A dash of M.S.G. (Macho Sino Girl)
July 28, 2008
- For years, I've imagined a coffee table book with images of authors' desks and studios. One Redroom author wrote a few weeks ago that her desk is piled high with papers and too unsightly to be photographed. I said, "I'd like to see it." She replied, "You first." My room is relatively neat. Where my feet rest is the spot is I plant my derriere to talk to y'all in ...
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July 26, 2008
- I want to share my morning sketch at poet Robinson Jeffers' Tor House, which he built for his beloved Una out of local rocks hauled up from the beach. When we first moved to Carmel, we lived a mere three blocks away, so it was natural for me to have started reading Jeffers in the early 70s. I was at Tor House to accompany a friend for a tour, but the caressing breeze was like pussycat's fur ...
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July 22, 2008
- Video of my agent, Ms. Deborah Warren of the East-West Agency. I'm embarrassed to say I've had relationships with half a dozen agents over the course of my nearly two decades-long writing "career." It feels almost as unethical as sleeping around and around. One superstar agent I worked with for 11 years but left in a fit of pique when I was ill. I thought she was the root cause of my ...
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July 19, 2008
- I have recurring nightmares. In the dreams, I am always angry at myself: why the hell have I returned to the L.A. house I shared with a violent boyfriend? I rush to gather my things, and think only to get away before his return. This dream has frequently inserted itself into my sleeping hours in the length and breadth of twenty-two years. My father has been having nightmares. I pat his ...
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July 17, 2008
- It is frightening to ask a question ,because no one may answer you or think the question stupid, too precious, too cute. It is humbling to receive well-thought out, patient answers (whether they are short like Steven Evans’s or long like Francoise Renoir’s) from the makers in Redroom.I must say that Redroom has been a rare gift. Many weeks ago Judith Tannebaum said in earlier post that I ...
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July 16, 2008
- I have a burning question: What is poetry?I see the stars are again in alignment. We have Matthew Biberman, Evie Shockley, Cheryl Snell, Marilyn Kallet, Jessica Barksdale Inclan, Susan Browne, and many others whose passion, interest and careers lie in poetry. I am not a poet but read and study it with fervor. Matthew Biberman said in an email he was open to a Redroom discussion of free verse ...
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July 13, 2008
- Emily Dickinson was Chinese in another life. I'm sure of it. She is everything the Chinese love in art and life.Chinese literature: terse, tight, short, concise, hard as a nut, nature, painterly and intellectual. Goes for the jugular, humorous, impish, a puzzle, musical and tonal (E.D.'s prevalent form and meter is the hymns she learned to sing in church.) Excellence in Chinese literature is ...
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July 10, 2008
- What I have often said to myself is, Gee, when I switch to my Chinese texts at night, I feel like I am moving from one part of the brain to another. It's a physical move that I can almost hear. Swooosh, kachunk. I experience similar shifts when I move from writing to drawing/painting.I've not paid much attention to the left brain, right brain dichotomy, the notion that became mainstream with ...
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July 6, 2008
- Big Sur is my backyard, and it was hallucinatory to see it burning below me as my plane began its descent. These pictures were taken last Sunday from one of the puddle-jumper flights, on my way home from Vancouver, via LA. I am about 15-minute drive from the town of Big Sur. My schoolmates, Kirk and Erin Gafil (a painter), are the descendants of the people who established the renowned ...
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July 4, 2008
- Home 1:1960-1965The first house I lived in was on the subtropical island of Taiwan, a faculty unit of a private school where my parents taught. It had a dark hole in the back for the WC. I was too afraid to go inside, lest I fell into the pit, so my mother made use of a spittoon for me to do my business. Snakes as thick as my arms crawled beneath wild azaleas or under our beds, seeking shade ...
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