Written on the Third Floor of the Museum of Jewish Heritage

June 18, 2018
New York City

Written on the Third Floor of the Museum of Jewish Heritage

Air. Space. Quiet echoes.

The view of the water and
the Statue of Liberty across it

Room to breathe and reflect

Room to make sense and make space

Room not to let go, but to hold loosely
a fragile thought pulsing with life

like an egg in the palm of your hand
or a bird
or the promise of wings.

Where I'm From, Version C

June 17, 2018
New York City

Where I'm From

I'm from saguaro cactus,
    from the prickly pear I scurried past
    on my way home from the bus stop.

I'm from digging holes in the backyard,
    from ground so hard and dry
    I had to drown it to make it yield.

I'm from white rice, from egg noodle soup,
    from dim sum and barbeque pork buns.
I'm from tacos, from chorizo,
    from horchata and limonada.

I'm from the jobs my father worked
    to put himself through college.
I'm from the English my mother learned
    to get along in a new country.

I'm from perms, from scrunchies,
    from Mommy brushing my hair too hard.

I'm from day trips to the White Mountains
    to play in the snow, then driving back
    to the desert heat by evening.

I'm from sheet music, from music stands,
    from Mommy's piano in the sitting room.
I'm from singing along to the Bee Gees with Daddy in the car.
I'm from piano lessons, from music competitions,
    from recitals at the mall.
I'm from stuffing my flute case into my backpack for school
    then carrying it home again.

I'm from books, from stacks of papers,
    from students' handwritten thank you notes.
I'm from Saturday mornings at the library
    and Saturday afternoons reading
    on the living room couch.
I'm from Nancy Drew and Anne of Green Gables
    and Encyclopedia Brown and Meet Felicity.
I'm from stealing paperback romance novels from my mom
    and John Grisham thrillers from my dad.
I'm from reading to my sister on the bottom bunk after bedtime,
    huddled together, a cocoon
    of blankets and words and love.

Once More, With Feeling

My childhood is littered with abandoned journals.

My inordinate love of books has long been a defining characteristic of mine, and so I suppose it is only natural that when my various loved ones are looking for a non-book gift for someone who loves words, well, it's quite frequently a blank journal.

Like many bibliophiles and school nerds, I also harbor a (slightly un)healthy, long-standing passion for stationery, and so I delighted in each of these gifts. Lined, blank, spiral-bound, book-bound, hardcover, softcover--I loved them all.

The trouble, for me, has always been filling them.

Perhaps it was that dreaded paralysis of the blank page, perhaps it's my unfortunate habit of leaving large projects unfinished, or even my brain's maddening need for regular novelty, but, invariably, I would start each of those notebooks with the best of intentions. I would write two or three really solid entries, then log in a couple of half-hearted attempts, then I would leave the rest of the journal blank, never to be filled. Eventually, the notebook would get lost under a pile of clothing or shoved beneath my bed, unused and forgotten.

When I eventually unearthed each of those barely used notebooks months or even years later, each one felt like a failure. What did it say about me, that I couldn't manage something as simple as keeping up with a journal?

I think more than anything else, it was this inability of mine to maintain a consistent writing habit that caused me to believe that I would always be just a reader, not a writer. Didn't writers need to write, like breathing? Didn't the words rush through their veins, like a river in flood, desperately searching for an outlet? I must not have had whatever special compulsion it was that those people, the real writers had. I didn't have that need, or that Gift.

But I am slowly learning that it isn't a constantly accessible, always replenishing flow of words that defines a writer, but the determination to keep picking up that pen or pulling that keyboard closer and trying again, no matter if it has been two hours or two years.

So it goes with this blog. Thanks for sticking around.

Poem: Signs of Life

Written on a "writing marathon" walk around ASU campus during CAWP Summer Institute.

2017-06-14

Signs of Life
I do not always know their names
But the shapes are familiar
Baked into my childhood memories
By years of sun and heat:

Wide, flat paddles covered in spikes
Tinged purple at the edges

Clusters of tall spears
Bursting in all directions like fireworks

Dusty green limbs, a folded lady’s fan
Stretching up and out like fingers toward the sky

Low wide barrels, ridges and valleys lined with needles
Always squatting alone

While their taller cousins reach long arms toward their neighbors
But also up and up toward cloudless, unrelenting blue.

Where I'm From, Part B

2017-06-13

Where I’m From, Part B

I am from dirt and rock

And slowly withering grass—

“Desert Landscaping”.

I am from the overgrown oleander bush

Standing guard beneath our front window—

Look, but don’t touch.

I am from too-big gardening gloves,

From pulling weeds in the yard with Daddy

And ice water after, tooth-achingly cold.

I’m from tacos and dim sum,

Hot tea and cool salsa,

Tamales and fried rice.

I’m from Chinese nursery songs with Grandma,

And English ones from PBS,

From Daddy’s cracked hands

And Mommy’s curly brown hair,

From staying up too late reading books to my sister

In the bed whose bottom bunk we shared

And filled the top with a zoo of stuffed animals.

I am from music, always, everywhere,

From piano, trumpet, flute, stereo, television, and portable sing-along cassette player,

From boy bands and hymns, the Bee Gees and Disney,

From “Peace Like a River” and “Hit Me Baby One More Time”,

From singing and listening and playing and rehearsing
and spontaneous bursts of song like uncontained joy.

IT'S ALIVE!

I know I literally haven't posted in years, so please be warned: post-CAWP deluge of posts coming (or maybe a small stream at least)! Scraps of poems, essays, little writing sketches. I think it's time to start posting again.

If you're reading this, bless your heart. You are a better friend than I deserve.

Language and Magic

Some (perhaps slightly out-of-context) thoughts on language and magic: 

"If there’s a single lesson that life teaches us, it’s that wishing doesn’t make it so. Words and thoughts don’t change anything. Language and reality are kept strictly apart— reality is tough, unyielding stuff, and it doesn’t care what you think or feel or say about it. Or it shouldn’t. You deal with it, and you get on with your life. Little children don’t know that. Magical thinking: that’s what Freud called it. Once we learn otherwise we cease to be children. The separation of word and thing is the essential fact on which our adult lives are founded. But somewhere in the heat of magic that boundary between word and thing ruptures. It cracks, and the one flows back into the other, and the two melt together and fuse. Language gets tangled up with the world it describes... Can a man who can cast a spell ever really grow up?" 

from The Magicians by Lev Grossman