know that I took a train out to California right after the New Year to visit my father in Oakland, and to help him drive back to Mississippi from California? Do you know that we drove an '88 Toyota Camry for 48 hours straight so I could make it to work on time on Tuesday, January 15? I have so many stories to tell. More, later.

sleep

2007-11-23T15:59:00.000-08:00

I have good news, but I don't want to share it right now. Call me selfish.

If I could dedicate a poem to myself, it would be this one.

Variation on the Word Sleep

I would like to watch you sleeping,
which may not happen.
I would like to watch you,
sleeping. I would like to sleep
with you, to enter
your sleep as its smooth dark wave
slides over my head

and walk with you through that lucent
wavering forest of bluegreen leaves
with its watery sun & three moons
towards the cave where you must descend,
towards your worst fear

I would like to give you the silver
branch, the small white flower, the one
word that will protect you
from the grief at the center
of your dream, from the grief
at the center. I would like to follow
you up the long stairway
again & become
the boat that would row you back
carefully, a flame
in two cupped hands
to where your body lies
beside me, and you enter
it as easily as breathing in

I would like to be the air
that inhabits you for a moment
only. I would like to be that unnoticed
& that necessary.

-Margaret Atwood

all passing

2007-10-26T12:41:00.000-07:00

My brother's death day passed on October 2. I cried until my eyes shut. Tomorrow is his birthday.

Grief

Sometimes you have to take your own hand
as though you were a lost child
and bring yourself stumbling
home over twisted ice.

Whiteness drifts over your house.
A page of warm light
falls steady from the open door.

Here is your bed, folded open.
Lie down, lie down, let the blue snow cover you.

--Louise Erdrich

I want it to be cold, to snow. I have recurring dreams of being in Alaska, in the upper reaches of Canada. There are fir trees all around, and always snow falling, gathering, settling.

The temperature in Mississippi refuses to fall below seventy degrees. I am perpetually thwarted.

storm warnings

2007-09-19T15:33:00.000-07:00

Storm Warnings

The glass has been falling all the afternoon/
And knowing better than the instrument/
What winds are walking overhead, what zone/
Of gray unrest is moving across the land,/
I leave the book upon a pillowed chair/
And walk from window to closed window, watching/
Boughs strain against the sky/

And think again, as often when the air/
Moves inward toward a silent core of waiting,/
How with a single purpose time has traveled/
By secret currents of the undiscerned/
Into this polar realm. Weather abroad/
And weather in the heart alike come on/
Regardless of prediction./

Between foreseeing and averting change/
Lies all the mastery of elements/
Which clocks and weatherglasses cannot alter./
Time in the hand is not control of time,/
Nor shattered fragments of an instrument/
A proof against the wind; the wind will rise,/
We can only close the shutters.

I draw the curtains as the sky goes black/
And set a match to candles sheathed in glass/
Against the keyhole draught, the insistent whine/
Of weather through the unsealed aperture./
This is our sole defense against the season;/
These are the things that we have learned to do/
Who live in troubled regions.

--Adrienne Rich

Some bureaucrat asshole put a fence across the bank beneath the bridge that was our only access to the Wolf River. We'll find another way down, but I almost don't feel like fighting. Barred from the place I last swam with my brother. I continue plodding along on this stupid path like one of those stringy horses that pulls carriages in the french quarter: food at the mouth, blinders, elegantly stupid.

queen to be

2007-09-04T20:47:00.000-07:00

My niece is obsessed with Coming to America. You know, the Eddie Murphy movie from the late eighties about the African prince who travelled to America, to Queens, New York, to find a bride?

On Tuesday night, she kept me up all night watching Coming to America. We watched it twice from midnight to around four A.M.; it was my vain, sorry attempt to put her to sleep. But Kalani would not capitulate because she has elevated watching Coming to America to an interactive experience.

She claps during the Black Awareness Rally. She sings the Soul-Glo jerricurl commercial song. She dances along with Patrice, Lisa's sister, when she is dancing around Lisa's bedroom wearing a skintight leopard miniskirt. And perhaps most awesome of all, she sings with Ohan when he sings the song that introduces Prince Akeem's arranged bride, Amani. She bends backward at the waist like Ohan, all the while looking for my approval and sings soprano: "She's your queeeeen to beeeeee." Classic.

She kept me up, laughing. I wanted to be angry and stern with her to make her go to sleep, but who could be angry when a one-year old is posturing like a portly tenor and singing for approval?

Katrina anniversaries

2007-08-29T18:07:00.000-07:00

I really don't like the name Katrina. For one, the storm swept me away in a flood, forced me to abandon my car to the water and swim, and diving into all that murky bayou water gave me a nasty rash. For two, well, let's just say I've been cuckolded for a girl named Katrina. It doesn't lend to liking the moniker.

Anyhow, today was the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Salon has a slew of great articles on the subject. One actually deals with the Mississippi Gulf Coast, and reveals how our genius governor parlayed his Republican Connection into disgusting amounts of money for casinos for development and the already rich to rebuild their beach mansions. Go here to read it. You must.

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/08/29/gulf_coast/

However, I think it's a damn shame I had to read Salon to find the name of an environmental group interested in protecting against development in the next county over. I haven't encountered one environmental group focused on the community/integrity of my small neck of the woods. Access to, and knowledge about, the environmental groups that do exist seem limited to those of a certain class or race. I also think it's a shame that even though I'd like to begin investing in something like a small, modest house, I can't because everything is too expensive. Renting was too expensive before the storm, so now, it's impossible.

What does my Katrina anniversary reveal to me? All the concrete things that I loved so much before the storm were ravaged by all that wind and water, twisted and worn, altered. The pines left standing grow at a permanent slant. The coastline is ragged, threadbare of buildings. Condos rise from the sand. Casinos glow. I have discovered that something ineffable, something essentially transient, something beautiful, has been lost. Ray told me that this would be the case when I first told him of my desire to return home to settle. But then again, home has always been changing. At Stanford, one of my roommates invited me and the rest of the roommates to a seafood dinner at her house in the hills of Palo Alto. We ate dungeness crab while sitting at a long, low table in a large dining room made of windows and dark wood. After I told them about the small town I'm from, her grandfather told me that he was originally from a small town in Texas. He said the town no longer existed, that all of its citizens had left, and it had collapsed. I imagined the woods and the weeds taking it over. Houses cleaned of their beating hearts of people and left to grow silent intestines of kudzu. A gas station with cylindrical gas pumps and empty eyes. Faded script. Her grandfather choked a little sitting at that table, remembering past us. He turned red when he said, "That's the only true thing I've learned about life: that everything changes." I thought he would cry, but he didn't. I looked down at my plate and felt dread.

In the end, I know the storm has little to do with this melancholy, this longing, this feeling that nothing is what it was. I am an alien. In the end, I know I can never return home.

This is an excerpt from Anne Carson's 'Autobiography of Red.' (The formatting on the poem is off because I couldn't figure out how to italicize, and because blogger restricts the width of the post. The forward slashes are supposed to indicate where the line breaks.)

V. SCREENDOOR

His mother stood at the ironing board lighting a cigarette and regarding Geryon.
--
Outside the dark pink air/
was already hot and alive with cries. Time to go to school, she said for the third time./
Her cool voice floated/
over a pile of fresh tea towels and across the shadowy kitchen to where Geryon stood/
at the screen door./
He would remember when he was past forty the dusty almost medieval smell/
of the screen itself as it/
pressed its grid onto his face. She was behind him now. This would be hard/
for you if you were weak/
but you're not weak, she said and neatened his little red wings and pushed him/
out the door./

That is the worst, I think. That things die but the love for them remains.

sicko

2007-08-20T11:38:00.000-07:00

If you haven't had the opportunity to see Michael Moore's new documentary Sicko, please find time. Check out his website at http://www.michaelmoore.com/. Watch it on DVD when it comes out, because this is a really heartbreaking, revealing, insightful movie.

The most affecting moment for me was when Moore is defining one of the many differences between the French concept of government and our own, and he says something along these lines: in France, the people are not afraid of the government; the government is afraid of the people. The French government doesn't want protests and controversy, they don't want revolution, so they do what they must to please and serve the people. To serve French society. It wasn't until I heard that quote that I realized I was actually afraid, viscerally afraid, of American government. But I guess that fear shouldn't be too hard to understand; I grew up learning and living with the history of Jim Crow and the Civil Rights movement in Mississippi. I also lived through Hurricane Katrina. I also think it's a sign of overbearing, oppressive, manipulative government when state and local governments pass laws that restrict civil rights (banning same sex marriage and civil unions, proposing laws that seek to ban adoption by same sex couples, etc.). If that's not evidence of a hostile government, I don't know what is. Of course, this is all complicated by the fact that I watched the documentary Jesus Camp, which is about evangelist kids, evangelism in the U.S., and how evangelism influences politics, yesterday. It was terrifying. Anyone want to move to Canada with me? Or France?

visiting relatives

2007-08-15T20:36:00.000-07:00

My cousin Eunice is visiting with her husband and children from Vermont. My Aunt TeTe (which means sister in the Creole my family used to speak, or so my cousin claims; anyhow, she's my grandmother's sister) had a dinner at her house that involved seafood gumbo, french bread with garlic butter, potato salad, two kinds of bundt/pound cake, two kinds of teas, and a jug of mojito. Since I had only eaten a bowl of cereal earlier in the day, I gorged myself. Almost sick. Two bowls of gumbo, three pieces of french bread, one bowl of potato salad, one piece of cake, and three cups of sweet tea. My stomach feels like a distended, overfull garbage bag. Ugh. But the food was so good, and it was so nice to laugh and joke with my extended family. It felt like family. It reminded me of the reason that I moved home in the first place: to be with family after I have been absent so long. I forget that. Probably because it seems to matter little to my immediate family, the people who I had thought it would matter the most to, that I am here. But we are essentially fucked up, I think. Bad history of men leaving women, of fathers leaving mothers and children, and the mothers feeling that what was left, the children, were something to be endured until they were old enough to be foisted upon the world.

Zapora's mother said to me once that some people just have solid families, and they live fairly happy lives. That she felt fortunate to have been born into a family that was basically happy, and that she felt that she had lived a fortunate life. She said there was no reason things worked out one way or the other. I envied her that basic assertion when she said it. I envied her her experience, her happy family. When I complained to Leroi once about all the bad shit that had happened to/in my family, the blatant favoritism amongst siblings, the infighting, my brother dying at 19, one sister pregnant at 12, the other at 20, the constant financial struggle, the drug addiction, all the absent men, he said, "It's because of where you're from. It's because everyone's poor and black." Living in Mississippi again makes me realize that what Leroi said is mostly true. That this place shapes us.

I think it's hard for me to remember, sometimes, that families and realities can be essentially happy; it's hard for me to remember that there are people who see parenthood and children as a happiness and not a burden that drags the rest of the life into mud. Writing, at least for me, is often about exploring the fucked-up life, the wretched family, the estranged reality. It's about crawling into the mud. It's about exploring people whose lives walk the thin edge separating happiness from despair. This place, this history, cages them.

Why can I not shake the feeling that place and history now cage me?

apologies and links

2007-08-09T15:13:00.000-07:00

First, I'd like to apologize to Britta for stealing her template. I did not know it was your template until I checked out your page, and I tried to find another template I liked, but I couldn't. So, for now, we have to be virtual twins. Sorry, Britta. And just to let you know, I loved your last post on robotdinosaurs. I just didn't have anything adequate to say in response.

I usually don't do this, but I'm linking to this excellent collection of articles on Afro-descendants in Latin America on the Miami Herald webpage.

http://www.miamiherald.com/multimedia/news/afrolatin/index.html

Before today, I hadn't read anything from the Miami Herald since I was in high school when I used to avidly read Dave Barry columns and laugh out loud at them. Yes, I was such a gotdamn dork. Painful. I'm actually a Nation, Salon, and BBC sort of girl. Anyhow, as everyone should know, I'm interested in African/mixed race/creole experience, but I haven't been able to find much about race in Latin America beyond the various allusions to mulattas in Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera and in his most recent one about molancholy whores, a story my ex told me about a trip he took with a group of friends in college to Mexico (Puerto Vallarta, I think) where our friend Chad was turned away at the door and not allowed in the nightclub because he was too 'black,' and finally, my experience in a section at Stanford where a Brazilian student was surprised when I called myself black; in Brazil, she insisted, I would be considered white. I was so surprised at the time that all I could offer was an embarassed smile and a bewildered blush. Until I read this series of articles, I could not understand her viewpoint. It was only after I read one of the articles on race in Brazil that I realized that the racial formulation in a Brazil is the exact opposite of the tradition in the United States that posits that 'one drop' of African blood means that the person is black. In Brazil, and in the Dominican Republic, you choose what you are, and that 'one drop' of Caucasian or Native American blood might just make it possible for you to claim that you are Indian or mulatto or pardo or anything else but just 'black.' Because to be 'just black' is insulting. And yet, many Brazilians, or at least neoconservative ones, insist that there is no such thing as racism in Brazil. Or Cuba. Or name your Latin American country. Anyway, it's a great collection of articles, and if you're at all interested in that portion of the world, you should definitely read it. Surprised to find that the population of Argentina was once 30% black in the 1800s, and that now the Afro-descendant segment of Argentina is basically non-existent? I was. Go forth and read.

If you know me, you know that I'm mixed, creole. My family has a mash-up of heritages; a Haitian great-great grandmother on one side, a Frenchman here, a full-blooded Native American there, one from the French Quarter here, all of them refugees from around New Orleans. All of my recent ancestors, up to my grandparents who know only a few phrases and cusswords, spoke some sort of creole French. Yet, on all census and official forms, I choose 'black.' I know that part of the reason I have to make this decision anyway is because of the English/American policy regarding race that was enacted once they made the Louisiana Purchase. Creole had to be defined. There was an impulse by the new owners to lump all those that spoke French and had an olive compexion or darker into one ethnic group, an ethnic group tainted by the suspected presence of African 'blood.' So, those light enough opted to restrict the understanding of the term Creole to those strictly of Spanish and French descent. All those with any discernible African descent were something other. They were black, and this was considered a bad thing. That they spoke French, that they participated in a distinctly creole culture, in the truest sense of the word, didn't matter. I still argue with some people about the right to call myself Creole, and it's even more contentious that I choose to augment it by using the word 'black' before it.

This, of course, pisses me the fuck off. Conflicts me. I choose black because choosing it makes me feel proud. I can say that my mom was one of the first elementary kids chosen to attend Pass Christian school when the authorities were trying to integrate Randolph, the all black school, into the white school districts in the sixties. The people in my community, regardless of their mixed features or shared cultural values, were still regarded as second class, or other, as the bastard 'black'. The reason my mom was chosen was because she had an olive-skin tone, a nose sharper and thinner than many Europeans, and soft, curly, fine black hair. She was less black, mixed, closer to the standards of beauty of whiteness. She was more palatable. My father, with his Native American grandfather, with his long curly black hair and his cheekbones sharp enough to cut when he was six years old, ran from the caretaker in the Pass Chrisitan park that screamed, "Get out of here, you little niggers. No niggers allowed. Get!" Even if I take that genetic test that Oprah did and find out that only 30% of my DNA is from African ancestors, and 70 is from French and Spanish and Native American sources, in this South, that won't make the police stop pulling my car over to search it for crack, and it won't make that fifty-year old white bigot in the vetenarian's office retract the following genius comment; "I think Indians had it the worst in this country, and if anybody disagrees with me, I tell them to go back to Africa." I'm sure those Native Americans feel the same way about your ass. Ever heard of the Lakota Ghost Dance religion? No? And yet I'm conflicted. I'm pissed off when Tiger Woods makes it a point to call himself Cablinasian, because it feels (yes, feels) like this is a direct rejection of everything black. Yet, I want to acknowledge all the pieces of myself, of my heritage.

I'm pissed off at the culture that makes it necessary for me to make statements like this. I'm pissed off that I have to define myself and subject myself to a misguided system that groups people in races, when, as one of the excellent journalists in one of the articles pointed out (she's an American black writing about the Brazilian concept of blackness), there's only one race. Yes, the sentiment reeks of cyberpunk, futuristic idealism, but there's only the human race. And my way of subverting the dominant one-drop paradigm is making people acknowledge the Creole part of my heritage, too. Of shoving that in the Creole purists' faces, and stating, yeah, I'm one, too, bitches. There's a lot of us here in New Orleans and in southern Mississippi and throughout the south, and I even met a few in L.A. So what. I guess in the end, being Creole is an ethnic and cultural identity, and being black is a political one. So, to see how other Afro-descendants in countries a little further south are navigating these identities, go read. I promise you won't be disappointed.

lighting the scenery

2007-08-08T14:58:00.000-07:00

I decided to lighten my page, change my template, all that good stuff. Although I know that noboby but Jule probably reads my posts anymore, I felt that it was time for change. All that black was weighing me down, making me feel very dark. And I need no help with that, considering that the fall and October are approaching. And I hate the month of October.

My niece, who is one and a half, has decided that it is a very cool thing to interrupt her eating to kiss me. That is, whenever I feed her, she does the following: open mouth, take food from spoon, chew briefly, lean forward with expectant look on face that includes raised eyebrows and wide eyes, and pucker. I kiss. She then leans back, chews and swallows, and opens her mouth for more food. Repeat. So feeding takes much longer than usual. But it is also much more rewarding.

This is what she does when you tell her to smile for the camera. Outrageous.

i admit it

2007-07-29T23:52:00.000-07:00

I feel like this is a dirty secret, considering I'm supposed to be honing my brain on razor-sharp literary fiction in the hopes of writing razor-sharp literary fiction, but yes, I read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I was actually very excited about reading it. You know, so excited that I pre-ordered the book from Amazon, and then was pissed when I chose the wrong kind of shipping at checkout so that it didn't arrive on the 21st, but on the 25th. I own all the books. In hardcover. There I said it. I'm just vomiting dirty secrets out left and right. I've actually read the first four books two to three times. Each. No, I'm not really a freak or a literary pudding. Let me explain.

One of my best friends from college, Jule, persuaded me to begin reading Harry Potter during the summer after I graduated from college. I was afloat, living in Mississippi, spending hours daily sifting through websites for jobs, always coming up with nothing. I was silently fighting with my mother a lot, being mulish when she insisted that I take a job, any job. I didn't want to work for less than ten bucks an hour folding clothes at the Tommy Hilfiger Outlet, so I pushed her off, told her I was still looking, spent hours in front of the computer in the Pass Christian Public Library.

Which was fine, really, except for all the kids. You see, once the private elementary school a few streets over dismissed students at around three, at least sixty children would descend on the library like a cloud of gnats. More specifically, they would crowd the eight or so computers that the small library boasted as its computer lab. After three, each library patron only had thirty minutes to be on any computer, and then I'd have to vacate my job search so some three foot wonder could play 'Powerpuff vs. Mojo' on the Cartoon Network website. And I love the Powerpuff girls, but I digress. Anyhow, I'd get pissed when the kids smelling of slightly musky child sweat and glue would elbow me from a computer, so to avoid returning home, I'd wander the library aisles, replete with shelves upon shelves of romance novels and bad science fiction and civil war history tomes and one book by James Joyce. So, in despair, I'd wander to the kiddie section, which some rich patron who probably lived in one of those antebellum mansions on the beach had built, and I'd check out what the kids were reading if they weren't complicating my job search. And that is how I discovered Harry Potter. I was intrigued by the three fat tomes sitting unabashed in the middle of their more anorexic cousins. So, I checked one out, along with a bad sci-fi book and the James Joyce.

I struggled through the James Joyce, skimmed the sci-fi for arresting cyberpunk projections about the future, and then opened the Harry Potter. I read the first page, and it was like Roald Dahl redux. Rowling introduced Harry, the perpetual underdog, living in his cupboard under the stairs, put upon by a family of blustering idiots. Then a wizarding giant with a frilly umbrella exploded into their house and saved Harry, and I was in love. I was in love with the characters, with the texture of that world so richly imagined, and with the possibility put forth by the books that insisted that this magical world existed concurrently with our own. That was the kicker. So I read the next one. And the next one.

And then my brother died.

I moved to New York, and for eight months, I lived on friends, acquaintances, and a boyfriend's sofas, and I job hunted. And Jule, perhaps knowing what I needed more than I did, sent me the first four Potter books, in hardcover, as Christmas presents. And I spent my idle hours when I wasn't out getting lost in subway stations and interviewing for jobs, hours I should've spent exploring the crazy, monstrous city I'd moved to, lurking in the corners of apartments that were no homes for me. Alive with an ache that was so unnatural and so huge I had no words for it. Mute. And I read Harry Potter over and over and over again. I slipped my skin and walked another place without dog shit ground in the pavement, sooty snow, buildings that obscured the sky, and disconsolate strangers, satellites of warmth forever orbiting outside my reach. A place where all that I was was reduced to a dull, backseat pain, and I felt fully only the shallow, surface emotions of the narrative, like a child: dread at Harry's relatives, the Dursley's, quiet satisfaction at his burgeoning relationship with Dumbledore, joy at his friendships, his triumphs, his fumbled victory over You-Know-Who at the end of each book.

So it was especially hard for me to read this last book. Harry and I had journeyed, concurrently, through some of the most trying times I had experienced so far in my life. I sat the book next to me for around four hours or so while I did other work, graded, e-mailed, surfed the internet, because I did not have the courage to open it, to face the fact that Harry's journey ended in those pages. To face the fact that it might end in death. I can only explain it in a confused way, but perhaps I did not want to read the end because I began reading Harry when my brother was alive, and now I would finish, and my brother is not alive. Stupid. Sentimental. Honest. It amazes me now to think of the hold that fictional characters, that fictional lives, can exert on us. And while I was reading it, especially towards the end, I cried. Broke down and sobbed. Had trouble breathing and all that. Wiped away tears, eyes blurry, to continue reading and felt accutely ashamed. I finally finished after several hours of reading, and it was a good read, in the end: worth opening the book. It wasn't a literary revelation like The Road, which also made me cry and feel that same mortal ache, but it was a good story that did something I think all authors want their work to do; it resonated with something in me, pulled me away and inserted me in a place that was so real to me that for a time, it eased me.

That is a worthy goal for any author, I think.

supine living and a poem from Michael

2007-07-05T18:46:00.000-07:00

So I haven't been updating this blog lately because I've been concentrating mostly on breathing. Yeah, I said it: breathing. Teaching all those classes (four) with those particular restrictions (multiply three classes by twenty students by five papers and final exams for each student equals a hellish amount of grading) for two semesters has left me supine. I am barely functioning. It is all I can do to wake up around noon and lie in bed and breathe. The only other thing that I concurrently do along with the breathing is work on my materials for this online class I'm teaching. And drag my fatty-rear around a track once a week for a mile. And get drunk, but I'm on a rotating schedule for that: three days on, three days off, and on the seventh, she suffers a wicked hangover.

Once I get over this paralyzing lethargy (I've been in this state for about a month and a half), I must add that to my shortlist of things to do this summer; I must finally memorize the correct uses and conjugations of lie and lay. And work on my French. And read around fifteen books. And get back into writing five pages of prose per day. And work on my feeble-but-growing guitar playing skills. And work out more often. And not drink so much vodka and rum. But first, I must get some sort of fire going under my ass so that I can even attempt to attempt all of these things. Because right now, it doesn't even seem like it's worth the effort to try. Breathing, composing lectures, and drinking are enough. Yeah.

So, to deflect the responsibility for my pitiful despair and abject laziness, a poem from Michael Ondaatje.

Birth of Sound

At night the most private of a dog's long body groan.
It comes with his last stretch
in the dark corridor outside our room.
The children turn.
A window tries to split with cold
the other dog hoofing the carpet for lice.
We're all alone.

the road

2007-04-23T13:40:00.000-07:00

I read Cormac McCarthy's The Road this weekend. I will never be able to forget some of those images. The end broke my gotdamn heart. If you haven't read it (and I know I'm probably late on this one, too--all the robotdinosaurs probably read it months ago), you should read it.

headaches are back

2007-04-12T17:41:00.000-07:00

My headaches have returned at the most terrible time. My health insurance here is awful--after six months of coverage, I now have to begin to pay a $500 deductible. Of course, I'm sure that the fact that I've spent the afternoon and evening doing my taxes, drinking Framboise Lambic (Bill lucked up and found it at a grocery store in Slidell), and stressing over my car probably contributed to my throbbing eye and the grip on my temple.

Tomorrow, I have to drive back into N.O. for a few meetings. I'm already exhausted just thinking about it. But at least I'll be able to walk around the French Quarter in the afternoon; there's a French Quarter music and food festival happening this weekend.