SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT

Comment made to husband of African American female patient I took care of on Saturday night:

Me: Gee, your wife's haircut is really cute. It's really attractive on her. (Short style, loose curls which I assumed to be her natural hair from birth. Compliment given specifically about haircut not texture).


He: Oh, no. This is the result of the chemo. After all that other "stuff" fell out this is what's coming in. And it's so much better. (Nods his head in approval). Yea, much better now.


Question: What is better?

---ANGEL

Artist: Shan Kelly Cecilio

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT

Looks like blogging is becoming increasingly popular. Message today from the folks at Blogger that my comments function on BlogOut! was suspended. More users than available diskspace. Hmm. Anyway, I made the switch to SquawkBox (after leaving a help! message on RedHead's board). But I figured it out. That's the good thing about blogging. Any numb-skull (like me) can figure it out. But I'm saddened that all of my messages from the very kind folks who take time to read my journal are now gone. How to retrieve it? That's the mystery. So if anyone can help .... I'd sho' appreciate it.

Now, onto .......

A CAUTIONARY TALE .... for Writers

If you happen to be writing a novel and ever want to just pause for the cause and find out what you really know about your story just engage in writing a synopsis and follow that up with an outline. If you are new to the game be prepared for a royal mental ass-kicking. I'm talking that Spanish Harlem, Vaseline-on-your-face, girl hold my earrings.....and my bracelet too....oh and my keys too..... type of beat down. I'm talking ass-kicking, throw down, go get your crew and be back here at nine, when the street lights come on type of ass kicking. It ain't pretty.

You see, I decided that before I engage in rewrites it might be necessary to do my synopsis so that I can get this thing out the door no sooner than the rewrites are done. Also, I wanted to be sure that I had my capsule statement down --- (there's a theory that if you can't describe what your novel is about in two sentences or less than you DON'T KNOW) --- and I wanted to be clear about this whole plot. Okay, so after seven rewrites on that synopsis, I've got the entire plot down in a quite engaging way I think. Okay. So then I say to myself, Self: we need to do an outline. Chapter by Chapter. Scene by Scene. And Self says: Cool. I'm down.

Well.

What makes a novel engaging, memorable, worth-reading, good is this: scenes that are necessary to the story, scenes that progress logically, scenes that foreshadow what is to come in the near future, scenes that logically keep pace with the charachters (by that I mean, don't have your charachter acting/speaking in one way in chapter 2 and another way in chapter 13 -- keep charachters consistent in every aspect of their behavior and don't do anything that is out of charachter for that person); scenes that are active and telling in detail (not a whole chapter worth of boring exposition that has .0001% to do with the story). No one, least of all me, wants to put $24.95 down on the counter for a book that isn't well plotted OR is so damn predictable you can set the time on your clock by how long it'll take you to read it. Anyone who tells me "Oh, that book was so good, I read it in one night," is telling me, in essence, "Don't buy that book, don't waste your time." It took me the longest time to get through The Prisoner's Wife. Why? Not because I'm a slow reader but because I'm a lover of language. And ashe bandele has mad skill when it comes to language. The language is so lyrical you want to pause for the cause, turn back and read a page or two over again. Not only that, the story is engaging. I didn't read Their Eyes Were Watching God in one day. Why? Cause Zora had an acute sense of what it took to tell a story and the charachters were so special, so carefully drawn, you couldn't possibly read that story in one day. She had a way of offering up their dialect without it being insulting or ignorant.

The other thing about outlining is it helps you in the areas of Pacing and Progression. Pacing is different from progression. Here's how Noah Lukeman, author of The First Five Pages differentiates: "Pacing is the measurement of how quickly you go from Point A to Point B. Progression asks: Is there a point B? Did you arrive anywhere? Readers need to feel a sense of progression, they need to feel like they're accomplishing something, like there's a point to all this. It's possible to have gpod pacing and poor progression. It's like flying a high-speed jet that circles the globe but lets you off where you started: the pace was great, but where did you go?"

So what I'm saying is, the outline is a very trick thing. It's the meat of your story. It is: here's what's going to happen, scene by scene. And here's where you've got to know how to have an eye of God and a functioning red pen. Because no matter how much you may like a scene, no matter how good you felt when you were sitting on the edge of the beach beneath a tangerine-pink sky with seagulls overhead --- if it ain't serving the story it's got to go and you've got to put something in it's place.

Well, I've had some scenes that had to be cut. And I've had to put on my God robe and say, okay I've got to give you two people an argument here in order to foreshadow what's to come over here. I've had take my protagonist out of his office and put him downtown in therapy if we are to know his flaws early on. (Oh, and that's another thing: stories that are memorable are those in which we feel immediate connection or disconnection to a charachter. We need to know early on just what this person is about. Don't be trying to bait people and have them hold out until chapter four. It won't work. Your book will wind up on someone's overstock shelf. People don't want to play games. They want to read a good story and they want to know early on just who and what this story is about). I've had to move around my exposition. Now, there's an argument that you should steer clear of exposition as much as possible, especially in the beginning. I don't buy that. You have to first do what's right for the story. I've read plenty of novels that open up with the first chapter being 90% exposition (some of Toni Morrison's works). I think that moviegoers want immediate action and in film that is definately necessary. But movies and novels are two different animals. I would argue, however, that no-one wants to read exposition that digresses. No want wants exposition that doesn't serve the story. No one wants endless exposition. So I think if there needs to be exposition then it does need to be carefully placed, preferably between active scenes.

So anyway, I've finished outlining Part One (Book 1) and now I'm onto Book 2 where the plot begins to thicken. I think I've got it down. What I've done is I've typed out the whole outline, shrunk it to an 8 size font and stuck it onto index cards. Scene by scene. Also, beneath each scene, I have GOAL: _____. My reason for this is simple: every scene must have a goal and that's where progression comes into play. Fulfilling each goal will ensure progression. If the goal in Chapter One Scene Two is to show that Mr. Jones has stolen money, then somewhere down the line in that story I'm going to need to see the outcome of his stealing. Was he caught? Punished? How did he get caught? What did he learn if anything? So anyhow, I'm going to spread them all on the floor to see if they are logical, foreshadowing .... check the pacing and the progression and all the other things I mentioned.

I also got online and ordered the JUNG book. Here's the part that made me decide I needed to own this book:

What distinguishes the Jungian approach to developmental psychology from virtually all others is the idea that even in old age we are growing towards realization of our full potential....For Jung, aging was not a process of inexorable decline but a time for the progressive refinement of what is essential. 'The decisive question for man is: is he related to something infinite or not?'

Life has always seemed to me like a plant that lives on its rhizome,' he wrote. 'The part that appears above ground lasts only a single summer. Then it withers away -- an ephemeral apparition ... Yet I have never lost a sense of something that lives and endures underneath the eternal flux. What we see is the blossom that passes. The rhizome remains.' The great secret is to embody something essential in our lives. Then, undefeated by age, we can proceed with dignity and meaning, and, as the end appraoches, be ready to 'die with life.' For the goal of ald age is not senility, but wisdom.

What I am hoping to do in this outline and in this novel is to show the core humanity, the rhizome of these charachters and then show how they change, how they find the courage to change, how change is indeed possible and necessary for the progression of life.

So, back to the drawing board and more reading.

Be well folks. Be Love(d).
---ANGEL

GUIDANCE

She: Female friend from my old job, thirtysomething, two kids under the age of six.

Me: Recently laid off, but Plan B in full effect. Thirtysomething. Two kids under the age of seven.


She: Girrrrl, we had a staff meeting today and let me tell you what went down.

Me: [stirring up my pot of sweet and sour meatballs at 3 in the afternoon] Okay, shoot.

She: Girrrrl, do you know L (supervisor) had the nerve to lay down the law today?

Me: [tasting a meatball and wondering about that size 8 dress i bought a few weeks ago] Oh yea? What did she say?

She: Honey, she had the nerve to say that from this point on the remaining seven employees (seven out of thirteen) will be available whenever, wherever, however. From this point on, when we need you to come into this office, you WILL be here. (Despite the fact that it is a work from home gig).

Me: Okay.

She: And she had the nerve to say that from here on out, when we call you, you come in. There will be no more "child care issues," and there will be no more "I can't come in because I have to do XYZ for my child" or "I have to pick up my child from daycare at 3 o'clock." She said, "if I call any one of you in the morning and leave a message I expect a call back before noon. If you are out on a clinic appointment, I expect you to find a pay phone and call home to check your messages. There will be no allotment for cell phones." (In other words, it's your quarter, baby).

Me: [tasting another sweet meatball and stirring my pasta salad, too glad that dinner is done before five] Oh really.

She: Yea, girl. Now I know I got to get out of here.

Me: [feeling real good about the meatballs, the pasta salad AND the three straight hours I put in on my outline and my research for the novel without na-ree an interruption] I feel you girl. I feel you.

Moral of the story and Lesson for the Day:

Whenever you are feeling like you're being beat up by the Universe, wondering why God has done such-and-such to you and what you did wrong to deserve God doing such-and-such and wondering just when God's going to take His mighty thumb off the top of your head, smushing you like a beatle bug ..... PAUSE, take a DEEP BREATH, and THANK GOD that you are on His radar because without a doubt you're being poked and prodded for something bigger and better and more super-duper than you could ever imagine.

You see, right about now I am so glad I understand Spiritual Law. The law that all things work together for good for them that love God. All things. Not some things. ALL THINGS. There is no way under the sun that I could exist in a workplace that demands that I put the job first and everything else second. There is no way under the sun I can commit to shoving my two earth angels under the rug because someone (who doesn't even sign my check mind you) wants me to be available at their beck and call.

See, here's the thing I know: children don't ever care how big their house was, what position mommy had on the employee chart, how big a car they had or what color it was, whether or not the furniture was leather or tweed ............. children DON'T grow up to reminisce about any of that. What they remember and what they remind you of is whether or not you were there.
Did you come to my first recital? Did you see me hit that home run? Did you see me jump in the water (finally, after eighteen thousand swimming lessons). Mommy, did you see me at the play? I was the frog with the one-liner, standing next to the too-tall ant. Didja see me? Huh? Huh? Didja see me?

And the only answer you can give is yes or no.

You see, it ain't about the job, or the house, or the car, or the SUV, or the boat ..... it's about the kids. And it's about giving them your absolute all. The best you have to give. It's about being there at six, saying "You did a great job, I'm proud of you," so that come sixteen, when someone is trying to get them to take a sniff of coke, they have the wherewithal to say, "No. I'm too good for that. I've got too much to live for." It's not about programming your kids to say no. It's giving them the skills to reason out why they should say no. It's about giving your kids survival skills. It's about making sure they are emotionally healthy. It's about being sure they have the ability to walk out of potentially dangerous relationships later in life. It's about being sure that they know how to make it on their own come the day you are no longer on this planet.

And the only way you can ensure any of it is by being present.

And I know, beyond a doubt, that that is the reason my manager chose to let me go. Because she knows that I WILL NOT put anything or anyone above my children. Because I am too smart for that game. Because I know that at the end of my life, when I am laying on my bed and opening my eyes for the very last time, the ONLY two people who will be there to hold my hand are my children. I pray Spouse will be there but if he ain't I know I got my kids. And that's worth more to me than a pot of gold.

So today, aside from much much progress on this ass-kicking outline (which I will blog about tomorrow) I am too glad that God kicked my butt out of that rut. I am too glad that I didn't try to hold onto something that wasn't good for me. I am too glad that I understand the Spiritual Laws of not holding too tight to anything but to let Life ebb and flow.

Be Well. Be Love(d).
---A.

UPDATES

Day 3 and I'm still alive. I have my five year old nephew along with Kid 1 and Kid 2 for one whole week. He's leaving on Sunday. It can't come soon enough. Not 'cos I don't love the little fellow. But be'cos I got some serious work to do.

So many things to blog about but just not enough time. So I'll try to shed some light on what has been most pervasive in my mind in the last twenty four hours.

First, I got a call from a friend on Sunday that nearly sent me to my comfy chair in my room (a $15 find at the local thrift store that I just cherish) with a cup of tea. I wanted to pull my knees to my chest, sip my tea, wrap my falsa blanket around me and nestle into the warmth of her voice. She feels like a sister but she isn't. We talked like we've known each other for years and we haven't. Our conversation flowed so easily, it was surreal. It amazes me how very spiritual this journey truly is and I think that if we could just grasp the very fact that we are spirit first and flesh second, we could solve the majority of our societal ills. I am also amazed at how "familiar" a person can feel, as if you've traveled with them in some other life. As if the Creator/God knows that you two *NEED* each other right now and He just shuffles around some pieces around on the Great Chess Board we call Life so that the two of you have no choice but to run smack dab into one another. I know I have traveled with this woman before .... somewhere .... she feels so very familiar to me. We think the same way. She is "community minded" and believes that we can and must "do for the people." She is Old School with a twist of New School. She listens. I hear. She listens. I speak. I envision traveling to Africa and Cuba and Brazil with her to teach the young people poetry and writing and art. I envision Sister-Friend jump-offs to Harlem for a weekend of poetry readings, museum hopping and shopping for yarns in funky shades that neither one of us have money for but saying anyhow "Hey, let's go half on a few skeins...."

But I'm afraid.

Friends come and go, they say. When a man comes onto the scene, women's friendships are layed upon the altar for sacrifice. I've been there so many times I can't count. I give 150% in friendships. I care more than I should. I give and make myself available beyond reason. And somehow, I'm always the sacrificial lamb. Loving is hard. Whether it's loving a woman (in my case, as a friend) or loving a man (as a friend or lover) ..... it costs. So I'm afraid. And I ask myself .... how long will she stay? How far open can I fling my heart?

On another note:
I'm too pissed, yet not surprised by Clarence Thomas' statement about the Affirmative Action issue. He says (and I paraphrase here) that we Blacks don't need Affirmative Action. That we are smart enough to get into colleges and achieve and be productive members of society without any handouts. And of course, American media being what it is, there were several college students on Tom Brokaw last night echoing Thomas' words. One even said he wants to be known as the Smart Kid, not the Smart Black Kid.

Well.

Let me just throw in the first paragraph of Langston Hughe's essay: The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain to serve as backdrop for what I'm about to say:

One of the most promising of the young Negro poets said to me once, "I want to be a poet--not a Negro poet," meaning, I believe, "I want to write like a white poet"; meaning, subconsciously, "I would like to be a white poet"; meaning behind that, "I would like to be white." And I was sorry the young man said that, for no great poet has ever been afraid of being himself. And I doubted then that, with his desire to run away spiritually from his race, this boy would ever be a great poet. But this is the mountain standing in the way of any true Negro art in America -- this urge within the race toward whiteness, the desire to pour racial individuality into the mold of American standardization, and to be as little Negro and as much American as possible. --- Langston Hughes, The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain

I am saddened for those people who feel like there is something wrong with being the Smart Black Kid. I am no more interested in being part of a "melting pot" than a cow is interested in a glass of Coke. Why? Because i'm not interested in melting, assimilating. I'm interested in being me. I'm interested in holding myself up against the sunlight and enjoying all the colors that pass through my Self prism. I'm interested in knowing my history and walking boldly with it in my hands. I am Negroid but I also have German and Indian ancestry. Which one of us blacks don't? I want to know and embrace it all and I have no interest in allowing any part of it to melt away. As Gloria Naylor once answered when someone asked her about being called a Black Woman writer: "I am a Black female writer and I have no qualms whatsoever with people saying that I'm a Black female writer. What I take umbrage with is the fact that some might try to use that identity, that which is me, as a way to ghettoize my material and my output. I am female and I am Black and American. No buts are in that identity. Now you go off and do the work to somehow broaden yourself so you understand what America is really about because it's about me."

And I say this, as it pertains to Affirmative Action: I am saddened by anyone who thinks, mistakenly, that We Have Arrived and it's all good now. We don't need any "handouts." We don't need any "help." Not enough space here to get into the truth about who Affirmative Action *really* helped. But suffice it to say that it was not us.

And guess what: WE HAVE NOT ARRIVED.

Your Lexxus, BMW, Porsche, Escalade, Tahoe, Suburban, Mercedes, Denali, Yukon, four bedroom with two car garage is only a drop in the Grand Scheme Bucket, my friend. Your supervisor, manager, HNIC position is a drop in the Grand Scheme Bucket. Your album that just went platinum because you've been shaking your ass with all you got, selling your soul to the man on the eighty-eighth floor ..... is a drop in the Grand Scheme Bucket. Your two book deal and ten city tour is a DROP IN THE BUCKET.
Because somewhere there is someone with the same shade of skin as yours receiving a letter in the mail that they "just didn't seem to qualify for that Director position." Somewhere there is someone who has worked their ass off trying to get that MBA while at the same time rushing their kids off to school, staying up till the sky fades from black to blue again, trying to write that essay before it's time to get to work and the kids off to school ... who has graduated with a 3.98 average and is $35,000 in debt for that degree and just still "doesn't seem to qualify." Somewhere, someone is getting passed over for a position because they don't have the right waddle in their walk and someone else is getting the job because they've got something dangling between their legs that the other candidates don't.

You get my drift?

So until we have fair and equal representation in the areas of government; until we are able to crack open the doors of Hollywood such that films of African Americans are not just bufoonery and Magic Negro films but quality images that depict us as the humans that we are (did you know that we cry too? that we don't just laugh about everything and fry up chicken when we're hurting?); until we have fair and equal education standards with consistent curriculums regardless of which school district you fall into (ask the kids in Red Hook, Brooklyn if they're studying the same math that the kids in Chappaqua, New York are); until we have fair on the job hiring, firing and promotion standards; until we have real estate agents that don't try to shuffle Mr. Black Stockbroker and Mrs. Black Doctor to Neighborhood B instead of Neighborhood A because the homes are so much more "beautiful" (only to find that Neighborhood B is the black side of town full of liquour stores, Chinese Take-Outs and Bill Pay Centers) ..... only when we exist in the idyllic America that brother Clarence apparently lives in, then and only then will we NOT need Affirmative Action.

And when that happens let me know. I'll be the first to shake brother Clarence's hand.

Be well. Be Love(d).

--A.

AHA

Up last night until roughly 2 a.m. searching not only for reasonable airfare for my trip (yea, an oxymoron i know) but also working on my outline. Thus far I am finding that both the writing of the synopsis and the fleshing out a formal chapter for chapter outline incredibly helpful. I am fine tuning, pressing, molding and definately forming this thing into a solid shape whereas heretofore it's been nothing but a quivering mass of jelly.

One of the things I discovered today, during my time of reflection, is that what I'm trying to get at in this novel is the human ability to change, to metamorph into something better. I'm noticing that one of the recurrent themes in most of my writing is change; change of the personality, change of the core beliefs; personal paradigm reconstruction, which is something we all (hopefully) do at some point in our lives. I say hopefully because I realize that some people are too afraid, too weak, too bruised to put themselves through the painful process of paradigm reconstruction. Some people are too weak (and I say this empathetically) to even think about their beliefs and admit that what they've been taught to believe is not only wrong universally but wrong for them personally. Some people don't have the courage to change but that doesn't preclude the fact that the ability is still there.

In this novel I'm interested not only in how and why my protagonist changes but the catalyst for the change and the process itself. I want to look at all the beauty and the pain of personal change; the ability of the human spirit. I'm looking at his behavior, his personality, his frailty and trying to boldly draw an arc of change from a male perspective. I'd determined some time ago that one of the ways to bring out the essence of his charachter (weaknesses, strengths) and those things that happened to him in his childhood is not necessarily through author-driven exposition but through the use of another charachter: a therapist. (I think last year's Iowa workshop Show, Don't Tell cured me of that). So I gave my protagonist a case of nocturnal panic attacks and have him, in the very beginning, talking with his therapist. Last night I listened in on a conversation the two were having (if you're not a writer, you may want to excuse yourself here. we writers listen to our charachters) and my protagonist was talking about dreams he's been having. And the therapist was, quite successfully, analyzing the dream. Now, since I've had some very rudimentary study of human psychology in college and a natural inclination all my life toward philosophy, I decided I need to re-explore what I know to understand just what this therapist is talking about. Human behavior has always fascinated me. I'm a people watcher and a people studier and one of the things that has always given me a mental workout is studying the inner mechanics of the human mind.

Well, wouldn't you know today, in the bookstore with Kid 1 at my heels, I stumble upon Dreams and Analyses by Carl Jung.

Well. (I'm not going to even tell you how much both Freud and Jung have always fascinated me and how I nearly backflipped when I heard Alice Walker talk about her trip to Bollingen, inside the castle this man constructed.)

So I decided that rather than put forth my hard earned Benjamins on one text that may or may not be useful, I'll pop over the library and see how much my free library card can get me.

Well.

So I pick up JUNG: A Very Short Introduction by Anthony Stevens and find on page ten:

Heraclitus was to prove a lifelong favourite, as were Goethe and Meister Eckhart. One idea that Jung borrowed from Heraclitus was to be of crucial importance to him: the notion that all entities possess an inherent tendency to turn into their opposite. This tendency Heraclitus called enantiodromia (lit. 'running counter to'). Jung believed it to be charachteristic of all dynamic systems, and saw the human family as a prime example: as children grow up, they display a propensity to compensate in their own lives for the failings of their parents.

Very, very interesting.

So I left the library with about four texts on Jung, devouring the smallest of the four the minute I got into the car. Kid 1 left with about six books of her own and about four that we picked up for Kid 2 in his absence. We are pistol-packing mamas for sure.

On another note, I received a very sad email from a friend today, requesting that I no longer call her home before 9 a.m. which has long been our practice. She and her miserable husband are calling it quits after nine long years. He blew a cow out of the four corners of his ass this morning b/c I called. Excuse the fuck out of me. Isn't it called getting your sorry ass up out of the bed to get to work any damn way? It is a work day, isn't it? Or do you have some Harry Potter magic tricks up your ass that can help you sell those cars from your fucking bed? Don't get this Scorpio started. Haven't heard from my friend who married and moved to El Paso and wondering if another friend who recently married is still on the planet. Amazing and disturbing to me what power men have over women's friendships. I've been through this so many times before it's ridiculous and I'm beginning to at least want to lose my faith in women's friendships. It seems impossible to maintain a friendship with another woman during the time of courting, the early stages of marriage and the time of separation. What is it? And why do women allow men to destroy (for lack of a better word) their relationships with the very people who help shape them into a better person for HIM in the first place? I mean, let's face it, a night out with my sisterfriends for laughter, crying, sharing and griping only makes me better when I come home to you, right? I mean, it's like I told Spouse two years ago when I went away on my first personal retreat. Getting away and taking time for myself helps me refocus, fine tune, wind down .... enabling me to be a better wife to you. He understood and agreed wholeheartedly albeit after much discussion. And when I returned he noticed me less short tempered, more focused and certainly more relaxed. Anyway, I wrote a poem about it this whole girlfriend thing a few months ago which I will post on the My Work side soon. Seems my friends are getting swallowed up into the abyss of Black Manhood. Feeling very alone today and glad to have the company of Kid 1, Kid 2 and some serious reading.

Be Well. Be Love(d).
--A.

WHO TO LOVE


MY BROTHERS

my brothers i will not tell you
who to love or not love
i will only say to you
that
Black women have not been
loved enough.

i will say to you
that
we are at war & that
Black men in america are
being removed from the
earth
like loose sand in a wind storm
and that the women Black are
three to each of us.

no
my brothers i will not tell you
who to love or not love
but
i will make you aware of our
self hating and hurting ways.
make you aware of whose bellies
you dropped from.
i will glue your ears to those images
you reflect which are not being
loved.

Copyright, 1983 Haki R. Madhubuti
First Published in Earthquake and Sunrise Missions, Third World Press

As you can see I'm in quite a poetic mood.

After seven revisions the synopsis is done and sent out to my readers for feedback. My earth angels/fellow travelers on this road who have no problem telling me what's awful and what's good. Next step, a cursory review of each chapter to see if/how each serves the plot (synopsis). Scene analyses to see which scenes are too long, too short or just plain undeserving. Charachter checks to see who's getting too much play, who's not getting enough and who just needs to be cut. Basically, juxtaposing the synopsis and the outline (chapter by chapter) checking for congruity. Lots of cuts at this point. Cuts are good. Should be able to complete that in a week or so. My schedule for next week is looking kind of tight (nephew coming for a week) so I'm going to allot myself 10 -14days to be on the safe side.

What's with all the scheduling? Well, I was reading a piece in Real Simple last night about a woman who shelved her first novel for a long time then went back to it and gave herself one summer (three months) to finish it and put it out in the world. She established a "due date." Thought about this and decided yes, much like a baby has a due date, this novel needs to have a due date. I need to put myself on a schedule for each task b/c one thing about writing novels ... you can literally drown. You can hide behind its massiveness for years. Sister Alice likens it the rutabagas in her garden -- tough, thick, massive -- as opposed to the poems which are simply like roses. It takes as long as it takes and one shouldn't rush an unfinished product out into the world. But at some point there's got to be a cutoff. Oui ?

Oui.

So a valid, reasonable due date? I'm so linear in my thought process, I'd love to shoot for December 31st. That's roughly six months. BUT, I can't get started on a full time writing schedule until August when the kids go back to school. Summer's just too unpredictable and a very lazy time indeed. Plus, Kid 1 is hanging out with me most days. Talker that she is, it's hard to get stuff done that requires deep contemplation. So let's add two months to the proposed date (allowing, essentially, for the two I'm losing during the summer) and we have a February 29th due date. So I will do as much as I can with the novel and since the work for the chapbook is already done, I can complete that project by summer's end.

Ah me ...

Be well. Be Love(d).

A.

ORNITHOLOGY

it is so hard to be earth bound
when yr wings are aching to challenge the high-tide
of a revolutionary wind.
so hard to remain terrestrial when the skin remembers
being bird. and the heart soars back and forth in its
ribbed cage...
the song of the crow gives rebirth to a loneliness that
manifests itself in the flight-time of the life-time.
it is so hard to be earthbound
wings dragging beside u on the ground
u cld lift them if folks wld just get off of 'em.
they kno y're dependable so they lean on u
hopin to be included on yr next flight.
and not being able to take off gives u the woes
occasionally u claw at what loves u the most
and everything u sing after that is beyond even the blues.

so much is lost when the lost claim to be the only thing
happenin. they eat, sleep, and excrete in fear of being genetically
assassinated. the unspurpassed splendor of our united plummage makes
them plot to slaughter the bird in us. their media tells us to hate the sky.
they make us think that stagnation is better than flight of any kind,
motion of any sort. they trick us into turning in our wings. and they burn

the wings that are not turned in.

but sometimes, the way we can feel about each otha is totally
regenerating to the most scorched wings.

the right look, an opening smile that never closes,
sometimes, the way we dare to feel about each otha, is
all the flight-times of the most magnificent birds in all
the worlds where luv and freedom are a way of being.
sometimes, we do that to each otha.

wanna fly?

Copyright, 1988 Laini Mataka
First Published in Never As Strangers
Anthologized in In Search of Color Everywhere: A Collection of African-American Poetry

Be Well. Be Love(d).

A.

MOVING ON

From the latest issue of Writers Ask

You know that they used to say a woman could either be a writer or have a family. Was that much of an issue for you? Finding the solitude that being a writer requires?

It's very hard. There's no way of glossing it over. It's very, very difficult. At this point my children are grown, but still they're -- of course -- more important than my work. And that's how it is. It's a very hard question. When they were little it was a constant struggle. I think that a woman who has children can never give herself as totally to her work as a woman who doesn't. I sometimes think back through history: Were there any great women writers with children? I've been unable to find any. Of course, the way history is written we don't know...but those whom we know didn't have children and families. and in this generation, it's too early to tell who will be the great ones, the enduring ones.

It's hard. It will continue to be hard, because the energy comes from the same place. You give the same kind of profound engagement to the writing and the children. It's not like being a waitress and being a writer. It comes from a different part of your mind.

What kind of schedule do you keep when you write?

...Writing is not something you do when you're in the mood. People always say, how do you find time to write? It's really the amateur's question because it misses the point. The point is how do I find time to do anything else. You don't ask a doctor how he finds time to take care of patients--that's what he does.

What advice would you give to writers just starting out?

Well, the task differs for each person. You have to really want to write very passionately. I mean, there must be no question that this is what you want to do. If there's any question like, "Well, do I want to be a writer or would I do better in law school?" you'd probably do better in law school. If you want it badly enough, you'll find yourself turning down other things you want to do. But you have to be kind of ruthless and say no to a lot. You have to have perserverence. It really takes a kind of nerve--not only in what you write. The whole act is very nervy. Sometimes you find yourself sitting there thinking, "What am I doing?" "How can I say these things?" And you somehow have to believe that it's worth it. --- Lynne Sharon Schwartz, author of In the Family Way, The Fatigue Artist, Disturbances in the Field, Rough Strife, Leaving Brooklyn and others.


I don't mean to beat this issue to death but today, at 9:45 a.m. EST I delivered all of the equipment, files, folders, forms and other miscellany back to the company for which I worked nearly two years. After saying my righteous goodbyes, a strange, very surreal sense of freedom and relief washed over me. I felt the need to clean -- wiping off my desk, vacuuming the floor of my home office space that I share with Spouse, pulling my futon from around the corner (that I really bought for Kid 1 and 2 to bounce around on but is rarely used) and putting it in the office space, heading off to Target for a nice lamp and shade to put next to the futon where I can now sit and ponder and read. A space of my own, free of clutter, absent of toys and crayons and markers and trucks and trains. A place where I can finally step into, without hesitation, without foreboding for the work I need and intend to do.

I guess this is why the thought of having more children, for me, is a pleasant thought but nothing more. Nothing that I intend to act upon, let me say. The hard cold reality is, as the author states, the energy to write (create) and to mother (create, mold, shape) come from the same place. And the energy is finite. One only has but so much to give in the course of twenty four hours, in the course of a lifetime. And this is the same reason why, after working at this job, I have come to understand why most artists work as waiters and waitresses...fake it till you make it...because the energy is finite and most jobs usurp a tremendous amount of that the limited creative supply that you have. I have come to understand something about myself too. That I am a free spirit. I cannot be contained in an office, to a schedule, to day-long meetings that end in nothing but "to be continued." I am miserable when I can't write, when the day escapes before I've had the chance to sit my charachters down on the page, record a verse of poetry or jot an entry into my journal. I am equally annoyed when I have not had a chance to sit and just think, listen to my own thoughts and process my feelings. I have wanted this freedom for so long that it's almost scary to see something you've prayed for come to fruition. It's like ... this is too good to be true.

So anyway, as a progress note, I delivered about 20 poems and three short stories to my professor friend who is going to edit it all for my chapbook which I'm hoping will be out in the fall. Also, I found a local artist who's interested in doing the cover art. We'll meet sometime next month after I return from Iowa. I started a checklist of things I need to do to in the upcoming weeks, including but not limited to the application for the ISBN number and a host of other things. I'm using two quotes in the epigraph, one by Langston Hughes and another by Chinua Achebe. I need to nail down my opening statement which as I look at it now, might be offensive to some family folk. Maybe not offensive but, let's just say, eye-opening. And so there are adjustments needed so that no-one is left with hurt feelings. I also need to get ready for Iowa, since this workshop is about POV and I've taken creative license to use Omniscient as opposed to Limited Third Person. I need to get that opening chapter rewritten so that I can 'shop it in Iowa. Lots to do. Lots of good stuff to do.

Oh, and Kid 1 is just too pleased that MommaGirl is free now. Free to sit and make bead bracelets with her and talk about which LipSmacker is prettiest: the Blueberry or Strawberry or PassionPink ??? and to paint clear glitter polish on her tiny toenails and jump in the MotherShip to run all these crazy errands and eat ice cream and hotdogs and wander off to the playground for some "girltime" while Kid 2 plays his little heart out at nursery school/camp and the only hand I have to hold is hers and then to jump in MommaGirl's big old bed with Momma and Kid 2 and take long naps and dream about dinosaurs and magic carpets.

Life is good.

Be Well. Be Love(d).
ANGEL

THINGS THAT MAKE YOU GO ... Hmmmm

Bumper Sticker
Holland Tunnel
New York City, New York
May 17, 2003

Why do we kill people who kill people to show people that killing people is wrong?

Be Well. Be Love(d).
ANGEL

MISS CELIE, MISS CELIE

There's a part in the movie Color Purple that always makes me laugh. It's the part where Celie says something to the effect of "I may be black and I may be ugly but I'm free." Or at least that's how I think it goes....that's how my mind remembers it. In any event it seems apropos right about now as I sit and ponder that I am three days away from turning in all the shit that belongs to this company and saying my sweet goodbye.

You see, after the jive ass staff meeting -- you know the one when we were all notified that it was a mandatory meeting and we just had to drop everything and be there during which time there was an announcement that cuts and staff reduction were on the way -- and then my manager's very convenient, well timed one week vacation which left those who really need that gig biting their nails down to the very tendon because they were waiting for her to get back and announce who was getting the ax ...... well, I got the ax. Got the call at 11 a.m., Friday, May 30th. I, a contract employee with no 401K, health insurance, sick time, nor vacation time am no longer needed. On the surface I guess I should be pissed since I gave my all to the company the whole time I was there. But since I've always had a plan B and have another contract gig to step right over into, I ain't hatin'. And the other thing is I can't have much faith in a bunch of stupidos who don't have the sense God gave them, who would let go of a contract employee who costs them nothing, nada, zip. Hey, if they're that stupid then I definately need to say my goodbyes.

So rather than hang with them till the end of the month as they requested, I told them to do me a favor and let me bring my laptop and all their files in on the 13th, two weeks earlier, since I ain't hardly sweatin' their technique. My manager was pissed and near hysterical. How can a person who's laid off have the nerve to say "no, I'm not laid off, I resign." ????

It's called .... Always having a Plan B.

But here's the other thing.

Right now, I feel incredibly free. I feel like the biggest monkey has been lifted off my back. This job was troubling. Stressful. And a major distraction from my creative work. Major. Since I got the ax, I've been more creative than I've been in a long time. It seems my mind has opened up. The poems are coming, the prologue is done and the synopsis is just about done too. I'm on my fifth round of cuts on this synopsis, still trying to trim some remaining fat, searching my thesaurus for the one word that can replace two but essentially it's done. I've got my whole novel down on 5 pages and if I were to run into an agent today I could say, without sounding like a bumbling fool, exactly what my novel is all about. I can finally say it's done. It's all closer and closer to being ready and that's a damn good feeling.

Sister Alice says that novels take a long time, a long long time, and she ain' never lied. This project has taken me longer than I'd like to say simply because I've always tried to balance writing it with motherhood and full time work. And I have become, over the years, painfully aware that Virginia Woolf sure knew what she was talking about. That it is very, very difficult to be a woman and fiction writer. Difficult but certainly not impossible. One has to use whatever means one can to earn the money one needs to survive and earn it in such a way that does not distract from the creative work at hand. That is no easy task. But I say again, it's difficult but not impossible.

So here I am, 72 hours away from saying goodbye to a job that nearly drove me into therapy....that I only kept because it was convenient and offered the flexibility I needed with a newborn at home that nursed around the clock. But here I am too, in a different space, with different needs, goals and desires ..... with a newfound awareness that my creative work is my work and my work is just my income. A means to an end, not meant to be taken as seriously as I had taken it and certainly not meant to be put on the front burner as I had put it. And so the days now are filled with writing, revising, knitting and gardening and work is relegated to the weekends and late evenings when the mind is not as fresh -- perfect for non-creative pursuits.

I's free. I's finally free.

Be well. Be Love(d).

ANGEL