MEETINGS

A black woman and a white, Jewish woman meet at a cafe. Quite a revolutionary thing considering they live in a horribly segregated state. For two months they've gone back and forth through hairy-canary schedules to come up with a viable date. The black woman considers cancelling -- there's always so much to do--but she goes along, re-organizing the day to fit in the meeting. The place is crowded more than the black woman thought it would be, always a problem for someone who prefers solitude. The black woman immediately wonders, what will come of this meeting?, for this is the first time she's met the person she's only known online thus far. The white woman gives her a warm hug, as if they've known each other all along.

They talk and eat and eat and talk and talk with their mouthes full of what they've eaten. Not a pretty picture for people who don't know each other, you think? The white woman asks how long the black woman has lived there and the black woman, staring out the window, imagining herself someplace far away (read: San Francisco) replies, "Nine long years." The black woman explains all that she despises about the place and compares it to her hometown, New York City. Ahh, to be there again, amidst the lights, the sounds, the theatre, the food, the action, the Spirit ....
she's so unhappy here, in this Big Little Town.

"Oh, but of course," the white woman says, "as long as you keep comparing it to New York, you'll never be happy. You have to find the good that's here." They talk and they talk about the black woman's writings and her endeavors. The white woman gives the black woman a list of books she's read, scribbled on a scraggly sheet of paper. They talk about Buddhism as a way of life and the white woman says, "Shambhala changed my life." They part and the black woman feels the stares as she moves through the crowd -- mostly from the few other black women. Hard to believe but it is indeed odd to see this kind of pairing where they are. But the black woman remembers how often she had these kinds of pairings back home, in New York, and no-one ever gave her a second glance. She exhales deeply as she heads home.

But for the next few days the black woman meditates on what the white woman said: a woman she's only known through a set of tangled wires and a keyboard. She thinks and thinks and thinks, turns the words over and under in her palm and comes to a solid conclusion:

Sometimes you gotta bloom where you're planted. You gotta know, from the depths of your being, that where you are now is just a readying place for the next step and that the Creator, holder of Infinite Wisdom, would not have you here if there were not something you needed to get, give, or learn. You gotta reach out against circumstances and BE the change you want to see. When the road left looks as jacked up as the road right, you gotta learn how to cut a new path. In this society that tries to keep us focused on differences (especially race and religion) sometimes you just gotta see that we all do have something to give and get; that sometimes life wisdom and the messages you need to get come from places you least expect. Perhaps the problem of the 21st century and every century thereafter WILL be the color line as W.E.B. Dubois said but we certainly don't have to get tangled in it.

Something to think about.


()()()()()()()()())()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()


This past weekend I led my first Creativity workshop, something I've wanted to do for a long time but for too many reasons to post here, reasons deeply personal, I hadn't. It went amazingly well, with positive reinforcement from the participants to keep it going. In addition to all that needs to be done, here I am pulling together notes I've travelled the past 15 years with and writing a creativity manual for the next session.

Also, I picked up two wonderful books over the weekend, one by
SARK called Succulent Wild Woman (I love SARK) and another by Clarrisa Estes, called Women Who Run With The Wolves -- an amazing book that rode on the wings of the NYT Bestseller List for two years.

---A.

UNTITLED

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.

Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.


-- Jelaluddin Rumi,
translation by Coleman Barks

THE ROLE OF FICTION

...a new quote to your right from John Edgar Wideman. Definately a keeper. Courtesy of Lisa Tucker. Thanks, Lisa, for your wise words about independent publicists in this month's issue of Poets and Writers. I won't forget.

---A.

JUST BECAUSE

I am not a mall shopper. I am a solitary sort, easily overstimulated. Recycled air brings confusing blends of perfume and coffee, mixed with odd colognes, incenses and lotions, new shoe smells and food court snackeries. Women with arched brows resembling crows stamped across the sky come at me too quickly, offering make-overs and samples of foundation that I have no interest in wearing. Artificial lighting makes me hungry for the outside, limiting my ability to concentrate on the purchase at hand. Talk is too loud into cellphones; my head hurts from receiving TMI (Too Much Information) about who-shot-john and which lover slept with whom and reminders of soccer practice and dry cleaning and tampons in need of picking up on the way home. The walk is painfully slow; a steady shuffle of feet resembling a herd of farm animals headed for slaughter. The price tags annoy me, knowing that 99.9% of the time the mark-up is three hundred percent of which the workers---poor women in impoverished countries---are only paid pennies on the dollar (if that) to make. The styles are redundant and sorely lacking originality. And perhaps worst of all is the people. One finds the saddest lot in malls, dressed in ill-fitted clothing spending hard-earned wages to look and smell and feel and be like anything, anyone but themselves; identified by the name inscribed on the tag, carrying vinyl purses that cost a small fortune yet bearing someone else's initials. But I endure it today because:

I know that in this mall there is an item you've wanted for some time now;

Because I love you and I want you to have it;

Because you are, to me, the greatest lover and the kindest friend;

Because the love we have given and the love we have made has blossomed into the two most awesome and amazingly beautiful children I could have ever imagined;

Because you are the father I only wish I could have had and yet, the gift I know he has sent to stand in his place, giving me the unconditional love he would have given;

Because you are a true example of a man and the perfect role model for our son;

Because you are the type of man I wish for our daughter;

Because you negate every tired and disgusting stereotype ever hurled upon men who look like you;

Because you give unceasingly, unflinchingly;

Because you hold out both hands and pull me closer and closer to my dreams everyday;

Because you teach me, through your own sacrifices, what it means to be a family;

Because you showed me that it is okay to stand still;

Because in you I have discovered that it is possible and it is healthy to trust;

Because you are strength when I am weary and balm when I am wounded;

Because I feel so fortunate to have found love.

Happy Father's Day honey. I love you so very much,

Just because ....

---A.

SHAMELESS SELF PROMOTION

Good advice from Crawford Killian today. Not too many words on this except for the fact that we writers don't do enough of it and it's perplexing because who else in what other profession would spend this much time, money, and effort at perfecting something only to leave it in the hands of someone else to earn a profit. I say we must all strive for that balance and not be seduced into the romantics of writing 'cos their ain't nothing romantic about being a broke artist. A very good writer friend of mine thought I was crazy for reading the Publisher's Weekly as much as I do but how come girlfriend called me up to ask for info on Random House, McGraw Hill and others when she completed her non-fiction project? Nuff said.

So a long time ago I decided to do one thing, every day to ensure my financial success. Creating databases of bookclubs, small indie bookstores that might be interested in having me to read, libraries, etc etc etc.

--A.

CONUNDRUM

Black Woman

We are always dancing
on high wires of tenuous floss
thirty seven miles high

Dancing
to save ourselves
from
falling

Too much
yet never
enough.

ANGEL V SHANNON
C 2004


I want to be angry. I want to spill out some very hateful words to people who have assaulted my charachter for no good reason but for the fact that I am intelligent, I am capable, and I have the ability to run circles around them; I negate every disgusting stereotype they've fed themselves every day of their lives; I am from a city that taught me survival skills which translates into my knowing that no matter what, I will always be taken care of; I am a deeply private person; I enjoy solitude and do not need conversation in the way that others do; I am me, comfortably, happily me. I want to call some people on the carpet, call them out of their names. I want to hate them just as they, I'm sure, hate me. Simply because I am a black woman with a rod of steel in my back that frightens and intimidates them.

But I won't. I won't because I am better than that. I have never taken the easy way out. I won't because I will not give negative energy more focus than positive energy. As my Spouse always says, "I'm not even gonna feed into this."

And I'm not.

But I will say, that it fuels my commitment to my writing and to making a sustainable place for myself and my children. It fuels my commitment to finish my novel and get to work on the next. It fuels my focus on the next chapbook: a collection of essays about motherhood and my life as an artist. And it's funny because just the other day I went in JoAnn's to pick up some remnants for my little girl who just received her first sewing machine for her birthday and I stumbled across some beautiful wooden style beads. I bought them, reminding myself how happy I was back when my daughter was born and I was designing my own jewerly --- beads, glass, wood --- anything beautiful. I bought them, determined to start up my jewelry making again. It fuels my commitment to embrace every beautiful, artistic part of myself. It fuels me to love, not because of but in spite of.

I have to thank my friend Jamey for putting me onto her friend Cheryl's Blog which you can see here: Cherryl. and I remember Jenoyne too. Jamey told me in an email that I (we) are part of a New Tribe and reading Cherryl's blog reaffirms that for me. Indeed a New Tribe.

And as Creator would have it, I found the Novel Synopsis workshop I've been searching for over here. Though I've written my synopsis already, I would like workshop it to be sure it's as engaging as I think it is. And so I mail my enrollment form today taking yet another step. Indeed another step.

I'm pissed. But I'm moving on. Bigger. Better. Blacker.


-A

ART IMITATING LIFE, OR LIFE IMITATING ART?

An interesting read in the March/April issue of The Writer's Chronicle. An interview with Nora Okja Keller.

Nora Okja Keller was born in Seoul, Korea and grew up in Hawaii where she attended the University of Hawaii. In 1995 she received the Pushcart Prize for a story, "Mother Tongue," which later became a part of Comfort Woman, her first novel and winner of a 1998 American Book Award. Fox Girl is her second novel.

Just a snippet:

Interviewer (INT): How did you get started writing fiction?

NOK: I had always been writing since I was in elementary school, doing little poems or stories that I would illustrate myself! I've been writing for as long as I can remember, but I never thought that I would do it for a career, or that I would become an author and write for a living. That wasn't a part of my family life. No one in my community was writing, no one that I knew personally was doing any sort of writing.

INT: How did you come to writing professionally?

NOK: Even though I'd written as a hobby over the years, it was only after I wrote Comfort Woman that I realized writing could be my profession. I started writing Comfort Woman in 1993 after I heard a talk given by a former comfort woman at a human rights symposium.

**Funny how things in life, morph into stories, huh?? Awareness has got to be fifty percent of it all, you think?**

snip....

INT: What did you do, and what do you continue to do to develop and deepen your craft?

NOK: I read. I read a lot. I consider reading the best way to learn how to write, reading with awareness and consciousness of the choices an author makes to bring a charachter to life or to brighten dialogue. I don't think you can be a good writer without being an avid reader. I've had students say they want to write, but they're not really interested in reading, which is bizarre to me.

***And to that I would add, please read well. You are what you eat. Which is why I have had to set DaVinci Code aside. The plot may be good but the writing....oh dear.***

INT: Who are some of the writers who have influenced you, and who do you admire now?

NOK: I always say Maxine Hong Kingston because she was the first Asian American writer I read. (She goes onto talk about the dirth of Asian American writers and when she asked a professor if she knew of any Korean American authors, the professor said a flat, No. Her literature courses were made up of Steinbeck, Hemingway, Faulkner...the Great White Males. No surprise there.)

INT: How do you know how far to go with a scene like the one in which Hyan Jin has sex with three men during her first prostitution experience. The scene is very horrifying and graphic, and it goes from bad to worse. With a scene like that, how do you know how far to go?

NOK: I actually didn't know how far to go. That was one of the last and most difficult scenes that I wrote. (snip)

INT: It seems important that you have that one brutal scene because it lets readers know the reality of what goes on. You don't have to have innumerable scenes like that, but the one scene says, "This is what it is."

NOK: I didn't want to turn away from that. It's ugly and it's brutal and it's graphic and it's violent. I didn't want to ignore that those kinds of things do go on. While writing, I tried to walk the fine line between dwelling in it, not wanting to dwell in it, not wanting to exploit it, and yet not wanting to deny it either.

INT: I guess it comes down to honoring the charachter's experience.

NOK: That's always what I came back to: trying to get in touch with the view point of the charachter, to empathize with her and feel her emotions and her spirit and her voice. But it was hard. As an author, I went into Fox Girl knowing that it was a novel. I couldn't trick myself the way I did with Comfort Woman, and I was very conscious of the choices I could make as an author. I wanted to challenge myself. I didn't want to take the easy way out. I wanted to let the charachters do their own unpredictable things and not try to guide them along a preconceived plot. At one point, it got very difficult, and the girls had made so many bad life choices. About two thirds of the way in, I got stuck. I'd come to a dead end where I didn't know how to get the girls out. I didn't have the energy, and I was emotionally and intellectually stuck. I showed up at my monthly writing group empty handed, ready to quit. I told them I didn't know how it was going to end, and they all said they'd been reading for months and they wanted an ending. They wouldn't let me quit. (**Damn! that kind of support is good, isn't it?**) For four or five months I was determined that I was done with it, that I wouldn't go back. It was very difficult to go back because some of the charachters' cynicism was working it's way into my life. After a few months---I realize now that I probably needed those months to gain some perspective and have some breathing space----I thought that not only was I obligated to my writing group, but to my charachters as well. I owed it to them to get them out of this horrible mess. I went through from the very beginning and looked for places to interject some hope so that when they reach that dead end, it wasn't a dead end. There was a little window of light open at the top that they could escape through. But I almost had to quit.

INT: So much of your themes have to do with the mother-daughter relationship. What draws you to this complicated and unruly terrain?

NOK: In part, it's the life that I'm living now. I'm raising two young daughters [and it naturally filters down].

INT: What do you look for in an ending?

NOK: In an ending, I want the charachters to come to some sense of peace or realization, and also an ending should offer hope for a new beginning.

INT: How long was there between Fox Girl and Comfort Woman?

NOK: Five years, and part of that was spent writing what I thought would be my second novel---which was not Fox Girl---but I got distracted by the research I did....snip....part of the trouble with that second novel was that I told so many people what I was going to write. I told the whole story, what the charachters were like, what was going to happen, and so I lost that vital sense of discovery which is one of the joys of writing.

snip

INT: I like what you said earlier too about letting your charachters surprise you and be spontaneous and not being married to some idea of what you think they're going to do.

NOK: That's so important. When you first start out, you don't know your charachters well enough to know what they're going to do. The fun of writing is the discovery of who your charachters are and what's going to happen to them. When you start with an outline and a preconceived idea, I think you kill something off. It deadens your charachters.

INT: What would you say to writers working on their first stories or novel?

NOK: I would say to not worry so much about the end product, or if it's going to get published or what the message is. Start from your charachters and let your charachters tell the story. Let the story develop on its own from your charachters' viewpoint and be as honest as possible to that. The rest will come. If you keep trying to get to the emotional heart or truth of the charachters, the story will come from that. I've read so many things that say to plot out your book, and I feel that puts even more pressure on the writing. I tried it once and found my story going off in different directions and had to bo back and erase my outline and rewrite it to make it conform with how the story was developing. Now that's backwards.

snip/end

***Gee, a lot said here and it's funny because the opening page for my second novel has come, which I'm considering posting. I told this woman that I cannot not start her story yet. My idea is to finish one thing before I start another. But why can't one write one novel and flesh out another? Why can't I listen to what she's saying and just record it. I do know for sure this is a novel and not a story. She's gone through a lot and she's got a lot to tell. But it's funny how that first page just poured right through me; me just writing and writing. Bearing witness.


A.

DECISIONS

There are times when we need to make decisions. I'm talking about coming to a solid conclusion about things; a place of unwavering surety where one has settled into the peace of knowingness. I'm talking about looking up to the Creator and within to the Creator and saying, with all surety and without doubt, "There it is. I am done." And then, really and truly, from the most honest place in your being, Let It Go.

Lately I've been thinking alot about my Plan B. In a previous post I ran down my beliefs about my convictions about Plan B. Or, as I like to call it, Backup Plan. It's the "what I'm going to do, if XYZ doesn't work out." It's the "I'm going to save X dollars just in case my honey ever decides he/she ain't my honey no more." It's the "I'm going to keep my resume updated, just in case these folks up in here try to act the fool." It's about staying in the ready and being able to jump when you need to jump. It's about making sure you are in a place of Self-Determination -- ALWAYS -- needing no-one (keep in mind that needing and wanting are two different pigs).

I was raised by a single, strong woman who taught us six children if nothing else but the clothes on your back, always always always have a Plan B. A modus operandi.

I have lived by those teachings all my life.

And so here I am, for the past few months thinking about my plan B. Early thirties, knowing that Western Medicine is not where I want to spend the rest of my life. As I was explaining to a girlfriend recently, I live a double life. I work with scientists but I dwell with artists. I work with the concrete, but I dwell in the abstract. I work with what the eye sees but I dwell in the imaginative. And everytime I have to pull my two twelve hours I feel, literally, physically ill. Like a child being drug into the doctor's office, kicking and screaming.

Now I admit, I do have the life that many people would envy. I work two twelve hour shifts and I'm done. I'm comfortable with my income and my needs are met. My kids are happy; they never go to bed without seeing either Daddy or Mommy. They get a bedtime story every night and I haven't missed a field trip yet. The hours are long, yes, but the idea of going into anybody's workplace five days a week makes me nauseous.
But on the same hand, I don't want to do this forever. I have a lot of serious problems with Western Medicine and I have always believed that the best thing you could ever have is a family member who knows how to navigate the system and understand the lingo, lest you find yourself with the wrong limb cut off and failing kidneys cause some sap resident didn't know what the hell he was doing.

But I digress.

So I've been troubling myself with the notion of going back to school. I say troubling because I ask myself: for what? Aside from a few courses in women's studies, archaeology, a couple languages, and of course, writing craft courses, what would I want to commit myself to that strongly that I would put aside my writing and the projects I want to do? What could convince me to incur the kind of debt that colleges are calling for nowadays? Virginia Woolf had it right when she said " a woman, if she is to write, needs a room of her own," but what homegirl forgot to add is that a woman better be damn sure she doesn't have a whole lot of debt cause debt means working a whole lotta long ass hours doing stuff you don't want to be doing. I am through with that student loan stuff and I mean that. I am spoiled with my two days a week, let me tell you. And so, I ask myself but what then? What do I do about the future?

What if ..... and then I start having all kinds of what if's floating through my mind about my writing career and panic sets in.

But what I've come to understand about all of this is that this is the way I was raised and mantras have a powerful, powerful effect. Spouse said, in no uncertain terms: Angel you've got incredible talent. You've got commitment. You've got drive. And you're always going to be a Student. The Universe always responds to that. It may not be tomorrow. It may not be the next day. But It always responds. Just trust.

And so I ask, why can't we artists trust? Why do we buy into the notion that we can't sustain ourselves with our art? Why do we always think about the plan B instead of thrusting ourselves full force? Why can't we trust the burning within our hearts?

And so I've made some decisions. Some, Here Creator I Am Done. I am pouring everything I have into it. In the last day, I have shoved aside every non-essential task and committed to the creation of my art. I spent two hours last night and eight today updating my palm, buying software that enables me to write on the go (so I can stop wasting time typing my long hand stuff in), creating a To-Do List so I can stop bogging my mind down (why try to remember if you can write it down??) and looking at my date book clearing all non-essential appointments. I pulled open my latest chapter and went at it full force. I pulled the latest edition of the Writer's Chronicle off the shelf and resumed my independent study of literature and writing, taking a fresh look at Contradiction and Charachter:

"I began to notice a kind of contradiction that I had for the most part overlooked in literature...Virginia Woolf, Henry James, Bruno Shulz, Alice Munro, Joseph Conrad, John Hawkes, Jean Rhys, Ernest Hemingway--all of them used irony, which implies contradiction; all of them built stories around contradictions BETWEEN charachters; but what interested me most--what came as a revelation because I'd remained blind to it for years--was the pervasiveness and importance of contradiction WITHIN charachters.

...Students of craft will immediately recognize the most pervasive use of all. It is often contradiction that allows a literary charachter to change over the course of a story.

...If we do not know ourselves--if our charachters do not know themselves---who can predict what we will do. Another layer of complexity has to be added: if our charachters KNOW or FEEL that they do not know themselves, if they tremble from contradictory impulses, they will also tremble with suspense, driving themselves and the reader, AND THE WRITER, to the next moment and the next.

And so, I move forward, full force now, knowing that this is IT. This is the IT I've always wanted. IT will come through reading and writing and living and being and...simply DECIDING.

Be Good.

DECISIONS

There are times when we need to make decisions. I'm talking about coming to a solid conclusion about things; a place of unwavering surety where one has settled into the peace of knowingness. I'm talking about looking up to the Creator and within to the Creator and saying, with all surety and without doubt, "There it is. I am done." And then, really and truly, from the most honest place in your being, Let It Go.

Lately I've been thinking alot about my Plan B. In a previous post I ran down my beliefs about my convictions about Plan B. Or, as I like to call it, Backup Plan. It's the "what I'm going to do, if XYZ doesn't work out." It's the "I'm going to save X dollars just in case my honey ever decides he/she ain't my honey no more." It's the "I'm going to keep my resume updated, just in case these folks up in here try to act the fool." It's about staying in the ready and being able to jump when you need to jump. It's about making sure you are in a place of Self-Determination -- ALWAYS -- needing no-one (keep in mind that needing and wanting are two different pigs).

I was raised by a single, strong woman who taught us six children if nothing else but the clothes on your back, always always always have a Plan B. A modus operandi.
I have lived by those teachings all my life.

And so here I am, for the past few months thinking about my plan B. Early thirties, knowing that Western Medicine is not where I want to spend the rest of my life. As I was explaining to a girlfriend recently, I live a double life. I work with scientists but I dwell with artists. I work with the concrete, but I dwell in the abstract. I work with what the eye sees but I dwell in the imaginative. And everytime I have to pull my two twelve hours I feel, literally, physically ill. Like a child being drug into the doctor's office, kicking and screaming.

Now I admit, I do have the life that many people would envy. I work two twelve hour shifts and I'm done. I'm comfortable with my income and my needs are met. My kids are happy; they never go to bed without seeing either Daddy or Mommy. They get a bedtime story every night and I haven't missed a field trip yet. The hours are long, yes, but the idea of going into anybody's workplace five days a week makes me nauseous.
But on the same hand, I don't want to do this forever. I have a lot of serious problems with Western Medicine and I have always believed that the best thing you could ever have is a family member who knows how to navigate the system and understand the lingo, lest you find yourself with the wrong limb cut off and failing kidneys cause some sap resident didn't know what the hell he was doing.

But I digress.

So I've been troubling myself with the notion of going back to school. I say troubling because I ask myself: for what? Aside from a few courses in women's studies, archaeology, a couple languages, and of course, writing craft courses, what would I want to commit myself to that strongly that I would put aside my writing and the projects I want to do? What could convince me to incur the kind of debt that colleges are calling for nowadays? Virginia Woolf had it right when she said " a woman, if she is to write, needs a room of her own," but what homegirl forgot to add is that a woman better be damn sure she doesn't have a whole lot of debt cause debt means working a whole lotta long ass hours doing stuff you don't want to be doing. I am through with that student loan stuff and I mean that. I am spoiled with my two days a week, let me tell you. And so, I ask myself but what then? What do I do about the future.

What if ..... and then I start having all kinds of what if's floating through my mind about my writing career and panic sets in.

But what I've come to understand about all of this is that this is the way I was raised and mantras have a powerful, powerful effect. Spouse said, in no uncertain terms, Angel you've got incredible talent. You've got commitment. You've got drive. And you're always going to be a Student. The Universe always responds to that. It may not be tomorrow. It may not be the next day. But It always responds. Just trust.

And so I ask, why can't we artists trust? Why do we buy into the notion that we can't sustain ourselves with our art? Why do we always think about the plan B instead of thrusting ourselves full force?

And so I've made some decisions. Some, Here Creator I Am Done. I am pouring everything I have into it. In the last day, I have shoved aside every non-essential task and committed to the creation of my art. I spent two hours last night and eight today updating my palm, buying software that enables me to write on the go (so I can stop wasting time typing my long hand stuff in), creating a To-Do List so I can stop bogging my mind down (why try to remember if you can write it down??) and looking at my date book clearing all non-essential appointments. I pulled open my latest chapter and went at it full force. I pulled the latest edition of the Writer's Chronicle off the shelf and resumed my independent study of literature and writing, taking a fresh look at Contradiction and Charachter:

"I began to notice a kind of contradiction that I had for the most part overlooked in literature...Virginia Woolf, Henry James, Bruno Shulz, Alice Munro, Joseph Conrad, John Hawkes, Jean Rhys, Ernest Hemingway--all of them used irony, which implies contradiction; all of them built stories around contradictions BETWEEN charachters; but what interested me most--what came as a revelation because I'd remained blind to it for years--was the pervasiveness and importance of contradiction WITHIN charachters.

...Students of craft will immediately recognize the most pervasive use of all. It is often contradiction that allows a literary charachter to change over the course of a story.

...If we do not know ourselves--if our charachters do not know themselves---who can prredict what we will do. Another layer of complexity has to be added: if our charachters KNOW or FEEL that they do not know themselves, if the tremble from contradictory impulses, they will also tremble with suspense, driving themselves and the reader, AND THE WRITER, to the next moment and the next.

And so, I move forward, full force now, knowing that this is IT. This is the IT I've always wanted. IT will come through reading and writing and living and being and...simply DECIDING.

Be Good.

NOT THAT I EVER, EVER...

...watch awards shows, reality shows, nor talk shows but
Phylicia Rashad, Anika Noni Rose, and Audra McDonald all in one night is too much to miss. In times that seem wrought with the stupidity of Soul Plane, these women give me hope. Congratulations sister-girls!

SOMETIMES THERE ARE JUST NO WORDS

This is enough to make me want to knit the rest of my clothing for the rest of my life. This in the Daily Star.

SOUTH ASIA'S WOMEN GARMENT WORKERS
Globalisation's Race to the Bottom

By Ron Chepesiuk


EACH day, 20-year old Farida leaves her home in the slums of Dhaka and walks for one hour to her job at the Dalia Garment Factory. Farida, who, like many garment workers interviewed for this article, didn't want her real or last name used for fear of losing her job, works 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. and sometimes as much as two hours more, often seven days a week. For her labour, the young worker earns the equivalent of about $18 per month. At night, Farida must walk through the pitch black and dangerous streets of a city notorious for its crime rate.

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