Category: inklings

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From the New Pages blog: “PEN American Center, the largest branch of the world’s oldest literary and human rights organization, announced today the creation of PEN Reads, an online reading group that will bring readers and writers together to discuss works of literature relevant to PEN’s mission. The inaugural title will be The Hour of the Star (New Directions) by the legendary Brazilian author Clarice Lispector.”

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I also love Agua Viva (Stream of Life) and Perto do coração selvagem (Near to the Wild Heart).

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Hélène Cixous wrote: ” If Kafka were a woman; if Rilke were a Brazilian Jewish woman born in the Ukraine; if Rimbaud had been a mother, if he had reached his 50s; if Heidegger had been able to stop being German, if he had written the Novel of the Earth. . . . It’s in this ambiance that Clarice Lispector writes. There, where the most demanding works breathe, she advances. There, further ahead, where the philosopher loses his breath, she continues, still further, beyond all knowledge.”

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postscript prayer: A woman with osteoperosis & bone chips in her hip joint, a man who mourns the loss of his brother, a little girl who does not live with her parents and who draws hearts on paper airplanes, and a woman who still awaits her healing.

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There are 11 poets named Karen.

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Today, I decided to take a personal day to work on my conference paper, eat chocolate, and *think.* 

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I didn’t have any chocolate in the house except three kinds of cocoa beverages (hazelnut, dark chocolate, and marshmallow cocoa).  No chocolate?  Inconceivable.

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I ended up taking a walk. 

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I spent most of the morning in a bookstore looking at new books… lovely! 

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I spent part of the afternoon in a paper store… it reminded me of the one I used to visit in Berkeley.  Handmade mulberry paper and fern-leaf paper and dyed washi paper and paper with silver print from India… the store was fragrant – like sweet rice.

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I visited the perfume boutique and sprayed my dress with the pink Vera Wang perfume ($90 for 3.4 oz), then the mint-green one (also $90 for 3.4 oz). 

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The fancy chocolatier wasn’t dispensing free chocolates today.  Yesterday, it was sharing “gem chocolates” wrapped in turquoise and gold foil.  *sigh*

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Now I must return to work. 

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For Memorial Day, I made quinoa with lima beans, fresh baby spinach, and toasted pine nuts. Well, not exactly toasted: I fried the pine nuts in olive oil, even better! I ate this with a homemade hummus of blended chickpeas, lemon juice, and fresh garlic. One of these summer days, I will make pesto… but I am too engrossed in reading Tsitsi Dangarembga and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie to leave the house often. 

It’s fresh basil I’m usually missing.

Over the phone, I told a friend what I ate for my Memorial Day lunch. She said, “What about the barbecue?” What barbecue, I said. “You’re supposed to barbecue on Memorial Day.” People barbecue on Labor Day, I said. “No, we barbecue on Memorial Day, too. Where is the BBQ meat? And what do you call garbanzo beans?” Chickpeas, I said. “Chickpeas aren’t meat.” What do you call toasted pine nuts? (I didn’t mention they weren’t actually toasted.) “Toasted? You call that a barbecue? And are you calling garbanzo beans… chicken?”

Something about the conversation – the chickpeas-not-meat, the toasted-not-barbecue – made me laugh. I couldn’t help thinking of the “eat more chiken [sic]” cow waving to me at a corner Chik-Fil-A as I drove to a neighboring town to buy fish. This Chik-Fil-A is located next to an In-N-Out, where the cow, presumably, might’ve escaped. I always wave to the cow, which makes him or her happy (jumps up and down). I’m awaiting the friendly cluck-a-cluck of chicken mascots one day, too.

Those of us at the top of the food chain are certainly consumers in every sense of the word… I am thinking about all this while typing this blog entry… and jotting notes for a conference paper on the poetics of surrealism, which isn’t due until the 2011 MLA convention, but a number of recent adventures have put me, serendipitously, in the right mood to contemplate the politics of surrealism in literary contexts.

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As for the near future, it looks like Los Angeles, and possibly Washington D.C, according to a new poet-friend Sawnie Morris from Taos, New Mexico, whose invitation was a blessing out of the blue.  

2010 West Hollywood Book Fair
Poetry Reading & Signing

2011 MLA Convention, Los Angeles
Presider: Karen An-hwei Lee
Panel Session: Transnational Feminist Spaces
Panelists: Erin Ninh (UCSB), Josephine Park (U. Penn), and me
Respondent: Sandra Lim (U. Mass)

2011 Los Angeles Times Festival of Books
Poetry Reading & Signing
Contact: Elena Karina Byrne

2011 West Regional Conference on Christianity & Literature
Thanks to the collaboration of stellar colleagues, my department will host this conference on our campus – a wonderful opportunity for our undergraduate English majors!  Go English!!  Our students presented a Senior Capstone version of CCL this past year, and next year, we’ll organize the West Regional CCL.  I am so proud of our department.

2011 Ruskin Art Club, Los Angeles
Poetry Reading & Signing
 
2011 AWP Convention, Washington D.C.
(in progress… we’ll see how things go!) 

prayer postscript:  It is a blessing to share God’s creative works with a spirit of love. I am grateful for an ever-increasing circle of this love, which requires that I take risks, fortifying the substance of faith.   

second prayer postscript:  If you have  moment to pray, please add these women to your healing list… a woman with cancer in the lymph nodes (was in remission, now returned), a woman with paralysis in her left hand (it’s her “writing hand”), a woman with cancer & an estranged husband, and a woman with silent gallstones.

Catherine Keefe recently asked me….

“What is the sound that hunger makes?”

This is a profound question – beautiful and painful – I couldn’t answer right away. 

I spent the evening reading silently from my new devotional.  I fell asleep with the lamp on and the little red book open in my hands, rising and falling like a fluttering bird or a loved one’s heart. 

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When I woke, I remembered a story told by Agnes Bojaxhiu. 

“One night, a man came to our house to tell me that a Hindu family, a family of eight children, had not eaten anything for days.  They had nothing to eat.  I took enough rice for a meal and went to their house.  I could see the hungry faces. . . .

The mother took the rice from my hands, divided it in half and went out.  When she came back a little later, I asked her:  ‘Where did you go?  What did you do?’

She answered, ‘They also are hungry.’ 

‘They’ were the people next door, a Muslim family with the same number of children to feed and who did not have any food either.

That mother was aware of the situation.  She had the courage and the love to share her meager portion of rice with others. In spite of her circumstances, I think she felt very happy to share with her neighbors the little I had taken her.

In order not to take away her happiness, I did not take her anymore rice that night.  I took her some more the following day.”

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I drove myself to a nearby chapel.  I sat near the fountain.  Wedding guests… but the bride was missing.  Spanish-speaking bridesmaids wore wine-colored satin.  I saw everyone else, from the youngest to the eldest, and an Asian videographer. 

Where was the bride?  Everyone was waiting…. waiting, waiting for her.

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I wrote:  The sound of hunger is silence until it has a voice.

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prayer postscript:  Spotted as I drove to my tenth Commencement as a faculty member:  “It’s not the destination, it’s the journey.”

Things I’d like to learn someday…

*how to choreograph a modern dance
*how to shoot a film short
*how to forgive with joy, no strings attached
*how to communicate in American Sign Language
*how to love courageously & fearlessly
*how to grieve properly without lasting bitterness
*how to be a healer in the lives of loved ones & strangers

Lately, I’m reading a new book, Finding Beauty in a Broken World,  by Terry Tempest Williams, a mosaic written in lovely “tesserae.”  Two weeks ago, I had the pleasure of hearing Ms. Williams share from new – unpublished – writings in Denver, Colorado.  Ms. Williams recently embarked on a fresh healing journey.

After the reading, she told me two things which deeply touched my heart:  (1) Santa Ana is beautiful, and (2) she always wanted to be a poet.

This afternoon, I learned two new Spanish words: “gracia” for grace… and gratitude is “gratitud” (without the “e”).  So I have been mulling over the little graces in my life, which usually, more often than not, manifest as big graces.

Recently, one little grace is something my Spanish-speaking hairdresser told me the other day as she examined my hair (el pelo “hair” vs. pelitos, “hairs,” the eponymous fiction piece by Sandra Cisneros) before cutting it.  “You are growing new hair [el pelo],” she said, holding up the tiny strands, about two inches long, at my forehead and temples. (Or did she say, “pelitos,” hairs?)

“New hair?” I asked.  After all, I’m at an age when when women’s hair start lightening – from southern California sun-bleaching, sea-blanching, or chlorinated water – or even thinning from life-related stress. I imagined this all could be true for me, too, since I’m older with an increased duress of years (what was that popping noise in my knee/elbow/shoulder?), not to mention living in California.

“You are growing a lot of new hair,” she said.  She explained how blessed I was to experience this.  Many of her customers spend lots of time and money trying to find ways to grow new hair, whereas mine was growing on its own… a chia pet of sorts.  Add water, light, and poof!  El pelo nuevo: new hair. No, not old hair [el pelo viejo] growing longer… *new.*

Luke 12:7 – “The very hairs of your head are numbered,” a verse that says God is in the details… and the God of the universe cares about details, even little human ones, weaving grace into a brilliant design which we understand in tiny pieces, less than one hair’s breadth at a time.  God knows this… Jesus spells it out for us and prays our hearts will open to receive new life.

Why am I blessed to grow new hair… 

Medically, I can’t think of any reasonable explanation for this except that (1) I’m using a new shampoo with nectarine in it, but I haven’t read any research studies about the effects of nectarine on stimulating hair follicles, and (2) I’m eating seaweed with sesame seeds from a new local Asian market – seaweed is one of my favorite foods and good for hair, or (3) someone is praying I’ll grow new hair, although I’m not sure who this kind prayer warrior would be.

So I am grateful for el pelo nuevo. 

Another little grace is that a female hummingbird – emerald green all over but not red-throated like the male – has woven a nest in a cluster of eucalyptus nuts in the tree before my window.  She sits in her nest throughout the day and spreads out three tiny tail feathers – one, two, three –  no larger than the nub of a Q-tip. 

When she wants to sun-bathe away from eucalyptus shade (I imagine it minty-fragrant… like eucalyptus), she perches in the thundercloud plum blossom in front of my lanai, and preens under each wing with her needle-beak.  It’s a pleasure to see this hummingbird hover outside my window, looking at me with one bright eye, and zip high and away over the bougainvillea to a destination only she knows by heart.

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postscript prayer:  I’ll think of a third grace soon…

During my office hours this afternoon, I enjoyed chatting with a student about Kenzaburo Oe, whom this student  read in a literature class lately.  

When I lived in Berkeley, I purchased several copies of Oe’s writings at Moe’s Books and Black Oak Books.  One day I wandered into Amoeba Music on Telegraph Street and – amazingly! – found his son Hikari Oe’s music… not one but two C.D.s!  The songs have lovely titles: “May the Plane Not Fall,” “Summer in Kitakaru,” “Barcarolle,” and “Requiem for M.” 

When I was writing my dissertation, I listened to these C.D.s frequently.  Oe’s piano and flute compositions helped to clear my mind – create a quiet mental space – for hours upon hours of concentrated writing.  As a person who played flute and piano from childhood through college years, these two instruments hold special places in my heart.

Coincidentally, Kenzaburo Oe was invited to give a keynote lecture at Berkeley that year.  I showed up early so I could procure a good seat in the giant lecture room – more like a ballroom – at the top of Barrows Hall.  He was sitting outside on a “lanai” of sorts, reviewing his notes.  As I peeked at him through the glass, he peeked back at me and smiled.

After the lecture, there was, of course, a long line of people waiting to exchange a word with him, take a picture, or receive an autograph.  I brought the two C.D.s by Hikari and, proud father, he beamed widely and autographed behalf his son.  I was pleased to share how much I enjoyed his son’s music compositions.  I continue to enjoy them today. A Healing Family, illustrated by his wife, is still one of my favorite books, too.

postscript prayer: …grace through faith, not by works…in hikari we see grace.