Bett Williams has written a smart and moving review of the buddhist for the webzine, Fanzine. That's too neutral—her writing about my book knocked my socks off as I sat in the veterinary clinic's waiting room, having taken my cat Quincey to her acupuncture treatment, which happens every six weeks, like a haircut. Bett's very personal take on the book is so perfect for the project. She throws objectivity out the window and writes nakedly of her personal experience of encountering this blog and the book. It's a response that every writer dreams of receiving, to have such an impact on someone with razor-sharp intelligence who's capable of getting the nuances of your every grunt.
An excerpt from the buddhist has recently been published on the webzine, Radius. It's part of a very interesting series in which a poet chosen by the site then presents and introduces a poet whom she has an affinity with or who influenced her—as well an emerging poet whose work she finds interesting. I'm so honored that Dapne Gottlieb chose me as her influence. The "emerging" poet is Danielle Montgomery. Daphne and Danielle's poems kick ass, and the three of us resonate together wonderfully, all presenting an aesthetic that fuses power and vulnerability. The three pieces also intersect in their exploration of desire and otherness. My excerpt is from the material at the end of the book, which was never posted online. But read all 3 of the poems in Daphne's series, for this is an excellent example of the whole being greater than the sum of the parts.
5/23/11
Anti-conform
Early Friday evening I made the 3 1/2 hour drive from the raw foods school to Kevin and the cats in San Francisco. I began by listening to a compilation CD Kevin bought, of "hits" from Apple Records. At first I thought the CD was dreadful, but it grew on me. I do have to skip Brute Force's banned "King of Fuh," because one day its sing-songy melody got trapped in my head and it nearly drove me crazy. It was banned because the King of Fuh is called the "Fuh king" most of the time in the song. "Hail to the Fuh king." It's really silly and makes me giddy when I hear it. When I got to the redwood forest, this vast presence slapped me in the face—tears came to my eyes—the trees generate enormous power that demanded silence on my part. I turned the CD off, and rolled down the front windows to take in all that energy, which felt simultaneously ancient and fresh. It's a place where seductive spirits roam. I had a fantasy of being called by my tall wavering translucent pale jade friends, and pulling by the side of the road and walking into the trees and never being heard from again.
When the dense redwoods were behind me, I continued to listen to the audiobook I began on the way there, Maggie Gyllenhaal reading Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar. I know this sounds ludicrous, but once you get used to her, Gyllenhaal is really good, I think—subtle and nuanced for an audiobook. Maggie's own craziness and bitchiness worked well for Esther's voice—much better than Plath's own stagy reading style would have been. It had been a zillion years since I read The Bell Jar. I wasn't prepared for how brilliant it is. It angers me that this book isn't more respected. It's far from being obscure, but there's still an aura of snickers around it, like it's a pathetic book. Plath's use of image is in the novel is as sharp as in the poems, and her ability to capture fleeting impressions and shifts of consciousness is jaw-droppingly good. Reread the part where Esther is zooming down the hill on skis. I was touched that Plath would dive into such vulnerable, intimate material. The book must have been very painful to write. Says one who always seems to be wanting to write things that are painful to write—and to read. The book exposes the fucked up social systems women were trapped in in the 50s like no other.
Saturday afternoon I accompanied Kevin to Fort Mason's Southside Theater for a panel discussion on William Burroughs' novella Queer, in honor of the restaging of Erling Wold's operatic adaptation of Queer. The panelists were RE/Search Publication's Val Vale, Bob Glück, and Kevin. Erling Wold also spoke. Nobody was there. In fact, I was the only person there who wasn't somehow connected to the panel or the theater. It was declared that as audience, I played an important role in the event. Vale and Marion Wallace decided to tape the presentations, with the hope of broadcasting them on their public television show, and so they moved the camera from the audience to the stage. I had to switch my seat to the far left, as they were blocking the podium. Here's an image of the stage, with Kevin talking directly to Bob, as Vale sits in a chair in front of him and Marion operates the camera.
It was a fascinating event. Everybody should have been there. The papers Bob and Kevin read on Queer were, as expected, superb. Bob focused on the meaning of queerness in the book, and how it tied into a now vanishing, late 40s/early 50s spectrum of gay masculinity. Bob also wrote about money and how it operates in Burroughs in general, a provocative angle. Kevin focused on Queer as an 80s phenomenon, even as an AIDS novel. At one point he discussed sections that Burroughs wrote of Kevin and Marcus Ewert's collaborative rewriting of Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden, which he then tied back to Burroughs' biography and fascination with the grotesque. Vale presented a slide show of rare images of Burroughs from his personal collection, many of them revolving around guns, as he and his friends would go to shooting ranges with Burroughs. Here's Vale standing beside a slide of the cover of the RE/Search publication dedicated to Burroughs.
That's Erling Wold's head in the foreground. I was moved by Vale's off the cuff discussion of Burroughs' personality and aesthetics—Burroughs' insistence on nonconformity to the point of being an alien. This struck home after the regimentation of raw cooking school. By the final day of it I was seething with rage, like I wanted to run out of the place screaming. The students in the school may have come from all over the world, but for the most part they weren't a fringy crowd. Being immersed day and night with all these normal people, living in the same house with athletic straight guys, I felt like an alien, and I must have been acting like one, as some people were treating me that way, like my need for privacy was unfathomably strange. It takes balls—and entitlement—to declare oneself an alien. That's a totally different experience than having alienness thrust upon one. Like Plath, I've always been a conformist who's just fucking unable to do it, a failure of sorts. One half of my brain is always saying "fuck this shit," and the other half is suffering over my difference. A failure that generates tremendous energy; I think it's the core of my creative drive—and of Plath's. Maybe it's that way for a lot of women. I don't know.
Here's a couple more snapshots from the rest of the weekend. Saturday evening Kevin and I went to Small Press Traffic's Reliquarium fundraiser, and I bid on and won Dottie Lasky's magical bottle of sunshine:
Sunday Kevin and I visited Kota Ezawa in Marin at the Headlands Center for the Arts, where he has a residency. Here's Kota in his studio standing beside a video installation:
Kota scavenged the TV monitors from around the Headlands. I loved Kota's looped video, City of Nature, originally conceived as a work of public art and shown in New York's Madison Square Park. Kota animated the nature scenes from many, many feature films, leaving the original (and often over the top dramatic and sentimental) musical scores and nature sounds. Kota told us which movie each scene was taken from. I remember Brokeback Mountain was in there, and Fitzcarraldo, Fire Walk With Me. Kota's editing was really tight. What looked like a single bird flying through the sky was in fact, with each cut, a different bird from a different movie. The installation was previously shown on state of the art flatscreens, but Kota was saying he was liking how it looks on old TV monitors. He smiled and said Headlands makes you more of a hippie.
When the dense redwoods were behind me, I continued to listen to the audiobook I began on the way there, Maggie Gyllenhaal reading Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar. I know this sounds ludicrous, but once you get used to her, Gyllenhaal is really good, I think—subtle and nuanced for an audiobook. Maggie's own craziness and bitchiness worked well for Esther's voice—much better than Plath's own stagy reading style would have been. It had been a zillion years since I read The Bell Jar. I wasn't prepared for how brilliant it is. It angers me that this book isn't more respected. It's far from being obscure, but there's still an aura of snickers around it, like it's a pathetic book. Plath's use of image is in the novel is as sharp as in the poems, and her ability to capture fleeting impressions and shifts of consciousness is jaw-droppingly good. Reread the part where Esther is zooming down the hill on skis. I was touched that Plath would dive into such vulnerable, intimate material. The book must have been very painful to write. Says one who always seems to be wanting to write things that are painful to write—and to read. The book exposes the fucked up social systems women were trapped in in the 50s like no other.
Saturday afternoon I accompanied Kevin to Fort Mason's Southside Theater for a panel discussion on William Burroughs' novella Queer, in honor of the restaging of Erling Wold's operatic adaptation of Queer. The panelists were RE/Search Publication's Val Vale, Bob Glück, and Kevin. Erling Wold also spoke. Nobody was there. In fact, I was the only person there who wasn't somehow connected to the panel or the theater. It was declared that as audience, I played an important role in the event. Vale and Marion Wallace decided to tape the presentations, with the hope of broadcasting them on their public television show, and so they moved the camera from the audience to the stage. I had to switch my seat to the far left, as they were blocking the podium. Here's an image of the stage, with Kevin talking directly to Bob, as Vale sits in a chair in front of him and Marion operates the camera.
 |
| Kevin's T-shirt bears the tagline from Friday Night Lights, "Clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose." |
It was a fascinating event. Everybody should have been there. The papers Bob and Kevin read on Queer were, as expected, superb. Bob focused on the meaning of queerness in the book, and how it tied into a now vanishing, late 40s/early 50s spectrum of gay masculinity. Bob also wrote about money and how it operates in Burroughs in general, a provocative angle. Kevin focused on Queer as an 80s phenomenon, even as an AIDS novel. At one point he discussed sections that Burroughs wrote of Kevin and Marcus Ewert's collaborative rewriting of Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden, which he then tied back to Burroughs' biography and fascination with the grotesque. Vale presented a slide show of rare images of Burroughs from his personal collection, many of them revolving around guns, as he and his friends would go to shooting ranges with Burroughs. Here's Vale standing beside a slide of the cover of the RE/Search publication dedicated to Burroughs.
That's Erling Wold's head in the foreground. I was moved by Vale's off the cuff discussion of Burroughs' personality and aesthetics—Burroughs' insistence on nonconformity to the point of being an alien. This struck home after the regimentation of raw cooking school. By the final day of it I was seething with rage, like I wanted to run out of the place screaming. The students in the school may have come from all over the world, but for the most part they weren't a fringy crowd. Being immersed day and night with all these normal people, living in the same house with athletic straight guys, I felt like an alien, and I must have been acting like one, as some people were treating me that way, like my need for privacy was unfathomably strange. It takes balls—and entitlement—to declare oneself an alien. That's a totally different experience than having alienness thrust upon one. Like Plath, I've always been a conformist who's just fucking unable to do it, a failure of sorts. One half of my brain is always saying "fuck this shit," and the other half is suffering over my difference. A failure that generates tremendous energy; I think it's the core of my creative drive—and of Plath's. Maybe it's that way for a lot of women. I don't know.
Here's a couple more snapshots from the rest of the weekend. Saturday evening Kevin and I went to Small Press Traffic's Reliquarium fundraiser, and I bid on and won Dottie Lasky's magical bottle of sunshine:
Sunday Kevin and I visited Kota Ezawa in Marin at the Headlands Center for the Arts, where he has a residency. Here's Kota in his studio standing beside a video installation:
Kota scavenged the TV monitors from around the Headlands. I loved Kota's looped video, City of Nature, originally conceived as a work of public art and shown in New York's Madison Square Park. Kota animated the nature scenes from many, many feature films, leaving the original (and often over the top dramatic and sentimental) musical scores and nature sounds. Kota told us which movie each scene was taken from. I remember Brokeback Mountain was in there, and Fitzcarraldo, Fire Walk With Me. Kota's editing was really tight. What looked like a single bird flying through the sky was in fact, with each cut, a different bird from a different movie. The installation was previously shown on state of the art flatscreens, but Kota was saying he was liking how it looks on old TV monitors. He smiled and said Headlands makes you more of a hippie.
5/17/11
Raw Up North
I know, long time no see. The end of the semester was really crazy, actually it's still not totally over for me, but it's getting there. At the end of the crazy end of the semester, I went on a 2-week cleanse, which was ridiculous, given that it was a time when I needed extra energy, not to be detoxing so I was nauseous, headachy and couldn't focus. I couldn't even write in my journal I was so out of it. But somehow I managed to attend 3 student fiction thesis meetings, and critique their work. I saw Pierre Guyotat read at City Lights fasting, and afterwards had dinner with my Newing the Narrative class at Cafe Macaroni, fasting. Kevin's fiction workshop joined us, as did Guyotat (at another table), eventually. He was great, so haughty, yet also a miracle of survival, having his book Eden Eden Eden banned, which he said was financially disastrous. His haughtiness and his survival are probably very much co-dependent. I wish I could pronounce dramatically that I was reinventing the English language, the way he said he was reinventing the French language. I wish I could be proud of what I haven't read, rather than feeling guilty and ignorant, the way Guyotat declared with a tinge of condescension, that he's never read Bataille or Genet or the nouveau roman, as if they were beneath him. "I read the classics," he said. I got the impression that he saw himself as a direct heir to the classics, so why distract himself with the lowly competition. His reading from his new Semiotext(e) book, Coma, was amazing. He read a long section of it in French, then translator Noura Wedell read the ending. The English of her translation is beautiful; the audience was awe-struck. Coma is my dream book, tracking consciousness and unconsciousness as it intersects with physicality. I mourn how the (American) novel no longer is primarily about consciousness in our plot-driven era.
I'm staying at a lodge 3 1/2 hours north of San Francisco, along the coast, attending a raw food cooking school. I'm being purposely vague, so this isn't google-able. Here's the apple crumble tart my team (Team 3) and I made.
There are three of us in team 3, a young woman from Malaysia (which I didn't know before I met her was a county, I'm such a god-awful Westerner), and a white woman with dreadlocks who lives in Willits, who has a sweet white boyfriend who also has dreadlocks. I saw her 11 year old-ish daughter one day in the lobby, and she too had dreadlocks. Observing the dreadlocked mother and daughter, side by side, I thought of Austin Powers and Mini Me. But she's great, as is the woman from Malaysia, who studied bio-tech in college, but has a passion for graphic design. She's read a lot about it and loves to talk about her favorite graphic designers. She's been sent by the restaurant she works in in Malaysia so she can learn raw food cooking and go back and teach the other people there how to prepare raw food. She's a Buddhist, a real Buddhist. The woman from Willits plans to open a raw food cafe as part of a holistic healing center she wants to start with some friends. I'm here for no good reason other than I wanted to get myself to actually prepare this stuff, which is surprisingly easy. The tart was delicious but cloyingly sweet. Each of us in Team 3 ate a slice of it and instantly became so sleepy we couldn't keep our eyes open.
Yesterday we made raw veggie sushi. I posted a pic on Facebook, but here it is again. It tasted surprisingly good. We each made 2 rolls. My first one was nice and tight, but for the second one we ran out of sprouts, and it's clear the sprouts are the secret to tight rolls (at least for novices), as my second roll was a bit flabby. Today we also made pesto and marina sauces, and spiralized zucchini for pasta. The sauces were good, but I'd never eat this. Below is a pic in a to-go container (we were each given one corn-based to-go container to take home food we make that isn't whisked away from us and either sold in their cafe or fed to us at lunch the next day; we're to wash out and reuse our one to-go container; if we don't we have to pay $2 for a replacement).
The lodge I'm staying at is cute and clean and has raw food kitchen, but it's noisy as hell, being an old wooden structure, and the communal feel is perhaps too much for a loner like me. I think of the buddhist last summer, spending 3 months at mediation retreats, hiding in his room eating take out from a Whole Foods that he had to drive an hour to get to, and writing compulsively to me. If I didn't have Kevin to talk to on the phone, I think I'd go crazy. I've developed an enemy, this snotty party girl from Peru, or Pay-Roo, as she says it. She's blonde. I don't know if blonde people are common in Peru or not. The only Peruvian I ever met was Chinese, and he said there was a sizable Chinese population in Peru. People from all over the world go to school here. I have to get up every morning at 6:30 or 7:00 to be at school on time, which is really a feat for me, as I'm used to staying up all hours and getting up at 9:00, the earliest. We have quiet hours here, supposedly from 9 p.m. to 7 p.m., so my Peruvian enemy was in the hallway talking really loud on her cellphone at 12:15 at night, and finally I said to her she was keeping me up—so now I'm the voice of adult oppression. She moved to the living room and woke somebody else up, then she ran up to the floor above me and stomped around and banged things nonstop until after 1:00, keeping not only me up, but also my teammate from Malaysia, whose room is across the hall from mine. (I later learned it was someone else who was doing the stomping, but in my heart it's still the girl the Peruvian blonde). I ended up taking an Ambien last night, which makes me feel rage, as I just came off of a cleanse and I'm eating all raw here, and the last thing I want to be doing is to take an evil pharaceutical. The Peruvian acts snooty and stern whenever I'm near her. I found myself purposely going and sitting near her so she could do her snooty act. I have childish, nasty revenge fantasies about her.
Being here, I'm feeling a lot of compassion for my students. Learning is hard work, and it requires such discipline. I'm amazed my students put up with all my demands. I waver here from being totally in it, as I am learning wondrous things, such as when you dice an onion, leave the root end attached, and dice it that way, and all the layers don't go sliding all over the place. I'm sprouting. I'm making flax seed crackers, almond cheese. I'm overcoming my fear of dehydrators. I'm learning to use a knife like chefs do on TV. And yes, I'm constantly thinking of Julia Child in the Julie and Julia movie, Julia in French cooking school screwing up, I feel so awkward sometimes, practicing new techniques. Sometimes I feel so fucking rebellious, all the rules, and it's so regimented, like if class starts at 8:30, they're taking roll at 8:30. They take roll after lunch as well. And that means you're at your station in your chef clothes, hair under control, and hands washed long enough to sing Happy Birthday twice, and rinsed and dried with a paper towel, and then you turn off the faucets with the towel. Sometimes I'm all, who gives a fuck, what do they have over me, I'm not in the army (though it sometimes feels like it), but other times I'm so excited I want to stay longer than a week and do the whole program and get certified as a raw food chef, even though that's not in any way a goal of mine. I just get swept away in the excitement of it all. The owner is a diva supreme. Kevin would love her. She was born in 1947, but looks like 20 years younger. She's fascinating to watch and she seems like a controlling bitch. I was gossiping with one of the local shopkeepers about her, and they said they'd heard she was impossible to work for. I love to see what cute chef outfit she has on each day. Sometimes she wears more than one cute chef outfit a day. You should try on a chef outfit, it's not easy to look cute in one. Today as she demonstrated how to make our apple crumble tart, she started talking about her father, how he's who got her interested in cooking. And when he was dying of cancer, she cooked for him, what he liked to eat, chicken and pot roast, even though she hadn't cooked meat in 40 years. She said, I love my daddy. She said it intensely, like that big smile of hers was going to crack. And then she talked about her mother, how her mother didn't appreciate her creativity. The room felt totally Freudian, like Joan Crawford were standing up there, the head of a cooking school rather than the chicken place in Mildred Pierce.
When I told Kevin I bought a chef's coat, he said he was going to write me a part in the play he's writing with Karla Milosevich. He said I would play China Chow's personal chef. Kevin, who's written over 30 poet's theater plays, said that many a good part started with an outfit.
I'm staying at a lodge 3 1/2 hours north of San Francisco, along the coast, attending a raw food cooking school. I'm being purposely vague, so this isn't google-able. Here's the apple crumble tart my team (Team 3) and I made.
There are three of us in team 3, a young woman from Malaysia (which I didn't know before I met her was a county, I'm such a god-awful Westerner), and a white woman with dreadlocks who lives in Willits, who has a sweet white boyfriend who also has dreadlocks. I saw her 11 year old-ish daughter one day in the lobby, and she too had dreadlocks. Observing the dreadlocked mother and daughter, side by side, I thought of Austin Powers and Mini Me. But she's great, as is the woman from Malaysia, who studied bio-tech in college, but has a passion for graphic design. She's read a lot about it and loves to talk about her favorite graphic designers. She's been sent by the restaurant she works in in Malaysia so she can learn raw food cooking and go back and teach the other people there how to prepare raw food. She's a Buddhist, a real Buddhist. The woman from Willits plans to open a raw food cafe as part of a holistic healing center she wants to start with some friends. I'm here for no good reason other than I wanted to get myself to actually prepare this stuff, which is surprisingly easy. The tart was delicious but cloyingly sweet. Each of us in Team 3 ate a slice of it and instantly became so sleepy we couldn't keep our eyes open.
Yesterday we made raw veggie sushi. I posted a pic on Facebook, but here it is again. It tasted surprisingly good. We each made 2 rolls. My first one was nice and tight, but for the second one we ran out of sprouts, and it's clear the sprouts are the secret to tight rolls (at least for novices), as my second roll was a bit flabby. Today we also made pesto and marina sauces, and spiralized zucchini for pasta. The sauces were good, but I'd never eat this. Below is a pic in a to-go container (we were each given one corn-based to-go container to take home food we make that isn't whisked away from us and either sold in their cafe or fed to us at lunch the next day; we're to wash out and reuse our one to-go container; if we don't we have to pay $2 for a replacement).
The lodge I'm staying at is cute and clean and has raw food kitchen, but it's noisy as hell, being an old wooden structure, and the communal feel is perhaps too much for a loner like me. I think of the buddhist last summer, spending 3 months at mediation retreats, hiding in his room eating take out from a Whole Foods that he had to drive an hour to get to, and writing compulsively to me. If I didn't have Kevin to talk to on the phone, I think I'd go crazy. I've developed an enemy, this snotty party girl from Peru, or Pay-Roo, as she says it. She's blonde. I don't know if blonde people are common in Peru or not. The only Peruvian I ever met was Chinese, and he said there was a sizable Chinese population in Peru. People from all over the world go to school here. I have to get up every morning at 6:30 or 7:00 to be at school on time, which is really a feat for me, as I'm used to staying up all hours and getting up at 9:00, the earliest. We have quiet hours here, supposedly from 9 p.m. to 7 p.m., so my Peruvian enemy was in the hallway talking really loud on her cellphone at 12:15 at night, and finally I said to her she was keeping me up—so now I'm the voice of adult oppression. She moved to the living room and woke somebody else up, then she ran up to the floor above me and stomped around and banged things nonstop until after 1:00, keeping not only me up, but also my teammate from Malaysia, whose room is across the hall from mine. (I later learned it was someone else who was doing the stomping, but in my heart it's still the girl the Peruvian blonde). I ended up taking an Ambien last night, which makes me feel rage, as I just came off of a cleanse and I'm eating all raw here, and the last thing I want to be doing is to take an evil pharaceutical. The Peruvian acts snooty and stern whenever I'm near her. I found myself purposely going and sitting near her so she could do her snooty act. I have childish, nasty revenge fantasies about her.
Being here, I'm feeling a lot of compassion for my students. Learning is hard work, and it requires such discipline. I'm amazed my students put up with all my demands. I waver here from being totally in it, as I am learning wondrous things, such as when you dice an onion, leave the root end attached, and dice it that way, and all the layers don't go sliding all over the place. I'm sprouting. I'm making flax seed crackers, almond cheese. I'm overcoming my fear of dehydrators. I'm learning to use a knife like chefs do on TV. And yes, I'm constantly thinking of Julia Child in the Julie and Julia movie, Julia in French cooking school screwing up, I feel so awkward sometimes, practicing new techniques. Sometimes I feel so fucking rebellious, all the rules, and it's so regimented, like if class starts at 8:30, they're taking roll at 8:30. They take roll after lunch as well. And that means you're at your station in your chef clothes, hair under control, and hands washed long enough to sing Happy Birthday twice, and rinsed and dried with a paper towel, and then you turn off the faucets with the towel. Sometimes I'm all, who gives a fuck, what do they have over me, I'm not in the army (though it sometimes feels like it), but other times I'm so excited I want to stay longer than a week and do the whole program and get certified as a raw food chef, even though that's not in any way a goal of mine. I just get swept away in the excitement of it all. The owner is a diva supreme. Kevin would love her. She was born in 1947, but looks like 20 years younger. She's fascinating to watch and she seems like a controlling bitch. I was gossiping with one of the local shopkeepers about her, and they said they'd heard she was impossible to work for. I love to see what cute chef outfit she has on each day. Sometimes she wears more than one cute chef outfit a day. You should try on a chef outfit, it's not easy to look cute in one. Today as she demonstrated how to make our apple crumble tart, she started talking about her father, how he's who got her interested in cooking. And when he was dying of cancer, she cooked for him, what he liked to eat, chicken and pot roast, even though she hadn't cooked meat in 40 years. She said, I love my daddy. She said it intensely, like that big smile of hers was going to crack. And then she talked about her mother, how her mother didn't appreciate her creativity. The room felt totally Freudian, like Joan Crawford were standing up there, the head of a cooking school rather than the chicken place in Mildred Pierce.
When I told Kevin I bought a chef's coat, he said he was going to write me a part in the play he's writing with Karla Milosevich. He said I would play China Chow's personal chef. Kevin, who's written over 30 poet's theater plays, said that many a good part started with an outfit.
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