Monday, November 29, 2010
The Little Black Dog
The sun in a Siren. Seduction. Late November promises snow not sun. I bundle cushions, blankets and towels under my arm and become like a coastal mutation of a Sherpa. I haul my home away from the inn and to the sea.
Off the main road, I plod into wet sand, past drifted tree trunks, past mounds of salted seaweed and up a dune. I’m fifteen feet up on a small mountain of wind blow wild grass where I pile each layer on top of next, towel first, then a pad, then a round sitting cushion and then a wool blanket. I drop myself down on this nest. Meditation posture.
The sea rolls and recedes, white foam spray rises and falls, a symphony of action with no end. Wind blows, clouds smear the horizon in long gauzy sheets and the sun lifts over my right shoulder.
The center of perfection.
For a moment, just one and then thoughts rise to cover the view.
Yesterday I attended a conference at my son’s school. He has special needs. He has a condition that makes him an audio learner, verses one who learns from reading and writing. He asks questions. He needs to talk. He needs the teacher to repeat, again and again, what is expected and still he might not remember, especially if the teacher is impatient. He is very sensitive that way. His heart is ten times bigger than other people. He wears that heart around his neck for all to see.
It’s not his fault.
It will take years, if ever, to bring him into line with the rest of the world that sits still at their desks and prints perfectly and nods yes when the teacher says yes and no when the teacher says no and colors between the lines.
He’s a wonderful kid.
Mr. Charm.
Four of his teachers love him and understand. But one. One teacher, she doesn’t get it. She needs him to be the kind of learner she needs him to be. She counts the number of questions he asks, rather than listening to the questions. In conference, she made a point to say this. “I count the number of questions you ask and you are doing much better. In three hours, you ask just five rather than twenty six.”
He sinks low in his chair. Humiliated.
This woman doesn’t get my child despite the fact that I have explained to her, again and again. No child left behind. My son is smart. He is doing his best. Love him.
But she doesn’t.
She has a tight jaw and sharp eyes. She is a busy woman with no time for my busy inquisitive son. He’s annoying. He’s outside her lines.
Sea and sand and sun and sky. I see none of what is before me now. My view has gone dim from what I saw yesterday.
I pull out my iphone and tap my way to a program for email. I am going to write this teacher a letter. I am going to let her know how I feel. I am going to get him moved to a different class, I am going to organize my thoughts.
A two inch by two inch screen rises and below is a two by two keyboard. And electronic piece of paper is before me and my fingertips fly as I try to fit a lesson of what is true and right into letters and sentences and paragraphs. Teachers are here to teach, not harm. Compassion is requisite. Who does she think she is to humiliate my child?
A knot forms under my ribs, in the general region of my liver. The center of the will, I have been told. The knot, like a fist, rock hard and still I type. The woman’s humanity is nowhere near a place I can truly touch. Her insecurity, her sorrows, her limited understanding of the world. I don’t finger my way closer to her but travel further away.
The yap of a small black dog snaps in my direction. Yap yap yap.
The dog is at the base of the dune, far away and annoying.
The dog advances up the incline, yap, yap, yap and I drop the iphone drop to my knee.
The dog plants twig thin legs wide in the sand and quivers as it barks. It is one of those cross between dogs. Pomeranian with Boarder Terrier? Miniature Pinscher mixed with Japanese Chin? Toy Fox Terrier mixed with Eskimo?
Yap, yap, yap.
I search the beach past this annoying little beast, where the hell is the owner and here she comes with a leash dangling from her hand.
She calls out Sparky? Sparkles? Sparticus?
The little dog advances half way up the dune and is going nuts now. A full rant of yaps and the woman does nothing. She has white hair under a cream-colored stocking cap, pink earmuffs that cover her ears and white mittens over her hands. She is zipped and tugged into a turquoise velour-jogging suit, flesh in rolls as it presses against the fabric. The mild expression on her face is like someone compacted into box of cotton.
“You need to stop your dog,” I say.
Yap, yap, yap.
“If I come closer, he’ll just run away,” the woman explains from where she stands.
Yap, yap, yap.
The dog is now fewer than six feet from me. A leap away.
“Lady, you need to stop your dog,” I say again.
She stumbles up the incline but her balance is dreadful and with each step in the soft sand, she must stop to right herself. Her arms wave at her sides as if she navigates the high beam.
And the dog continues to bark and move towards me.
Finally, I push off the cushions and stand against the stupid little dog. I become a bear. My iphone flips off my lap and into the sand.
“Get that damn dog away from me,” I yell.
The woman leaps for the animal but it makes a little yelp, turns and runs down the dune and away. The woman toddles after it and then they are both gone.
My heart is fast and tingles of adrenaline rush to pin points on my skin.
I sit down again, try to go back to where I was before.
iphone!
I dig for the phone, dust it off and poke around at the now blank screen.
My letter is lost. Gone. All those collected thoughts and my great big plan to defend my son, gone and that's when I start to cry.
I'm mad at the teacher, yes but what is going on here anyway? What’s the bottom line and now I’m really crying, because I can, because I am alone on the beach and no one is here to make me stop—not the dog, not the muffled lady, not even my iphone.
My son suffers today and every day because he came six weeks early and moments after he was born I let the doctors take him away to the Intensive Care Unit when he didn't need to go and now it's proven that a baby separated from the mother suffers trauma in the brain. That is what happened to my son. I've read the studies, over and over again and even though the doctors call it “empirical” meaning it hasn’t been proven scientifically—I know the truth in my heart. My son, my son, I failed my son. I was trying to be good, I was trying to follow the rules, I was trying to believe the doctors knew better than a mother but I was wrong, the doctors were wrong and now my son...my son pays the price.
A terrible weight is on my back and won’t go away like that damn yappy dog—all day long and into the night. When will I ever forgive myself for what I have done?
Silence is all around, a whipping wind blown off the sea and nothing changes here—nothing. The waves still rise and then slip away, the endless dance of motion in response to the position of the moon and the sun moves in the sky, above my head now—twelve o’clock in the sign of Scorpio—the great stinging creature that likes to stay hidden and when it comes out it stings. Under the Scorpio sun, alone on the beach I am just a small woman, as tiny as a grain of sand and so is my sorrow. It’s not unique. All around this world, women tear out their hair for the suffering of their children. That is the plight of a mother. That is my fate and when its all done, it will be my son’s wife who will do the same for her own.
It’s life. I know it and in that knowing I wipe my face with the back my hands and just sit there in the wind for the longest time.
Friday, November 26, 2010
Book Talk: Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson
While there are many good conversations about essay, among them the introduction in The American Essay 2009, edited by Mary Oliver as well as the good writing of Philip Lopate, I find myself turn, again and again to this book of essays by Emerson (1803-1882) for a definition that rings true and that I often pass over to students.
The passage is by Irwin Edman, who was known for the “charm and clarity” of his writing, and for being an open-minded critic. He was also a popular professor and served as a mentor to undergraduate students, notably Pulitzer Prize-winning author Herman Wouk (Columbia class of 1934), who dedicated his first novel to Edman.
On essay, Edman writes: The essay is an adventure in ideas, an exploration of a theme, a sortie of reflection. It is not an article; it is not an explication. The essay is an idea reflected through a personal medium. It is the form of literature in which the part counts, perhaps, more than the whole and which the part that counts most is the sentence. It is the mode of writing in which, when the whole does count, it counts most as a tone, an atmosphere; mood and attitude are more important than explicit structure, than pedestrian reasons argument. The essayist himself is remembered no less than his subject, even when he is not talking about himself.
I simply love this definition of the essay, which since the advent of journalism and memoir, seems to be a misunderstood form largely confined to academic works. Full length collections of essays are a bit confusing. Just what are they any way? 
The actual book of essays by Emerson is a glimpse into another time and place. Emerson, an American lecturer, essayist, and poet, was best remembered for leading the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century and for his championship of individualism. He was also a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society.
To read his writing, ingest and even understand requires a kind of meditative silence and focus that this time often doesn't allow (and which he so aptly predicted). We are so accelerated in these days and Emerson enviously exists in a timeless space. He is a gentleman of contemplation, allowed hours, days, weeks and months to ponder and formulate ideas on the page.
Heaven.
I recommend this book for the shelf and bedside. Pick it up when you find the time. There are gems to be gathered.
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Thanksgiving = Chief Seattle, Great Teacher
I cannot be still, each year, with our collective celebration of slaughter. If we were German's, we would not condone a celebration of the Holocaust. Such a suggestion would be an outrage of heartlessness and yet, each year American's celebrate the coming together with native people and sharing in their generous harvest--that saved the settlers lives--and then resulted in the mass loss of nearly all the native people on this continent.
America was not waiting for us, it was occupied by others. We stole it. Concentration camps were not our method but we were just as thorough.
We have much, as a people, to be accountable for and yet we consume turkey and talk of shopping in the morning.
It is hard to live on this land, the so called land of the free, but I do it and with a heavy heart this time of year.
I remember the native people of this land, I read Cheif Seattle's words and I look in at my own choices.
How am I, as a white woman, hungry in a way that cannot be sated? What is my wound and how can I heal that pain?
That is a thanksgiving of the heart.
May I be at peace. May my hunger come to rest.
AUTHENTIC TEXT OF CHIEF SEATTLE'S TREATY ORATION 1854
Yonder sky that has wept tears of compassion upon my people for centuries untold, and which to us appears changeless and eternal, may change. Today is fair. Tomorrow it may be overcast with clouds. My words are like the stars that never change. Whatever Seattle says, the great chief at Washington can rely upon with as much certainty as he can upon the return of the sun or the seasons. The white chief says that Big Chief at Washington sends us greetings of friendship and goodwill. This is kind of him for we know he has little need of our friendship in return. His people are many. They are like the grass that covers vast prairies. My people are few. They resemble the scattering trees of a storm-swept plain. The great, and I presume -- good,
White Chief sends us word that he wishes to buy our land but is willing to allow us enough to live comfortably. This indeed appears just, even generous, for the Red Man no longer has rights that he need respect, and the offer may be wise, also, as we are no longer in need of an extensive country.
There was a time when our people covered the land as the waves of a wind-ruffled sea cover its shell-paved floor, but that time long since passed away with the greatness of tribes that are now but a mournful memory. I will not dwell on, nor mourn over, our untimely decay, nor reproach my paleface brothers with hastening it, as we too may have been somewhat to blame.
Youth is impulsive. When our young men grow angry at some real or imaginary wrong, and disfigure their faces with black paint, it denotes that their hearts are black, and that they are often cruel and relentless, and our old men and old women are unable to restrain them. Thus it has ever been. Thus it was when the white man began to push our forefathers ever westward. But let us hope that the hostilities between us may never return. We would have everything to lose and nothing to gain. Revenge by young men is considered gain, even at the cost of their own lives, but old men who stay at home in times of war, and mothers who have sons to lose, know better.
Our good father in Washington--for I presume he is now our father as well as yours, since King George has moved his boundaries further north--our great and good father, I say, sends us word that if we do as he desires he will protect us. His brave warriors will be to us a bristling wall of strength, and his wonderful ships of war will fill our harbors, so that our ancient enemies far to the northward -- the Haidas and Tsimshians -- will cease to frighten our women, children, and old men. Then in reality he will be our father and we his children. But can that ever be? Your God is not our God! Your God loves your people and hates mine! He folds his strong protecting arms lovingly about the paleface and leads him by the hand as a father leads an infant son. But, He has forsaken His Red children, if they really are His. Our God, the Great Spirit, seems also to have forsaken us. Your God makes your people wax stronger every day. Soon they will fill all the land. Our people are ebbing away like a rapidly receding tide that will never return. The white man's God cannot love our people or He would protect them. They seem to be orphans who can look nowhere for help. How then can we be brothers? How can your God become our God and renew our prosperity and awaken in us dreams of returning greatness? If we have a common Heavenly Father He must be partial, for He came to His paleface children. We never saw Him. He gave you laws but had no word for His red children whose teeming multitudes once filled this vast continent as stars fill the firmament. No; we are two distinct races with separate origins and separate destinies. There is little in common between us.
To us the ashes of our ancestors are sacred and their resting place is hallowed ground. You wander far from the graves of your ancestors and seemingly without regret. Your religion was written upon tablets of stone by the iron finger of your God so that you could not forget. The Red Man could never comprehend or remember it. Our religion is the traditions of our ancestors -- the dreams of our old men, given them in solemn hours of the night by the Great Spirit; and the visions of our sachems, and is written in the hearts of our people.
Your dead cease to love you and the land of their nativity as soon as they pass the portals of the tomb and wander away beyond the stars. They are soon forgotten and never return. Our dead never forget this beautiful world that gave them being. They still love its verdant valleys, its murmuring rivers, its magnificent mountains, sequestered vales and verdant lined lakes and bays, and ever yearn in tender fond affection over the lonely hearted living, and often return from the happy hunting ground to visit, guide, console, and comfort them.
Day and night cannot dwell together. The Red Man has ever fled the approach of the White Man, as the morning mist flees before the morning sun. However, your proposition seems fair and I think that my people will accept it and will retire to the reservation you offer them. Then we will dwell apart in peace, for the words of the Great White Chief seem to be the words of nature speaking to my people out of dense darkness.
It matters little where we pass the remnant of our days. They will not be many. The Indian's night promises to be dark. Not a single star of hope hovers above his horizon. Sad-voiced winds moan in the distance. Grim fate seems to be on the Red Man's trail, and wherever he will hear the approaching footsteps of his fell destroyer and prepare stolidly to meet his doom, as does the wounded doe that hears the approaching footsteps of the hunter.
A few more moons, a few more winters, and not one of the descendants of the mighty hosts that once moved over this broad land or lived in happy homes, protected by the Great Spirit, will remain to mourn over the graves of a people once more powerful and hopeful than yours. But why should I mourn at the untimely fate of my people? Tribe follows tribe, and nation follows nation, like the waves of the sea. It is the order of nature, and regret is useless. Your time of decay may be distant, but it will surely come, for even the White Man whose God walked and talked with him as friend to friend, cannot be exempt from the common destiny. We may be brothers after all. We will see.
We will ponder your proposition and when we decide we will let you know. But should we accept it, I here and now make this condition that we will not be denied the privilege without molestation of visiting at any time the tombs of our ancestors, friends, and children. Every part of this soil is sacred in the estimation of my people. Every hillside, every valley, every plain and grove, has been hallowed by some sad or happy event in days long vanished. Even the rocks, which seem to be dumb and dead as the swelter in the sun along the silent shore, thrill with memories of stirring events connected with the lives of my people, and the very dust upon which you now stand responds more lovingly to their footsteps than yours, because it is rich with the blood of our ancestors, and our bare feet are conscious of the sympathetic touch. Our departed braves, fond mothers, glad, happy hearted maidens, and even the little children who lived here and rejoiced here for a brief season, will love these somber solitudes and at eventide they greet shadowy returning spirits. And when the last Red Man shall have perished, and the memory of my tribe shall have become a myth among the White Men, these shores will swarm with the invisible dead of my tribe, and when your children's children think themselves alone in the field, the store, the shop, upon the highway, or in the silence of the pathless woods, they will not be alone. In all the earth there is no place dedicated to solitude. At night when the streets of your cities and villages are silent and you think them deserted, they will throng with the returning hosts that once filled them and still love this beautiful land. The White Man will never be alone.
Let him be just and deal kindly with my people, for the dead are not powerless. Dead, did I say? There is no death, only a change of worlds.
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Writing Prompt: The Dream
So you've had a dream and it's had an impact on you. How do you include this disembodied world in your writing? You just do it. Weave it in as part of your story and what makes it work best is to ground yourself in the real world first. Location, weather, time of day and description of where you are, who you are and so on.
INSTRUCTIONS:
1) What is the most vivid dream you've had? Write down the details of that dream.
2) Now write a time in your life, where something in the real world is going on--perhaps you are having a disagreement with a partner or are just at the grocery store. What matters is that you are in a place, during a specific time with a mission at hand. You are going from point A to point B. Describe this situation in real time.
3) Insert the memory of the dream or do as the example shows and wake up.
EXAMPLE: See Monday's Fresh Writing
WRITE & SUBMIT: 500-700 words. Good luck! Share your writing by emailing me via this site.
Monday, November 22, 2010
Fresh Writing: The Dream
I wake up. It’s late. I’ve overslept.
I’m in a compact bedroom at an inn on the Oregon coast. It is advertised, “the most romantic place in the world,” only I am at this inn alone. No romance. Just me and a dear friend—a fellow writer. Her name is Anne and Anne is terrific. She’s a mom with kids all grown now. She loves my children and gives the best “mom” advice. Anne is my BFF. Best Friend Forever.
Anne is in her room across the hall. A world away. In her own dreams. Or so I think.
I blink myself awake and overhead the ceiling is made from heavy beams of rough hewn pine. Angles and edges exposed. The construction of this place is such that it feels something like living in a tree house. Exposed wood overhead and on the walls and floors, it’s a forest without the wind blowing through the branches and without pine needles and pinecones. Still, all the wood overhead brings these opportunities to mind.
The windows, at right angles to each other, are like a giant open book and they are also louvered in wood. Morning sun leans through each slat and that’s wrong. It’s supposed to snow, or be snowing and yet that light is bright. It’s like summer light. November.
I blink awake a little bit more and that’s when I remember a dream I had. It was the kind of dream I’d rather forget.
It went like this: The Sun Magazine sent me a letter, via email. (Of course, stamps are so passé. So last week. )
Dear Ms. Lauck: (the letter of my dream began)
Thank you for your submission to the The Sun.
We are so glad we asked you to rewrite the essay titled Catherine.
We hated it the first time and upon your revision,
realized we hated it even more.
It’s truly terrible, more so with your revision.
Thank you for the opportunity to reject this piece.
Best, Sy (editor of The Sun)
I want to be a person who doesn’t believe in the power of dreams. I want to forget I had this one at all. I want to go back to sleep in order to rearrange Sy’s words on the page to say, “we love your essay. We’ll publish it without question,” since these are the words I’ve been waiting to hear since submitting that essay eight months ago.
The nutty and alive smell of coffee invades my internal study of what this dream might mean. Is it prophetic? Is it anxiety? What? What?
Anne is upstairs. She’s making coffee.
I push the covers back and put my feet on the floor.
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Announcements: Passing
Betty Jean (BJ) Lifton, PhD, was a writer, adoption counselor and a leading advocate of adoption reform.
She wrote: Twice Born: Memoirs of an Adopted Daughter, Lost and Found: The Adoption Experience and Journey of the Adopted Self: A Quest for Wholeness, as well as books about children orphaned or separated from their families by war and the Holocaust.
BJ also lectured and held workshops throughout the US and abroad on the psychology of the adoptive family, and on Janusz Korczak, one of the world's first children's rights advocates, who gave his life for the orphans of the Warsaw Ghetto.
On Friday, November 19th at 11:45 p.m., the accomplished and compassionate BJ Lifton died of complications from pneumonia.
I learned of her death moments after it happened. I had been on Facebook and there it was: BJ Lifton died. I spent several heart stopping minutes in denial and demanded confirmation from my fellow Facebook friends. 
Soon enough confirmation arrived. BJ, an adoptee herself, and a voice of sanity in a time of madness around the issue of adoption, was gone.
How was it possible? Did I not just speak her to days earlier, while she was on the coast and about to go home to Cambridge? Didn't we talk about storms and ocean retreats and the lovely need to "get away from it all"?
How could she be gone?
Adoptee and writer, Patrick McMahon wrote: "BJ will always be a relentlessly sane and caring voice in the minds of so many."
McMahon speaks to my own experience perfectly.
Recently I had asked, with some awe and trepidation, if BJ might consider reading my new book Found and possibly provide a quote.
BJ, gracious and available, did both and wrote: There are many ways of losing and being lost, and many ways of finding and being found when you are an adoptee. Jennifer Lauck has experienced most of them. We share her heroic and spiritual journey as a displaced child who has lost both her birth and adoptive mothers and suffers from a series of abusive would- be-mothers. But she finds herself on becoming a mother and forgiving those who failed her, including her birth mother. A compelling and uplifting memoir.
BJ also wrote to inquire into the deeper story behind the deterioration in my reunion story. Via email, I outlined misunderstandings between myself and birth-siblings which had brought our reunion to a standstill for more than eighteen months.
Without hesitation, BJ wrote back: "The regressed adoptee wants full attention from the mother -- every baby does -- but it sounds like your mother was being pulled by her other babies -- who wanted her attention too. A form of sibling rivalry, as ridiculous as that seems. Not unusual. The mother is not free to play out the reunion drama with the returned baby when her other babies can't tolerate it.
With one email, BJ helped overcome what had seemed insurmountable and in days I was again in contact with my birthmother.
And now she is gone? 
BJ was no less than an angelic presence. She changed me in the eleventh hour and fifty fifth minute of her life. How blessed am I?
How blessed we have all been by this miraculous little woman who spoke with a voice of deep resonate authority. She was so young in her appearance (like so many adoptees I know) and yet so solid.
I pray her journey is a peaceful one and if she should reincarnate among us, that she fall into the womb of a wise and powerful mother who keeps her and holds her very close.
Safe passage, BJ.
Friday, November 19, 2010
Book Talk: You Know What is Right by Jim Heynen
As I wrote on Wednesday, I had the great good fortune to study under Jim Heynen at the MFA program with Pacific Lutheran University and Jim is simply a delightful human being and an extraordinary teacher. Thanks to one of his suggestions, I made a change to the point of view in chapter 13 if my upcoming book, Found: A Memoir and it made that section sing. He has great instincts. 
Jim has written so many books, it's a bit daunting but I'd like to feature You Know What is Right and I found this sweet little blog post by fellow Oregonian/Writer Matt Briggs that sums the book up in such a lovely way:
Everything I know about what is called the short short or flash fiction or whatever you want to call it, I learned first from reading a small red hardback with a yellow dust jacket I found at a used bookstore in Seattle in the early 1990s called You Know What is Right by Jim Heynen. It had been published years before, in 1985, by a small press named North Point Press that, in turn, was bought by Farrar Straus and Giroux in the nineties where the name continues to exist as an imprint.
Heynen writes mostly about farms and rural life in the midwest. I guess these are regional stories if you want to get right down to it. They are written in a kind of plain and laconic style that reminds of the kind of talk used by my relatives from Iowa. Compared to the nattering rush of my Kentucky relatives, my great aunts and uncles from Iowa are reticent, even mute. When they make an observation it cuts to the quick. They say what they mean. They don’t mess around with problems of context or irony. They have faith in language’s ability to describe what they see...
...Each story executes a transformation. They occur in less than two pages or 500 words, and yet they are complete stories with beginnings and middle and ends. Unlike so many very short stories, Heynen’s stories are not crushed into sharp fragments. They seem almost leisurely, belying the great skill and literary cunning necessary to create such fully-formed narrative in such a brief space.
To read the full posting, go to this link. Matt does a great job with his insights.
In speaking with Jim and his philosophy on words and storytelling, I learned a great deal about word choice and the importance of being thoughtful with each word. Jim offers this teaching in his own writing, time and time again. A few of his titles include:
Sunday Afternoon on the Porch (2008), University of Iowa Press.
Old Swayback (2006) Midnight Paper Sales.
Schoolhouses of Minnesota (2006), Minnesota Historical Society Press.
Harker's Barns (2003), University of Iowa Press
The Boys' House: New & Selected Stories (2001), Minnesota Historical Society Press
Standing Naked: New and Selected Poems (2001), poems, Confluence Press
Why Would a Woman Pour Boiling Water on Her Head? (2001), Tribolite Press
Read more about Jim's books and his philosophy at his web site!
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Writing Prompt: Short Short
Last summer, I took a course with the wonderful, generous and so gifted Jim Heynen while at the Pacific Lutheran University MFA program.
Jim taught a seminar on Short Shorts. I had no idea what this was but went because I so enjoy Jim and his teaching. Here is an interview with Heynen, from his own site, giving some insight into the flash form:
Q: You've written poetry, short stories, young adult novels, and a nonfiction book on centenarians. Which form comes most naturally to you?
JH: The short-short stories. There's a groove in my head for them. I often polish them the way I would a poem, but they come quickly, effortlessly. I hope to write more novels, but they don't come effortlessly. I suppose they don't for anyone--except maybe John Updike.
Q: Those effortless short-shorts you're referring to are your stories about "the boys'--that group of farm boys who inhabit the pages of The Man Who Kept Cigars in his Cap, You Know What is Right, The One-Room Schoolhouse, and your most recent selected collection, The Boys' House.
JH: Yes, those little guys. But many of the stories about the boys were published as poems--or as prose poems. An editor might take some of them and I'd assume they were going to appear in the fiction section--and, surprise: I'd find them squatting there among the skinny poems. This has happened lots of times.
Q: So if editors don't know what they are, what do you think they are?
JH: Some of them are cross-dressers, especially the ones that are lyrical rather than narrative moments. I don't blame editors for putting these in the poetry section of a magazine. It just surprises me, catches me off guard and makes me have a second look at them. The label I prefer for most of these little stories, though, is tales, like telling. When I am writing these stories, it's as if I am hearing the voice passed down to me through an oral tradition. A really good story that has been passed down orally glistens in a pure and simple language, yet sounds natural, sounds easy--as if anybody could have written or told it.
Jim gave me a chance to play and practice this "little" form and while I found it to be a particular challenge (because I am so "wordy" by nature), I was intrigued. Only this week did finally write something that hit the mark and thus the little short I wrote on Monday--which is so damn short--I'll print it again:
Her lover swore he was infertile.
Her test came back positive.
"Impossible," he said.INSTRUCTIONS: Now you try. Write three lines that are an entire story.
EXAMPLE: "For sale: baby shoes, never worn." This was written by Hemmingway.
WRITE & SUBMIT: No more than twenty words. Good luck! Share your writing by emailing me via this site.
Monday, November 15, 2010
Fresh Writing: Short Short
Her lover swore he was infertile.
Her test came back positive.
"Impossible," he said.
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Announcements: Portland's Hottest Writing Group
The December term for the Transformative Writing Circle begins December 2nd. We have one reading spot and three observation spots. Readers read. That's pretty simple. You bring your writing to the group and we all help you move your project along. Observers observe and offer feedback for the group too,
I would love to hear about your project and offer my help, so please let me know if you are interested in being a writer at the Portland table. Let's talk.
Friday, November 12, 2010
Book Talk: Reality Hunger-A Manifesto by David Shields
I am not going to tell you to race out and buy this book. I am not going to say that spending $24.00 on this hardcover will make this a book well worth keeping for the rest of your life. I am not even going to say this is a good book. It's not. Or perhaps it is. Frankly, it's one of the most confusing books I've ever read because I can't quite tell what it is supposed to be.
Check it out from the library, that's what I did.
Here is, in part, what a review in the L.A. Times had to say: "Reality Hunger" is a manifesto, a closed fist. A manifesto says enough is enough, it's time to change things. A manifesto is fueled by varying degrees of anger. David Shields believes that literature has come to a critical point. Old forms are no longer relevant. Readers are abandoning print media because they are outdated: "What counts are the ways in which these common copies of a creative work can be linked, manipulated, tagged, highlighted, bookmarked, translated, enlivened by other media, and sewn together in the universal media. The only way for books to retain their waning authority in our culture is to wire texts into this library."
Shields, to his credit, is not just whining. He is hopeful: "An artistic movement, albeit an organic and as-yet unstated one, is forming. What are its key components? A deliberate unartiness: 'raw' material, seemingly unprocessed, unfiltered, uncensored, and unprofessional." He is not the first to write a media manifesto, and he won't be the last.
I do not understand what Shields is saying at all. Literature is in trouble? Since when? According to whom?
With so much true crisis in the world, namely things like social injustices against woman and children and very real issues of the environment, I can't get all fired up about "literature endangerment" due to the technological age. But that's just me. I also don't understand most of what is reported on the national news and find more reliable reporting on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart! Again, that's just me. My mind cannot seem to access the point Shields is trying to make.
Instead, I looked to Reality Hunger as a source text for a large critical paper I wrote on memoir in the 21st century.
These passages gave me such a clear sense of the genre that I have been writing in, intuititvely, for two decades that I have to include them here.
1) In English the term memoir comes direction from the French for memory, memoire, a word that is derived from the Latic for the same, memoria. And yet, more deeply rooted in the word memoir is a far less confident one. Embedded in Latin’s memoria is the ancient Greek mermeros, an offshoot of the Avestic Persian mermara, itself a derivative of the Indo-European for that which we think about but cannot grasp: mer-mer, “to vividly wonder,” “to be anxious,” “to exhaustingly ponder.”
2) Michael Gladwell, in The New Yorker, writes: Memoir is a genre in need of an informed readership. It is a misunderstanding to read memoir as through the writer owes the reader the same record of literal accuracy is that is owed in newspaper reporting. Memoirs belong to the category of literature, not journalism. What the memoirist owes the reader is the ability to persuade him or her that the narrator is trying, as honestly as possible, to get to the bottom of the experience at hand.
3) A memoir is a work of sustained narrative prose controlled by an idea of the self under obligation to lift from the raw material of life a tale that will shape experience, transform the event, deliver wisdom. Truth in memoir is achieved not through a recital of actual events; it’s achieved when the reader comes to believe that the writer is working hard to engage with the experience at hand. What happened to the writer isn’t what matters; what matters is the larger sense that the writer is able to make of what happened.
These are the passages that matter (to me) and that make sense (to me) and why I print them here in this weblog posting.
Finally, finally, Shields does a service by providing a concise way to speak to what a memoir is about and what a memoir writer is called to do.
To all writers of memoir, cut these passages out and put them over your computer. This is what you are doing, when you write your life. Remember because it is so damn easy to get lost.
~
Call for Writers: Three spots are now open at the weekly table of Portland based memoir writers--a nine week series that begins Dec. 2nd and meets every Thurs. from 5:30-9:00. Excellence is my motto. I provide excellent insight, a boat load of advice, press you towards publication and more. Give me a shout via this site.
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Writing Prompt: Revision
INSTRUCTION:
Take a piece you've written and rewrite it.
1) Ask some deep questions about your fears
2) Give answers but not THE answer. Ruminate.
3) Turn your initial scenario around and look at it from the opposite view. IE: Is it so bad to be a bug???
Writing happens in the revision!
EXAMPLE: See Monday's post What Can I Believe?
WRITE & SUBMIT: 500-700 words. Good luck! Share your writing on Sunday by posting in the form of a comment or by emailing me via this site.
Monday, November 08, 2010
Fresh Writing: REVISION ~ What Can I Believe?
Last week was the poem I called Would You Believe Me? which wasn't really a poem. It was a scattering of words that were racing in via my observation of the trees out the window. I sit, each morning, candles and incense and tea. I just try to breathe and be quiet but of course my mind has other plans: chatter, chat, plan, ponder.
So this little rush of words came as I was fuming over edits suggested by someone in my newest book. As a courtesy I had asked this person to read the chapters and boom, they came back revised. She had re-written pages including dialogue to fit her version of my life. Predicable and still, so surprising. Each time this happens, I am amazed although I have no idea why. None of us sees the world in the same way so of course, each will have a unique view.
It's my job to be honest about my truth. And it is your job, memoirist, to tell your truth. And it your job, spirutal teacher, to write your own book and tell your truth and promote your land, books, life etc.
But I digress.
So I wrote this word play last week, framing my thoughts around observations of the trees and birds.
And this week, I revised and then submitted it to a magazine on Buddhist practice because I really like the conversation about guru's in the U.S.
In India and Tibet (and many other places), they have guru's and then there is a lot of guru abuse. If we turn over everything to our teacher, we lose something essential which is our own truth and that's just not good. Having a guru can be like becoming a child again. No good.
We need to think for ourselves and trust our own innate wisdom and learn a new way to surrender that is fresh and personal.
Anyway, so this is a revision of the last peice and tones down all the teacher chit chat. It's not a poem, nor is it a narrative. It's more like a narrative poem. I don't know. It's an experiment. I like it.
Across the way is a small forest. Four birch trees planted in a row. They are too big for the curb where they were placed, perhaps ten years ago, as little wisps of white bark. Today, their roots explode the concrete sidewalk. A silent attack.
The trunks of those trees are thick and solid though. Strong. They would cut like butter with a chain saw.
Perhaps that is why I love them so and why I seek them with my eyes. The birch trees are a beautiful place to rest my mind. And they are so much more. They are out of place in the urban fray. They are overgrown and beyond being contained.
In a moment, with one call from the city or a landlord, that small forest could be reduced to fire wood, kindling, memory.
Like you. Like me.
The birch trees make me see how life is so fragile.
As I sit at my window watching the trees, the leaves, small and delicate, blow away. They are golden coins that sail to the street.
~
I had a teacher once. She called herself my spiritual friend. We met when divorce had me spinning in confused doubt. It had been my second marriage. There were small children involved. I found myself attracted to a musician, adding drama to disaster.
Failure, shame and confusion whipped me into a frenzy. I felt like a summer funnel cloud that toppled over the plains.
I cried at the feet of this teacher, confessed the tangled mess as if she were my neighborhood priest.
She coo'd, clucked and then agreed to be my teacher.
It happened that fast.
Then she escorted me to her talk that detailed the financial needs of her new spiritual retreat center. 
I went along, no questions asked and clutched to the hem of her prayer shawl like child, desperate and scared. I pulled out my checkbook that very day and wrote a five thousand dollar check.
Absolution.
My friend took that money, a blissful smile on her face and said I would accumulate a great deal of good karma.
Over the many weeks that passed, I noticed that my friend's interest waned between checks. If I called to tell her about the sorrow of my heart, I would hear nothing. For weeks. A month.
But if money were the subject heading of an email, instant return call.
Of course, she was very busy.
And who was I?
One of hundreds, perhaps thousands.
She had many other students and responsibilities.
I learned, like most children do, how to get the nourishment I thought I needed. I brought in money, I sent money, I raised money. More and more, all the time, and my teacher kept her hand out. I began to note that there was never enough money for this friend. Her need was a black-hole.
A student is told to watch her teacher for twenty years to make sure the teacher is good and pure.
This was my first mistake.
I watched my spiritual friend for moments and then began writing checks with my low self esteem.
Buddha said look inward, keep looking in until you find the ground of being. Emptiness. He also said something like this: "Question everything, even me."
But as we went along together, my spiritual friend had another Buddhist teaching for me. She said a student cannot question her teacher. A student is always wrong and the teacher is always right. To question a teacher is to earn lifetimes in a hell realm.
Lifetimes.
I wrote more and more checks. Until I ran out of money. And then she was gone. My spiritual friend disappeared.
~
Today, sitting at the window I watch the trees and wonder.
Can a student free herself of her guru and still achieve that desired state of liberation? Or once we tether ourselves to a guru, are we forever bonded or perhaps enslaved by our hasty decisions?
I question everything and I just breathe in the possibility of freedom. I watch the trees and my heart and the wind and the leaves.
I try to keep faith in my own good intentions. 
I worry, a little, but not much. What will be will be. Being a bug might not be that bad. It could be like a fresh start. Perhaps I'll be a lady bug and then work my way to earth worm and then bird and perhaps dog and then horse. I could earn my way back to being Jennifer again and then make better decisions the next time. I could rise beyond. Become Buddha perhaps. It could happen. Or not.
Little birds gather in the bare upper limbs of the birch trees. They are so small and so light they do not have any problem getting foothold on twig or air.
The wind blows, fragile leaves fly and the birds argue in high chirps. In a moment, they lift in a cluster of wings, they move up fast like pebbles tossed high by a child. And then those birds are gone.
Sunday, November 07, 2010
Announcements: Pre Order Found, Come Write & Set Goals
Found: A Memoir & True Sequel to Blackbird is now available at Amazon.com for pre-order and will be available in hardcover in March 2011. As I write this, we are booking the virtual book tour around the U.S. If you're interested in a virtual evening together, let me know by sending an email via this site. I'll include you on our list. There will also be a national radio tour, which is such a thrill.
The winter Transformative Writing Class, meeting every thursday, in Portland, Oregon, begins on December 2. We have one spot for a reader and three observation spots. If it is time for you to write, if you are looking for support and great teaching for your writing life, let me know via this site and I'll give you details. 
Do you know how to set goals and achieve them? Are you curious about how to overcome obstacles around finances, relationship challenges and body image? All of these issues were my issues--primarily due to my thoughts which needed to be changed. Only I didn't know how. Then I met Jake Gudger, who lives here in Portland, Oregon and let me tell you, this young man changed my life. He has been trained by a very wise man, Bob Proctor, who was featured on the movie The Secret and Jake has learned well. In six weeks, he totally altered the direction my life was taking and gave me the skills to accomplish whatever it was I wanted to accomplish. I highly recommend Jake, as a coach for goal setting and achieving. He has worked with me, my closest friends and my family. He is the real deal!
Wednesday, November 03, 2010
Writing Prompt: Nature
INSTRUCTION:
1) Think about a challenge you are having or make a list of reoccuring challenges. Bills that can't be paid, democrats who keep coming to your house and pushing you vote, a neighbor with barking dogs, power struggles with your partner or kids, or just voices in your head giving you a lot of bad advice.
Write this challenge down, give the details without too much detail. Don't get lost in the drama, just sketch it out.
Set this aside.
2) Now, look out the window, really look. See the world. Write down what you see: trees, wind, rain, clouds, what's on the ground. Fall is so lovely and full of change. Write this all down. Be very detail driven on this. You see a squirrel, okay, that's great but what is the little darling doing? Running, stopping, running again, tick wicking like it's hot wired, snapping away nothing? Details. Make your observations just drip with details like a Christmas tree with a lot of tinsel. Rain details.
3) Now weave the two together. Make your observation of nature the beginning and the end. Perhaps add a segue in the middle to, as a way to give your story more air and space. You are literally breathing nature into your process of perception. See how nature can hold your most aggravating challenge and offer a wider perspective.
EXAMPLE: See Monday's post Would You Believe Me?
WRITE & SUBMIT: 500-700 words. Good luck! Share your writing on Sunday by posting in the form of a comment.
Monday, November 01, 2010
Fresh Writing: Would You Believe Me?
Would you believe me if I told you I was enlightened?
I hope not.
Would you believe me if I told you you were enlightened?
I hope so.
Where did it all begin?
These questions
or purity,
perfection,
you and me?
It is real?
Am I?
Are you?
Are these questions, problems, highs and lows?
What matter's today?
Tomorrow?
What endures?
I sit at the window,
Across the way,
a small forest.
Four birch trees.
Planted in a row.
They are too big
now
for the curb
where they were placed.
Their roots
explode
the concrete sidewalk.
A silent attack.
The trunks of those trees
are solid though.
Strong.
They would cut like butter
with a chain saw.
That is why I love them so.
The trees are precious.
In a moment,
on a whim,
they could be reduced
to fire wood, kindling, memory.
Like you.
Like me.
And when they go,
were they ever here?
The leaves, small and fragile,
blow away.
Golden coins.
Gather them up,
spend them.
I had a spiritual teacher,
she called herself my friend
if....
I gave money. A lot of money.
Everytime I'd suggest I'd give money
she'd return my call.
If I needed help with my heart,
nothing.
Weeks would pass.
Not one message.
I knew, always knew, she would call right away,
if I said, "I have money for you."
Immediate return call.
My friend is angry now.
My story, my own memory of my life,
the parts that include her
don't read right.
I need to change passages
to advertise her, her books and her land.
"It will make a better story," she adds.
"It will be helpful, not harmful."
Is it true?
A student is told to watch
her teacher
for twenty years.
Twenty years.
To make sure the teacher is good and pure.
The right one.
I watched my teacher for moments
I was so greedy
for her to know me.
I had no faith in what I knew of myself.
She took all I had
and wanted more.
Always more.
She wants more still.
She wants my memory.
Where did it all begin?
Little birds gather
in the bare upper limbs of the birch trees.
So small, so light,
they do not have any problem
getting foothold on air.
The wind blows.
Golden leaves fly,
The little birds argue
a spray of chirps.
They lift in a cluster
like pebbles tossed high
by a child.
They are gone.