NEWS

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Syllabizing for Fall 2013 or Performing the Poly-Pedagogic

Summer Prep Reading
Summer Prep Reading

Even before putting Spring 2013 to bed, planning and prepping for next academic year is well under-way and under serious deadline. Fall 2013 promises to be as challenging as the last two years of teaching, not only because this adjunct will technically have three new entire preps to teach. Truth being, yours truly has taught one of the courses two or three years ago, the fact is a new prep is no longer a new prep only after the third sequential time around. Next academic year like the previous two will be an acrobatic feat that entails schooling both incoming freshman and exiting seniors in the same semester though in different courses.

Forefront on the mind is the service learning or community engagement required in the senior capstone course, and questions such as the following brim with possibility:

  • how do we serve our communities without letting our ideologies and personal narratives skew our engagement?
  • how do we learn from the communities serve?
  • how do we integrate senior-level research and synthesis with the academic materials covered in the classroom, so that connections are organic and consistent throughout the semester?

The course requiring service learning is Liberal & Civic Studies 124: Democracy & Active Citizenship, detailed below:

This last Liberal and Civic Studies course is dedicated to your futures – to investigating possibilities and discussing potentials for your lives beyond Saint Mary’s. “Come to learn, learn to serve” is a cornerstone of the Lasallian tradition. How do you translate your experience into a life of civic and global engagement? What does social justice action look like now? This course invites you to apply the wealth of your learning at St. Mary’s towards the good of the community and to think about how active American citizenship affects the world. Previous Liberal & Civic Studies courses have explored issues of community, diversity, the environment, and the arts. These courses have given you experience in the process of self-assessment and have provided you with two very different service-learning experiences, one in direct service, and the other in systemic service. They have also promoted critical and integrative thinking skills. This class will bring together all of these themes, but with the difference that we will examine them from the perspectives of democratic principles and issues. Your service-learning work in this class will be organized as group projects to promote democratic skills of cooperation, communication, negotiation, and compromise. The class is not only a theme-based course, but a course in leadership skills.

Curriculum — required readings

  • Privilege, Power and Difference by Allan G. Johnson

  • The Constitution of the United States (http://www.usconstitution.net/)

  • The Rights of the People: How Our Search for Safety Invades Our Liberties by David K. Shipler

  • Voices of Dissent: Critical Readings in American Politics (9th edition) by Grover & Peschek

General thematic thoughts about how to frame (or maybe how not to frame course content) include ideas about unconscious tribalism, the problematic problem-solution paradigm, and bolstering a critical framework for the community engagement, which entails creating a service learning rubric.

Sources for these found here:

  1. http://www.uni.edu/assessment/documents/servicelearningrubriclinksbytype.pdf
  2. http://www.uen.org/cmap/courses/CMap/files/LindonProject/PowerPointRubric.pdf

In addition to the above courses, the Fall 2013 teaching load includes two other classes, Seminar 2: Western Tradition I and English 3: Introduction to College Composition, each in two distinct programs, which isn’t freeway flying exactly, but teaching in three different programs requires different pedagogy, so maybe we can call this experience poly-pedagogic or the more boring multi-disciplinary.

It might not be technically true but sure feels like fall semester is already up and running.

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Mapping the Literary Constellation: 50 Key Moments in a Personal History

The Guardian UK loves lists, and they spend plenty of air time debating the purpose and usefulness of this form. Katie Kitamura waxes in her article “Literary Lists: Proof of our existence”:

Lists are used as a formally alienating device, a dehumanising agent, that is nonetheless entirely wrapped up in the question of human life.

How do we describe the fact of human existence? At a certain point, perhaps, style fails us. Language, even and in particular at its most evocative, becomes less of an aid and more of a difficulty. In these circumstances, a certain kind of writer has, again and again, reverted to the list – perhaps as the simplest proof of existence in the first place. It’s no accident that these lists often delineate material objects, the physical evidence of a life.

…[Umberto] Eco is talking about what I can only describe as a big feeling, and one that requires all the support of its formal and literary scaffolding. He is not, in the main, talking about grocery lists or lists of books read. But as long as we’re keeping lists, no matter what those lists are, we’re keeping faith with some idea of perpetuity. We are making the assumption that the list will endure even when we do not.

Furthering the idea that lists endure, The Guardian enumerated English literature’s 50 key moments from Marlowe to JK Rowling, registering historical moments and literary milestones. Here’s a taste:

Note: what follows is not merely a book list, but an attempt to identify some of the hinge moments in our literature – a composite of significant events, notable poems, plays, and novels, plus influential deaths, starting with the violent death of Shakespeare’s one serious rival …

1. The death of Christopher Marlowe (1593)

2. William Shakespeare: The Sonnets (1609)

3. The King James Bible (1611)

4. William Shakespeare: The First Folio (1623)78)

In the spirit of Eco’s perpetuity, here’s a personal record–certainly not exhaustive nor complete–noting moments of  self discovery, influential people, places, films, musicians, mentors, trailblazers to follow, and other artifacts that have shaped this literary self. The below register doesn’t follow chronological order nor an order of importance but is a haphazard attempt to pin down the brightest constellations that wheel over my literary skies. Like any piece of writing, it’s been revised nth times over, and these fidgety fingers are still tempted to make further emendations. It will be interesting to revisit ten and twenty years from now and discover how the skyscape has shifted.

1. Central Station
2. The City of Angels
3. My soul mate, PJS.
4. Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things

5. Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine
6. Barbara Jane Reyes
7. Lysley Tenorio
8. Rosemary Graham, Marilyn Abildskov, and Cecilia Brainard Manguerra
9. Saint Mary’s College of California MFA Creative Writing Program (2006)
10. UCLA Creative Writing Program: David Wong Louie and Paula Gunn Allen (1998)
11. Teaching Composition Classes
12. NYT article on Filipino House Bands
13. LA Weekly
14. Beethoven
15. The Smiths
16. MacDowell Colony Residency, January 2013
17. Maternal & paternal grandparents’ lives & stories
18. Virginia Woolf
19. Gabriel Garcia Marquez (short stories–not the novels!)
20. Typewriter Model #____
21. Apple
22. WordPress
23. Mi hermanito
24. BBC’s adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskell’s North & South

25. EM Forster
26. Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss
27. The City of Angels

At Home in Venice, Los Angeeles
28. Andrea Levy’s Small Island
29. Joseph Conrad and his Heart of Darkness
30. Thomas Hardy (Tess of d’Ubervilles, Return of the Native, and Far From the Maddening Crowd)
31. Frederich Nietzsche
32. This Bridge Called My Back and Borderlands/Las Fronteras

33. Shakespeare’s Hamlet
34. Mr. Thurston’s Honors English class at Monte Vista High School and his extra credit reading list
35. Mr. Tato, Avocado Elementary School
36. Libraries at Highland Elementary, MVHS, Avocado, and Spring Valley Middle School
37. Elementary School Bookfairs (Scholastic Catalogs–does anyone remember these?)
38. Laura Ingalls Wilder Series
39. The Romantics: Shelley, Byron, Wordsworth, and the rest of the guys in the band
40. Charlotte Bronte
41. Emily Bronte & Wuthering Heights

42. Sandra Cisneros, Woman Hollering Creek and Loose Woman
43. The UCLA Ten Series and The Norton Anthology of English Literature I and II
44. The Great Chuck D, aka Charles Dickens
45. Poets & Writers
46. Mary Volmer, Nick D. Leither, and Emily Breunig
47. KPFK’s Global Village’s Yatrika Shah-Rais and Derek Rath
48. KCRW’s Tom Schnabel
49. Pa and the copies of Aesop’s Fables and Greek mythology books he gave me as a child
50. Ma, all her books and paperwork that crammed our house and her indomitable encouragement to read & write

Hopefully this inventory might give you pause to reflect over the personal and private moments that have shaped your art and passion. This could include lovers, would-be lovers, chance encounters, TV shows, songs, albums, poets, comediennes–whatever gets your engine revved. You’ll leave beloved people and places out that will make you cringe with regret, as I have, but that’s the nature of lists. As much as they stand as testament; they’re essentially ephemera like every other form we try and hold fast to. These watersheds don’t have to be explained but should mean everything to you.

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Revving Engine for Babylon Salon: 2 March 2013, 7pm

If you’re in the city this weekend, please consider stopping by Cantina SF for some literary love and libations.

Free Admission —  Cash Bar Exotica 
Doors at 7, Reading at 7:30

Cantina SF – 580 Sutter St, San Francisco

Babylon Salon
presents:
Our Spring Reading
Saturday, March 2, 2013, 7:00 PM at Cantina SF (basement)
featuring
Hugo & Nebula award-winning author Terry Bisson 
& acclaimed author of West of Kabul, East of New York Tamim Ansary


Also presenting transmedia artist Kate Durbin, novelist Renee Thompson, author of The Plume Hunter, and essayist and short story writer Rashaan Alexis Meneses.




 Terry Bisson is an American science fiction and fantasy author best known for his short stories. Several of his works, including “Bears Discover Fire”, have won top awards in the science fiction community, such as the Hugo and the Nebula.

Tamim Ansary is the author of Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World through Islamic

Eyes and West of Kabul, East of New York, among other books. For ten years he wrote a monthly column for Encarta.com, and has published essays and commentary in the San Francisco Chronicle, Salon, Alternet, TomPaine.com, Edutopia, Parade, Los Angeles Times, and elsewhere. Born in Afghanistan in 1948, he moved to the U.S. in 1964. He lives in San Francisco, where he is director of the San Francisco Writers Workshop.

—
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Post-Residency: Was It All A Dream?

A GravestoneIf New Hamspshire were a lover, she would be bitter at times and take to teasing her admirers. One day, her sky is scintillating, crystal clear, the air crisp as an autumn leaf, but she will turn on you the following afternoon. Storm clouds troop across what used to be a dome of limitless color, and the woods that shivered bright in all shades of brown and black turn somber in a heavy veil of mist. The contrast chills the senses. Sheer blinding light reflected from the snowfall seems as if it could stretch for infinite infinities is cut short by startling stone grays and blues from rocks defying the snow, and the endless trees that turn darker the whiter the landscape gets. The white tries to blanket every surface, and there is no escaping it except to take cover indoors then, before anyone knows it, the ice melts, the sound of rushing water surrounds, you, as if the whole world will slip into a steady stream.

In this setting, I renewed my commitment to writing, vows sanctified by fellow colonists, board members, and the gentle and caring staff of MacDowell. Being at the colony is a recognition of faithful commitment, acknowledged by a historic institution, sanctioned by a tradition, a national and international culture that carries the  legacy of what art is, what it could be, and what it has meant since 1907.

This place serves something like a training camp for creative types turned athletes. Here we learn the loneliness of longPeterborough Town Library distance running or how to build stamina for short fevered bursts of process and creative output. In the utter silence of our studio, we test the elasticity of our strengths, learn our weaknesses, and strategize how to tone our creative muscles, so we can re-enter the other world, the world of earning paychecks and paying rent or mortgages, which is someone else’s fantasy we’re obliged to participate in from time to time, but not while at MacDowell.

An hour feels like three in our studios. It’s amazing how much work you get done when you sit down to it, and let your mind settle with the tasks in front of you. There is this idea of being social and creative, and the two are sometimes mutually exclusive, and sometimes they go hand in hand. You learn the dance of both at MacDowell.

in case of emergency break iceAside from missing my MacDowell family, comprised of composers, architects, a martini-making photographer, a dancing upholsterer, ping-pong playing poets, novelists, playwrights, filmmakers, and interdisciplinary practitioners, if there is anything I could wish for is a residency solely for reading. To sit with a book and immerse in words is also an art, which takes discipline and practice. Of course, a residency dedicated solely to reading may be asking for too much, as if MacDowell doesn’t spoil one enough.

What I’ve learned & accomplished @ MacDowell include some of the following though it will take a while to fully digest the experience:

  • Revised 250 pages of the novel.
  • In revision, imagine each word costs $5. Figure out how much you can take away from and still have the essence of the story intact. Think Minimalism.
  • Do not dance with long johns on.
  • You will over-eat.
  • Life is not about looking for answers, but seeking big and meaningful questions for the chase of a lifetime.
  • Spotted, deer, one bushy white-stomached squirrel, two crows, flocks of turkey, which are bigger and blacker than the California ones.
  • Met my family from Maine and am amazed and inspired by their love.
  • Survived 7° weather + snow + 50mph wind.
  • Snow plows make me think of Москва.
  • There are no Targets in the UK.
  • A folly is a nineteenth century typology for landscape with no functional purpose.
  • Never fly United. Never.
  • I miss my MacDowell family and dearly hope to reconnect in person soon.
  • Thank god for Facebook, really!
  • If you’re deep and close enough to the projekt, it will tell you what needs to be done and instruct you how to proceed.

For safe-keeping in planning the next residency, which is just around the corner, here’s a list of what to bring for next time:

  1. blank pads of paper and post-its
  2. permanent markers
  3. push pins
  4. chocolate
  5. chai tea
  6. nice stationary
  7. wall calendar
  8. scissors, tape, and other small travel office supplies (check out Muji)
  9. scented candles
  10. gin
  11. beer
  12. extra batteries
  13. extra plug for mobile phone and Kindle
  14. lighter and/or matches
  15. hard disk
  16. good hand lotion
  17. pocketknife

Thank you MacDowell for a dream come true! Here’s hoping for a return visit soon.

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San Francisco Wins @ Cantina SF, 2 March 2013, 7:30pm

Let’s not be sad about Sunday’s outcome. San Francisco is still a city to be proud of because it’s home to winning readers & writers, some of whom will be reading their work, myself included, Saturday, March 2, 7:30pm at Cantina SF. Aside from a stellar roster, Cantina SF serves some tasty cocktails. Below are the details. Please consider marking your calendar and forwarding to all interested parties.

Our Spring Reading
Saturday, March 2, 2013, 7:00 PM at Cantina SF (basement)
featuring
Hugo & Nebula award-winning author Terry Bisson 
& Afghan-American author Tamim Ansary 

Also presenting transmedia artist Kate Durbin, novelist and screenwriter Louis B. Jones, author of California’s Over and Radiance, novelist Renee Thompson, author of The Plume Hunter, and essayist and short story writer Rashaan Alexis Meneses.


 Terry Bisson is an American science fiction and fantasy author best known for his short stories. Several of his works, including “Bears Discover Fire”, have won top awards in the science fiction community, such as the Hugo and the Nebula.

Tamim Ansary is the author of Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World through Islamic Eyes and West of Kabul, East of New York, among other books. For ten years he wrote a monthly column for Encarta.com, and has published essays and commentary in the San Francisco Chronicle, Salon, Alternet, TomPaine.com, Edutopia, Parade, Los Angeles Times, and elsewhere. Born in Afghanistan in 1948, he moved to the U.S. in 1964. He lives in San Francisco, where he is director of the San Francisco Writers Workshop.

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Excerpt on the Re-Cap of Mills College Workshop: Geography as the Body

From Ruelle Electrique’s “Geography as the Body & Inherited Landscapes: A Shamefully Overdue Re-cap on the Mills College Workshop, November 18, 2012”:

Political Content Engagement Writing Workshop

Absolutely and positively late in re-capping but still here it is, an overview of the Mills workshop that your salonniere was invited to as a guest speaker hosted and organized by the gracious and talented writer and publisher melissa r. sipin , sponsored by ANAKBAYAN East Bay, TAYO Literary Magazine, Philippine American Writers & Artists and Mills College. The Political Content & Engagement Writing Workshop was a series of five free writing workshops where participants from all age ranges and from across the Bay Area also performed at a reading gala and had their work published in the “i am ND” anthology…

…When it came time for writing, yours truly created prompts to play with ideas on memory and/or cultural amnesia regarding native land, family, culture and tradition. The students wrote about body and space, concerning their hometowns of Vallejo, Toulumne, Los Angeles, and my neck of the woods, Paradise Hills in East County San Diego. The slides below are from the presentation on “Love & Labour: Geography and the Body” where writers explored their childhood neighborhoods and were challenged to describe their homes as a lover or an old friend.

Read the entire excerpt here.

Slide03

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Past the Halfway Point

Colony Hall in the snnow
Colony Hall in the snow

Just past the mid-way point at MacDowell, a lot can happen in the space of a week and change. The second week has brought snow, snow plows, a visit with family from Maine, and sightings of one turkey, much bigger, blacker and more shy than California turkeys, a squirrel, which are fuzzier and have white bellies, and finally an interlude of birdsong during a freezing truncated walk through the woods.

It snowed the third night, and the next morning they were plowing the road with such industriousness that yours truly

Eaves Dormitory
Eaves Dormitory

could only think how grateful I am not to live in Russia. Witnessing such hard labor in contrast to the virtually immobile exertion committed in my studio made me consider the usefulness and practicality of this skill I’ve been bent on honing at MacDowell, but that worry was struck down pretty quickly when I turned back to the projekt at hand, and I have no doubt about the urgency of this piece. For a small moment of time, I almost compared the work between plowing snow to revision, trying to clear the path, for others to journey is arduous, sweaty, nerve-wracking, labor, and there is always plenty to plow.

a snowy day in the studio
a snowy day in the studio

One of the many traditions practiced at the Colony is for fellows, or colonists as they’re called here, to give presentations of their work, whether it be a reading or an open studio, you’re encouraged to share your artistic endeavors. The idea wasn’t that appealing, really, until a fellow explained that its best to present earlier rather than later during residency so that other fellows will have much needed context in terms of why you’re here and what you’re doing. This context cements a substantive foundation to conversations at dinner, breakfast, random encounters on the hallway or on the way to the studio. The whole purpose of the colony is not just for individual, solitary work but to be a part of the community, and being a part of a community means sharing. So, yes, there was a reading, and it was gratifying. In explaining my work to this crowd, I have a better grasp on how to explain what I’m doing, which not only helps keep me on track but also helps clarify the concept, so I can share with other communities as well.

Prometheus up in here
Prometheus up in here

I’ve heard it said that the artists who step through MacDowell are the “cultural matrix” of U.S. Arts & Culture. A fellow colonist, over dinner, urged us to imagine all the different figures who have stepped through the doors and walked these grounds. The idea is over-whelming, frankly, and something I will have to sit and live with long after my time here is said and done.

If its possible, the projekt seems to be instructing me on what needs to happen next with revision. Its as if the manuskript is teaching me how to write. How is that?

With ten more days left, I’m trying to prepare myself for the return to someone else’s fantasy that I participate in, which I refuse to call “reality” because, as far as I’m concerned, living in this artistic mind and physical space is my reality.

More to come on the last week. For now, its steady and deliberate work on writing. Though I haven’t nearly gotten as much reading done as I had hoped, which is something I would like to work on, the art of reading, but there’s still time. One can always try.

snowy night at the colony
snowy night at the colony
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On To MacDowell

Out of my wildest dreams, 2013 starts off with a three-week fellowship at the nation’s oldest arts colony, MacDowell founded in 1907 in Peterborough, New Hampshire. If yours truly wasn’t also accepted to The Retreat for Writers at Hawthornden Castle in Scotland for June this year as well, I’d be suffering from a serious case of imposter syndrome. And below is why. A shortened list of some of MacDowell’s past fellows and the projects they worked on during their stay should give plenty of reasons for doubt and legitimacy. Sally Field, I feel you.

Marian MacDowell in front of Edward's log cabin, the Colony's prototype studio. Archival image.

Aaron Copland
Meredith Monk
Duncan Sheik
Nick Carbo
Amy Bloom
Lan Samantha Chang

Louise Erdrich (known to have worked on one of my all time favorite novels, Love Medicine)

James Baldwin (Giovanni’s Room)
Eric Gamalinda
Jessica Hagedorn
Garrett Hongo
Allison Landa
Rick Moody
ZZ Packer
Nzotke Shange
Lysley Tenorio

From their website:

The mission of The MacDowell Colony is to nurture the arts by offering creative individuals of the highest talent an inspiring environment in which they can produce enduring works of the imagination.

The sole criterion for acceptance to The MacDowell Colony is artistic excellence. MacDowell defines excellence in a pluralistic and inclusive way, encouraging applications from artists representing the widest possible range of perspectives and demographics.

So, what will this soon-to-be-fellow do at MacDowell? A game plan would be nice though a very near and dear writer friend called just days before departure with her advice since she’s been to Hedgebrook, Vermont Studio Center, and East Anglia. She was adamant about not expecting too much: “You’re not going to get everything you want done, but you will get what you need.” Echoing the wise words of Mick Jagger, she confessed wishing someone had told her that during her residencies.

The expectations thus far have waned and waxed with anticipation, and we’ll see which if any come true, knowing that as my partner’s ukelele instructor once warned during a music lesson, a creative person is never satisfied by their creation, prepare to be perpetually dissatisfied and to feed off your dissatisfaction.

With that in mind these goals may sound abstract but here they are: to tighten voice & style or at least have a stronger sense of each. Not that the entire projekt will be tightened but a firmer grasp on voice & style, and how it changes from character to character, from start to finish, just a keener sense on what each of them are and their evolution would be wonderful. Which leads to the question about structure. Does voice and style dictate structure? Is it vice versa or do the two really have nothing to do with the other? Perhaps that question will be answered on the Eastern seaboard.

More than anything a mental map of where this projekt needs to go is the ultimate aim, and that map needs explicit directives on voice, style, structure, and tone, knowing that all of this should evolve from one chapter to the next depending on character and progression of plot.

This residency is not only a good chance for the physical, mental, and spiritual kick in the arse as all good travel is since I’ll be clear across the country in a completely new and snowy environment. There’s also the mingling with other writers, painters, musicians, architects, sculptors, and who knows what these encounters may bring, but the relationship that is utmost in mind is the intent to gain a newer, closer, almost incestuous, yes, I said it, intimacy with the projekt. Even after five years, it still feels so much of a foreign beast. Is there anyway that the projekt might feel like a part of me, an extension of self? And in getting to know this piece better, getting skin close to it, is there a possibility of taking Writing to a different level? To not just make this art a second nature but first? That may be asking too much.

Satisfaction with dissatisfaction. If that’s one guarantee, I may just be ready.

If you have advice about New Hampshire, Boston, cold weather fun, what do and what not to do at residencies, and or creative-making, I’m all ears. Happy 2013. May yours be a healthy and bright new adventure!

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@ Mansfield Studio

and my studio Mansfield in the mist

What is the latest at Mansfield Studio at The MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire? And who has been the greatest at Mansfield Studio? Mansfield Studio is a spacious hideaway just a seven minute walk from Colony Hall and Eaves dormitory, which is where yours truly finds herself hard at work for the next three weeks. Equipped with its own fire place and bathroom sans shower, an enclosed but chilly porch for sipping hot cocoa, and two desk spaces with enough room to dance the shivers away. Mansfield might be the space where I redefine my role as a writer and where I am renewing my vows to the act and art of writing.

Who has been the greatest at MacDowell? Each room has a set of boards, called headstones, where past fellows inscribe their name and the date of their stay, some of the greatest, though by no means not all include: ZZ Packer, Michael Chabon, Tillie Olsen, Richard Yates, R. Zamora Linmark (two fellowships at Mansfield!) Jean Valentine, Tayari Jones, Mary Jo Salter, Susan Steinberg, Julie Orringer (who I worked with in grad school, thank you Julie, your wise words stay with me even today). Rosellen Brown, and Rick Moody. So in the short time that I’ve been here, I’ve tried to channel the best of these great writers, who have paced the floor where I now pace, stared out the window, possibly pulling their hair as I do now, and rested on the bed staring at the ceiling. These are the artists and writers I know in my limited experience though the headstones span all the way back to the turn of the century.

Check out R Zamora Linmark

Since arrival, the first thing one may notice is how astoundingly loud a single, individual mind can be. The silence is deafening meanwhile my brain has been screaming to make up for the void of sound. In the dormitory, the most noise you’ll hear is the clank of the furnace when it switches on, which can seem thunderous compared to the moments before and the moments that follow. The studio is twenty time as quiet, and my brain feels like an airport. I can’t seem to shut off the flow of thoughts, words, song snippets, and random dialogue with myself that manifests in instinctual reaction to the utter noiselessness. Obviously some meditation is in order here.

a misty afternoon

What happens at MacDowell stays at MacDowell, particularly the meals, which are outrageously decadent. Soon as I arrived my first dinner was a hearty serving of ginormous pork chops with a cherry and red wine reduction, and someone offered me a gin martini. That’s right, gin, not vodka. Blessed be. The next night, lamb as the main course and cream puffs for dessert. We enjoy baskets of lunch delivered to our doorstep, and I’m trying my best to keep working past noon, so I don’t stand at the door like a panting dog, Pavlovian conditioned.

the daily basket of lunch

 

Aside from stuffing ourselves silly and hanging out like college kids again in Bond Hall, we are here to work, and there is plenty of work happening. Its twenty-four, seven. Someone is always away @ their studio, no matter the hour or deep into research in the one building that has internet connection. The underlying idea here is that each fellow forges a new, more committed relationship with their craft. I really feel like I’m renewing my vows and wonder how my role as a writer, my relationship with writing may gain a different and/or deeper meaning in this completely new and wholly dedicated context. Its exciting, the evolution.

There are readings almost every other night and open studios for artists who want to show their work. I’ve met architects, composers, photographers, poets, writers, ceramacists, and painters. What is easy to take for granted but is most sacred and special about this fellowship is that the process is prized above all. It doesn’t matter what you end up creating. Its not really about creation or a finished product, at all, but about creating and even thinking about creating. One doesn’t have to necessarily create. I consider a stay here the equivalent of those long peripatetic walks that the Romantics took. As much as it is about the act and art of creating, what this time and space encourages is the meta, being conscious about the form and matter of the act of art-making.

work in progressIf not in the morning then in the evening someone is bound to ask how the day went, and that question has an entirely different meaning here than in any other context. There’s an unspoken understanding if the day went well or was steeped in hair-tugging frustration. Asked the same inquiry a couple of days ago, I could only respond that I felt like I was in the boxing ring, going to toe-to-toe with a beast of manuscript I had sworn to tame. Now I’m feeling that the projekt is more like a cousin who I’ve only seen on holidays but am now enjoying a long season with and starting to find some rhyme and reason to this cousin’s idiosyncracies. Though I’m fully aware that this relationship can turn on me much like the weather. One day its 53 degrees and warmer than the Bay Area, which I’m missing like crazy, and tonight we’re expecting snow showers.

I’ve been reading Elif Shafak’s The Bastard of Istanbul, and she quotes a Turkish saying: “The soul needs to shiver to wake.” We shall see if my soul shall waken with the cold to come.

the road to my studio