We walked in the woods at Goddard, looking for a cliff to look out over, and we found different way to see – through Bhanu’s cracked, taped phone. What she says, on her own blog (click the picture), is this:
I know that it is important to veer, and keep veering, until you reach an interior that does not correspond to the imagination.
From Goddard, where today Susan Kim, Kyle Bass and I will be talking about the writer in the world, then I will be moving on to a session on emotional structure.
Where we are talking about death and time and the body and trauma and love and witness and healing…and writing, always writing.
Last week, at a conference on young adult literature, key note speaker Beth Kephart (multi-award winning writer of fourteen books and more on the way), argued for the “radical significance” of stories in our new, “Sandy-Irene-Katrina world…of fiscal cliffs and residual recessions.” She asked:
“We are a globe on the verge, I’m saying, and because we are, mere entertainment for mere entertainment’s sake — for mere (forgive me) profit — strikes me as an increasingly unviable platform. Literature as easy distraction, literature as untempered horror, literature as gossip, literature as desolation, literature as isolation, literature as sensationalism, literature that leaves us stooped, numb, incinerated, angry, distracted, glassy-eyed, New Jersey Shored (and I am referring the show), and emotionally paralyzed: Do we honestly have time for this now?”
What do we have time for, and how will we spend that time so we might find a better future, not yet written? This is an essential question, not just for young people but for all people whether we are writing stories or writing our lives.
For Beth’s entire speech, Lamp Lighters and Seed Sowers: Tomorrow’s YA, click on the link.
Come to Sunset Park!
On September 8 & 9, the New York Art Residency & Studios (NARS) Foundation is teaming up with the Brooklyn Museum’s GO Project, a community-curated open studio weekend event taking place in neighborhoods throughout Brooklyn. There are over 50 artist studios to visit at NARS. Come check out one of Brooklyn’s most vibrant art scenes and VOTE for your favorite artists! Visit the GO website for more information: www.gobrooklynart.org
On Saturday, September 8th from 2- 4 PM, we will be celebrating the Go Project with an afternoon of special events. Join us for readers Ed Lin, Anelise Chen and Rahna Reiko Rizzuto, from the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, as well as a spoken word performance by Buendia, a local grassroots Sunset Park artists collective.
Visitors can also enjoy drinks from a set of exhibited ceramic clay vessels by Ming Yuen-Schat, and participate in a clay workshop for children and families with Veronica Frenning – both artists whose work appears in our newest exhibition, Interpreting Rituals: The Butterfly Effect. This exhibit, part of the five-borough Locating the Sacred Festival organized by the Asian American Arts Alliance, is an exploration of what is sacred in our contemporary society.
NARS Foundation
In truth, I skim uplifting forwards in my email, and only if I have time. But today, one of the messages resonated and I want to share a piece of advice:
Give up the past. I know, I know. It’s hard. Especially when the past looks so much better than the present and the future looks so frightening, but you have to take into consideration the fact that the present moment is all you have and all you will ever have. The past you are now longing for – the past that you are now dreaming about – was ignored by you when it was present. Stop deluding yourself. Be present in everything you do and enjoy life. After all life is a journey not a destination. Have a clear vision for the future, prepare yourself, but always be present in the now.
I so love the idea that the past we are longing for was ignored when it was the present!
I am finishing up my semester with my Goddard students. As we look back on what we have written, and face a future of ripping that apart and rewriting, it can be exhausting and scary to think of the work ahead; how much easier it would be to be able to rest on what is already done! This takes the form of what I call page conservation, and editing (moving those blocks of text you like around with your handy computer!) instead of re-envisioning. I have a book now that needs re-envisioning, even though I have re-envisioned it several times. Yes, it would be lovely if my readers could just see it the way I would like it to be seen now. But since they cannot read my mind, only my pages, the reality is this: If I don’t rewrite, if I am not writing, then what am I? Not a writer. Just a woman who is putting her books in a box and taking them out again.
