Category: Poetry & Life

This weekend, in the first of a series of Los Angeles outings over the next year, I’m appearing at the West Hollywood Book Fair with Cyrus Cassells, Dorothy Barresi, Kelli Ann Noftle, and Elena Karina Byrne.  

Yes, in California, “poetry” and “Hollywood” may appear together in the same sentence, though some would argue Hollywood is actually in Burbank, but that’s a whole other topic. 

*

Livng things I saw on my prayer walk this Sunday morning…

*
Five-petaled star jasmine – blooming cream, blooming white moonlight out of the corner of my eye – near the mailboxes, and one shrub already in full fruit. 

*

Jasmine fruit starts out green & hard like a tiny apple, then ripens to into a soft plushy fuchsia-colored plum.

*

Perched on a jasmine blossom, a green praying mantis curled its abdomen up, up, up like a leaf fragment.  Enormous eyes and legs like two hack-saws.  What a funny insect you are, I thought… and fierce… perching still as hewn jade, its face turned into the distance. 

*

You look like a staid green violinist, I thought.  Who stole your music?  Now you have two fiddle strings for antennae moving quietly in the silence, lifting traces of jasmine perfume… or not.

*

Out by the mailboxes, someone left books for others to take.  I took a cloth-bound copy of Angela’s Ashes, dust jacket missing, but overall in good shape.  When everyone was talking about this memoir a decade ago, I didn’t read it.  I don’t why.  What was I reading then? 

*

I was still living in New England, no idea what I wished to do except write.  No idea I’d spend the next decade teaching & writing in California, hearing curious statements like: Your velvet hat looks very East Coast. 

*
This afternoon, I will read Angela’s Ashes after church. 

*

Thank goodness for peace of mind to open a book & read.

*
Prayer:  Blessings for the person who placed books out by the mailboxes to share with others. 

I was blessed to spend the day at the Mission San Juan Capistrano where I spent time reflecting on what it means to create a space for peace & embrace the peace that transcends understanding.

*

The mission is known for its annual migration of swallows.  The mission bell rings in honor of their return –  the same date every year – March 19. 

*

I didn’t see any swallows or jug-shaped mud-nests, but it’s August, after all.

*

I enjoyed walking on the curving sand-paths.  A dry, hot noon sun rose overhead.  The heat reminded of baking bread – indeed, I passed an outdoor stone hearth with a rusted iron kettle on it, large enough for me to stand in, then I passed a round oven, like an igloo, with broken coal inside. 

*

I followed the mica-flecked path around one stone-and-stucco fountain with lilies and koi, then another with lilies equally beautiful, and came to rest at the foot of two large stones.  I touched each stone with my hands: If the stones could speak. 

*

Two scaly sand lizards sun-bathed on the edge of the path, looking quiet & content, blinking & breathing.

*

Here’s what a sign said by the two large stones:  Olive Mill

Built around the 1880s and reconstructed in the 1930s, this unconventional, two-wheel olive mill was used to crush olives for juice extraction.  Evidence indicates that the pulp produced was pressed in a room within the west wing industrial complex.  Processed olive juice was used to produce olive oil for cooking, lamps, medicines, and protective balm.

*
Olive oil… holy oil, the blessed oil, the oil for anointing the sick, the healing oil, the olive trees Jesus loved centuries ago, how old they must be today, if still alive: about two thousand years.

*
I thought of holy tongues of fire coming to rest over the believers’ heads in Acts 2:3-4.

*
Prayer:   To embrace blessings that come from the Holy Spirit to bless our own lives & loved ones, too.  To embrace blessings that come to bless others.  To be a vessel of grace with a diversity of tongues.

This morning, I was pleased to attend the inaugural kick-off breakfast, “Making Strides against Breast Cancer,” sponsored by the Orange County chapter of the American Cancer Society. I created a team for my university so we can participate in the 5k walk-a-thon to support finding a cure!   I enjoyed listening to survivors whose personal testimonies encompassed suffering yet embraced life.  The beauty of women was highlighted with dignity, emphasizing their inner strength & survivorship.

*

I also very much enjoyed the pink-frosted cupcakes at my table!  Cupcakes for breakfast are a special treat…. plus spinach quiche, croissants, pineapples, cantaloupe, and watermelon.  I drank tarragon mint tea.

*

Last night, I counted on both hands – more than both hands – the number of people I know who’ve survived cancer or passed away from cancer.  There are many, and early detection in all cases was the key to survival, as well as a positive outlook, faith, & an active prayer life.

*

On the various journeys each person experienced, I think (1) anger, (2) stress, and (3) bitterness were deterrents to healing…. especially if a person felt isolated or couldn’t forgive someone.  It’s healthy to embrace the good sparks in life – even if they’re sparse for a season – and find ways to work through painful & uncertain realities.  It’s also good to be blessed by loving friends; it’s hard to endure this sort of journey alone.

*

Women over the age of 40:  Get your annual mammograms!  At the presentation, the Director of Radiology from Hoag Hospital showed pictures of a new kind of technology called “digital tomosynthesis,” which yields higher resolution than regular mammograms. Digital tomosynthesis is especially useful for precise image-slicing of dense tissues, and it’s been used for research, but hasn’t been available for patient care.  Even better news for patients:  none of that icky “squooshing” with regular mammos (which, by the way, are low-dose x-rays).  Even teeny-tiny calcified specks are visible on the digital imaging.  Needless to say, I could’ve listened to this presentation for hours.

*

I remember taking a radiology course as a pre-med student.  The professor showed us pictures of advanced breast cancer and radical mastectomies:  Basically, if the lump is already palpable, it’s in the later stages and could be metastatic.  (I am a poet, not a doctor, and not a doctor-poet like William Carlos Williams, so please take all this with a big grain of salt!)  When I was a student, I had no idea then that this sort of technology would evolve to benefit cancer patients today.  How exciting, and how wonderful for patients who can afford excellent health care.

*
“Cancer doesn’t wear a watch,” said Lori Smith, Chair of the Board-elect of the California Division, the American Cancer Society.

*
I love listening to stories of hope… again and again.

From Melissa Breyer’s 46 Smart Uses for Salt…  salt to dry clothes in winter, salt to treat bee-stings:

“How many ways can you use salt? According to the Salt Institute, about 14,000!  … I can’t think of another more versatile mineral.  Salt is the most common and readily available nonmetallic mineral in the world. In fact, the supply of salt is inexhaustible… There are a number of forms of salt produced for consumption (and by default, housekeeping!): unrefined salt (such as sea salt), refined salt (table salt), and iodized salt. Kosher salt is sodium chloride processed to have flat crystals. And in case you’re wondering, Epsom salt is an entirely different stuff: magnesium sulfate to be exact (which is a salt that I consider to be, essentially, miraculous).”

From the New Pages blog: “Embracing Our Differences invites professional, amateur and student writers to participate in its 8th annual exhibit celebrating diversity. National and international submissions are encouraged. Entries should be no more than 30 words and express what the theme ’embracing our differences’ mean to you.

“The exhibit, displayed during April and May 2011 in Sarasota, Florida, has been viewed by more than 850,000 visitors. Cash award of $1,000.00. Deadline for submission is December 20, 2010. There is no submission fee or limit on the number of entries. Submission forms and more information concerning past winning submissions are available at www.EmbracingOurDifferences.org or by emailing info@EmbracingOurDifferences.org. Submissions may also be made online.”

A PBS interview with Lan Samantha Chang, award-winning author of Hunger and Inheritance plus a forthcoming novel about poetry in a fictional world.  In real life, she holds the amazing position as director of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. 

Tavis: What are the characteristics of a good writer, or is that an impossible question to answer?

Chang: Oh, that’s such an interesting question. I mean, we could sit and talk about that for a long time. What I look for, when I’m looking at different student manuscripts, is a sense of passion and tension in the prose, a sense that the writer cares about words and that the prose is alive. It could be any style. It could be highly experimental or street-psychological realism. It could be international fiction. It could be a family saga. But whatever it is, I have to have that sense that the narrator of the story cares, that there’s something at stake; that the prose is charged with passion on some level.

This morning, the woman downstairs cut down her kumquat tree… actually, her grandson – the one with the long hair – visited & cut it down. 

*

I wonder whether she’ll replace it with another fruit tree?  I miss seeing the orange kumquats. 

*

The woman used to pick kumquats and say, “I’m going to make kumquat marmalade.” 

*

As I heard her voice drifting up through the window, through the eucalyptus leaves at dusk, I would think to myself, maybe she will write kumquat poems, too.  In my mind’s eye, the poems looked like jars of kumquat marmalade sitting in a row.

*

Here is a recipe for kumquat marmalade.  It isn’t my neighbor’s recipe.  It’s just one I found … and it doesn’t require pectin or anything semi-fancy. 

Kumquat Marmalade

*
The phrase,  “kumquat…kumquat…kumquat” interrupted my thoughts like a frog hiccuping in a corner of my room… or an orange kumquat with hiccups. 

*

I received the conference session proofs.  It’s a special session panel on Transnational Feminist Spaces, but perhaps there are inklings of a Stein panel in the future, i.e. “a kumquat is a kumquat is a kumquat.” 

*
Now that I’ve finished hiring all very wonderful adjunct professors for our composition courses this autumn, I can focus my energies on the various conference activities. 

*
prayer:  That the woman would plant a new fruit tree… if she wishes.

*
Laura Hinton interviews Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge here.  Beautiful photographs of the original Endocrinology (Kelsey St. Press) collaboration with artist Kiki Smith!  Laura also designed a “Reading/Streaming Memorial to Leslie Scalapino” on her blog, Chant de la Sirene.

*

Two new poems, “Psalm V” and “Hunger & Solace,” appear in Catherine Keefe’s literary journal.   Read about Catherine’s inspiration and her visionary connection to UN Millennium Development Goals.

*

I am currently reading Unbowed by Wangari Maathai, the Nobel-Prize winning “Tree Lady” of the Kenyan Greenbelt Movement.