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

Adventures in Educational Crowdfunding!

I know it's been literally months since I posted, sorry, sorry.

I just wanted to pop out of my teaching/planning/grading hole to promote my DonorsChoose.org project. You can support our classroom by clicking HERE!

Help me put quality literature into the hands of my 11th graders!

Mindy Kaling (my favorite Hollywood person) supports Donors Choose! 

(as if I needed more reasons to love her!)

YA Lit Review: Divergent by Veronica Roth

Another old book review from Goodreads. Does posting three times in one day make up for not posting for months? Maybe?

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Divergent by Veronica Roth
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Not wildly original or remarkably well-crafted, but this book totally sucked me into its orbit for the four days it took me to read it. Already bought the sequel on Amazon! (Two day shipping suddenly seems horribly slow...) Tris Prior makes for a tough-yet-sympathetic and engaging heroine, but I'm having a hard time with Four. Maybe I'm too old (or cynical?) to have patience for boys who run hot and cold, even if they are super dreamy. Impatiently waiting for book 2 to get to my house...

View all my reviews