Category Archives: writing

Seventeen Year Cycles

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Cicada stramps from around the world

Cicada stramps from around the world (Photo credit: DanCentury)

 

So much as been written about cicadas and their seventeen year period cycles.  My sister-in-law pointed me to one informative map from the New York Times.  No doubt, the cicadas have got a lot of people thinking.

 

This summer, I was to read Proust, but I am leaving it for the fall, when my time is more ordered than now. ( I am very happy to note my translator of choice won the Man Booker International Prize.)

 

Instead of In Search of Things Lost, I am thinking of Things to Come.  I joked to my niece that she ought to enjoy the cooing in the trees as she complains about their crunch underfoot, an easy thing to say where my near coastal yard is not cicada-filled but never quiet nonetheless.  I hear the continuous gulping of a frog, or the twittering of various birds, the swoosh of traffic, the buzz of construction. (I did hear a bumble bee squeakily explore a foxglove flower as I weeded nearby one after–a thrilling sound!)

 

I tell my niece in seventeen years, she will be someone entirely different from who she is now, but that I realize is the same for me, a deeply sobering thought.  Seventeen years will see me teetering towards seventy, an age I never really imagined, though I see ninety with some clarity.

 

What will I have done in seventeen years time?  I thought I had thirty years more to write books, to become the world-class writer I once dreamed of being at twenty-five.  When I embarrassingly asked my editor if I had it in me to become part of the conversation of world novelists I so admire, though I phrased it more crassly, she said, quite simply, I better get busy.  She is right. I would like to write more books.

 

I once only wanted to write six. Seventeen divided by three=five point six years.  Whew.  That seems immensely do-able.

 

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Food and Books, in Lambertville

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English: Indian spice

English: Indian spice (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

On Thursday, I gave a reading at a lively event. It was at Anton’s at the Swan Hotel, housed in a building from 1870 furnished with curiosities and memorabilia, in New Jersey, where a once month, a dinner is given at once price, with one menu, to an enthusiastic crowd. The events are put together by the very graciously hostess, Miss Maxwell, and this one was suggested to her by my old friend Diane.

I read for my supper, and what a supper it was. Two long tables holding seventeen place settings were placed in a room covered with silks and chiffon from India. The tables held a long beguiling row of carefully potted marigold pots. In between the first (spinach and lentil soup garnished with a bright cucumber-tomato mix) and second course (baighan bartha, mango chutney, flat bread and basmati), prepared expertly (and deliciously, to the surprise of my family) by Chef Chris Connors,I read. After munching on cumin-seed shortbread and sipping strawberry lassi, I signed books, surrounded by family and friends, all under the painted gaze of British royalty.

I’d to return, to sip a martini or fauxtini, look for the John Cleese photo, as Diane suggests, and explore more of the Swan.

Inclusiveness, Yoga, & Color, Part I [revised]

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Indira Ganesan, Acceptance, 2013

Indira Ganesan, Acceptance, 2013

I have spent six days away at two different events. The first was a three-day yoga workshop taught by my teacher, Richard Freeman, and the second was a seminar on inclusive pedagogical practices for college courses. Both required a certain courage to attend, more required stamina, and attentiveness. Both were exhausting and marvelous and revealing. To go straight from three days of thoughtful spiritually guided yoga to three days of intellectual rigor is a cultural shock. One was integration of body and heart and mind, while the other is mind and heart alone, with rigorous conversation.

If I could, I would attend yoga four days a week with my teacher, if not six. A course on inclusivity is a different animal, but if a rest were built-in to the offering, it too would be a welcome practice. In reality, yoga and inclusivity are both life-long, daily practices.

Still, at one point in the seminar, when we were asked to write some of our reflections down, I wanted the presenters to hand out color markers and blank pieces of paper so we could visually illustrate our thoughts. As I continued with the exercise, I wondered what that meant, and doodled a little surreptitiously, but the answer is clear: one aches for creative intervention in multi-disciplines. One wants crayons and charcoals.

To work with themes diversity is hard work; acknowledging the biases, the small internalizations of privilege and lack, and work towards change requires time. How would Ntozake Shange put it? Being a woman of color IS NEVER redundant in a world of academia. There are simply not enough of us, yet. The problem is often the teachers of color are asked to teach color, a situation that can cause weariness. [This is a rewrite of my original post because I did not make sense on the page of what I wanted to say. Thank you, Sandra, for pointing me in the right direction. ] What Shange had her character in her play For Colored Girls Who Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf really said was “I cldn’t stand being colored and sorry at the same time–it seems so redundant in the modern world.”One wants at some point to stretch the mind [out from under the norm] with finger paint, activate the imagination, and let out a large, loud sigh.

I find I am as always when I involve myself in discussions of diversity in academics to be interested, alert, and far too revealing. A professor by natures protects herself so she can be who she also is outside the class. I tend to cultivate a reserve that can lead if I am not careful to sadness. What one wants to do is integrate oneself, and also get the work of inclusion and, say, creative writing in class, done.

On the way back to the Cape, I braked hard for a fox running across the highway, and watched it run to safety in the woods. Spring colors at twilight were on full misty display, the dunes, flowers and water saturated and rich. Imagine peach, yellow-gold, greens and blues in a hundred hues placed next to one another, forming something ethereal and real. Inclusive. Yogic. More, always.

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