Ode to an English Major

I am a writer. It is not my occupation or a significant form of income for me, but something more, something deeper; it is my passion, my calling, and my purpose. It is who I am, but I would have never come to that understanding without the early encouragement of my first- and second-grade teacher, Mrs. Hunter, and my family’s never-ending support. Some of my earliest memories surround my writing, and even predate it. I came to reading late compared to many of my peers in school, and I could barely write my own simple five-letter name at six years old. I graduated kindergarten without being able to read, despite the fact that I was an eager student in so many other areas of school.

In kindergarten, I felt drawn to the colorful blow-up dolls used to introduce new letters of the alphabet—a blue plastic uppercase letter “B” wearing a bowler hat and covered in bright bubbles, or a pale pink letter “P” spouting eyeglasses and curly yellow hair—but I could not yet make the connection between individual letters and words. I skimmed through the pictures of the books scattered through the classroom but my eyes skipped over the bold black scribbles at the bottom of the pages without recognition. As many critics note, the connection between reading and writing for students cannot be understated. I do not remember the day in first grade that the switch—finally! — flipped, but I do remember my ecstatic enthusiasm for reading once I came to it. 

I jumped from perusing the white baskets of thin early-reader books marked with a green “easy” dot on their spines to the yellow and then red “advanced” books with full plots and storylines beyond “See Jane jump.” It wasn’t long before Mrs. Hunter introduced me to the Magic Treehouse stories, and then I was off, zooming through time and space with Annie and Jack on their magic time-travel adventures to ancient Egypt, to the bottom of the ocean, or to Renaissance Italy. The characters in those books became some of my earliest friends. As the youngest in a family of six, I spent many hours by myself when my older siblings and parents were preoccupied and too busy to play. It was an easy jump for me to move from reading stories to making up my own. I made up tales and told them to anyone who would listen: to my family at dinner, to my attentive, patient dolls, and to Mrs. Hunter through the composition notebooks she handed out to every student. 

Every morning between “welcomes” and before math time, we had time to write. I remember the feel of the yellow #2 pencil in my hand and the sound of the graphite scraping across the wide-ruled paper of my notebook as I crafted silly slant-rhyming poems anthropomorphizing colors, describing the adventures of naughty little gray mice, or my brief stint dip into hymnal-like poems centered around my Sunday school lessons. At the end of every week, our journals were handed back to us with comments and affirmations written in Mrs. Hunter’s careful hand. I lived for the moment I opened my journal to see what my teacher thought of my latest story. Her praise buoyed me through the tedious math quizzes and boring history lessons. I beamed with pride when she commended my writing and imagination to my parents at student-teacher conference night. It was Mrs. Hunter who asked if she could submit my poem, “Yellow,” to a nation-wide writing contest for elementary students. The day I held my first published poem, I felt like a writer. It felt like a stamp of approval, something on which I could hang my proverbial hat that gave me purpose, direction, and voice. I moved more confidently in the world knowing that my voice mattered. 

Now, I recognize my privilege in the unique opportunities presented to me. Mrs. Hunter cared about my success as a writer. She was the first person to give me that title—to empower me with that title. Mrs. Hunter’s belief in me from such a young age helped me internalize my passion for writing. From there, I never stopped writing. Throughout the rest of my school years and education, I threw myself into the study of language and writing. My parents showered me with books at my birthday and Christmas. I spent my meager chore money on five-dollar particle-board bookcases that I filled with trade paperbacks with cracked, white spines and my own journals and diaries in which I preserved my earliest attempts at novels. One summer, a great-aunt of mine whom I barely knew gifted me with a notebook printed with a sleek white Westie stamped on the cover, and a pack of twenty-four glitter pens because she said she’d heard from my grandmother “What a little writer” I was.
I was lucky—privileged—enough to have parents who supported me when I said I wanted to go to school to study English. I often heard, “What are you going to do with that degree? Teach?” from the mouths of my aunts and uncles, grandparents, and other adults. At the time, I gave some halfhearted affirmative, though my heart wasn’t really into the idea of teaching just yet. I originally went into university on the English-teaching track as a means to subconsciously satisfy the doubt that lingered in the back of my mind. What would I do with an English degree if not teach? I slogged my way through two of the required teaching courses over the summer while longingly watching my fellow students outside barefoot in the grass playing Frisbee or napping in the sun. On a whim, one day in the student union building I plugged in a few numbers and played around with the course generator that helped students track their pace through their degrees. I blinked, then blinked again when I compared the two different course sketches I’d generated, but the information on the screen was correct—I could graduate with more than enough credits and all my required curriculum in just three years if I dropped the teaching component of my English degree. I went for it. I accelerated my coursework and graduated an entire year early with a Bachelor’s in English with dual concentrations in Literature and Creative Writing, and a minor in Spanish. 

My final year and a half of university was a blur. I rushed from class to class, chugging quad-shot mochas that tasted like burned chocolate and made my heart race as I sat in lectures and discussed Transcendentalism and Buddhist hermeneutics and its impact on American poetics. I stayed up until two in the morning multiple times every week finishing forty-page short stories about robots that looked like humans, and queer retellings of fairy tales like “Little Red Riding Hood.” A short story I submitted in the early hours of the morning it was due was accepted into the on-campus magazine as an “Honorable Mention” –the first piece I’d had published in years—and I rushed to tell everyone I knew until I noticed that the first line of my piece had a typo. I felt exhilarated, and drained, and like a shell of a human during midterms and finals week, but I could not help but feel that I would have made my five-year-old self proud when I posed in front of the university clocktower in my cap and gown and held aloft my (fake) diploma as a certified English major.  

I did not graduate university and immediately “use” my degree. I did not graduate and immediately get snatched up by a major publisher who offered me hundreds of thousands of dollars for my hurriedly scribbled stories and midnight musings. I moved back home and went to work at the same bakery I’d visited when I was little. I woke up at three in the morning and brushed cat litter off my bare feet before going to bake bread. I made $9.50 an hour and paid $200.00 in student loans every month. But I never once regretted my English degree. With that degree—and thanks to the bakery—I eventually became the manager of a local nonprofit art museum. Over the course of the last year that I worked at the museum, I drafted stories and poems and an entire memoir in the back storeroom in between greeting patrons. From my work at the museum, I eventually moved to Oregon state and took a job working with writers and authors through the free writing workshops I hosted at the public library. I learned alongside my fellow writers as we all listened, hopefully, for that one idea that would crack open our writing. I listened to others share their most intimate, vulnerable stories and felt brave enough to do the same once in a while. The more I shared, the more free I felt. Writing liberated me, as I saw and heard from the other writers I came to know through the library. 

I came to writing in part because it was something I was “good” at—something that my teacher and parents praised me for. Growing up in a community and culture that emphasized goodness in very stark, dramatic terms, I feel “safe’ with my writing because it secured me in a place of praise—until it didn’t. One day, something I had written and gotten published made my my mother cry when she saw it come across her Facebook feed. My sisters berated me through a barrage of texts from two states over, asking me how I could say those things about our mother who had given us so much, who had supported me through so much? 

I sat on the floor of my bedroom sobbing as I phoned my therapist and told her the worst thing—the thing I was always so terrified of happening—had happened. I felt unloved and unloveable in that moment, and so angry with myself for ever writing that essay or sharing it. I deleted the piece from my website and social media, this piece I was so proud of sharing only moments ago, and swore off writing ever again. But, three weeks later, I picked up my pen and I wrote it all down; how I had made my mother cry, how I had cried, how I could do it differently next time. I know I can never stop being a writer. It’s part of who I am. I feel the most like myself when I write and share with others, and when I help others come into their own as writers themselves. 

I now turn back towards teaching with renewed interest. I want to do for future students what Mrs. Hunter once did for me; I want to give someone the world as she gave it to me when she introduced me to writing. I want to be one of the teachers that helps guide and mentor the future generation of English majors. I want to instill in them the same empowerment my writing has given me, so that when someone asks my future students, “What are you going to do with an English degree?” they will feel confident when they reply, “Anything I want.” 

Urban Indians with Urban Problems: a Look at Tommy Orange’s Debut There There

spoilers ahead

There, there. A comforting murmur we use to coax our children to sleep, to temper a frightened dog, to console ourselves in times of panic and pain. I wish I could tell you there was an easy sort of comfort to Tommy Orange’s debut, There There, a happy ending in which all was resolved and discovered, issues unearthed and then laid to rest again by the final period. There is no such comfort to be gained here. This book is a lens, many lenses, analyzing what it means to be Native, yesterday and today. No one more than Orange or his characters realize how very complex and complicated that notion is.  

There There is a multi-generational tale told from the shifting perspectives of thirteen Natives, adults and children, living, working, and trudging through their lives in Oakland, California. The novel is divided into four sections (titled “Remain, “Reclaim,” “Return,” and “Powwow” respectively) and features a livid prologue and lit interludes that slice through the narratives with biting ease, drawing attention to specific moments or images or illusions. The poetic nature of this work does not hide hard truths, but amplifies them, as is depicted in the essay-like opening that pinpoints the bizarre history of Indian heads: Native chief Metacomet who “was beheaded and dismembered. (…) Metacomet’s head was sold to Plymouth Colony for thirty shillings—the going rate for an Indian head at the time”; the “successful massacre” in Manhattan in 1637 in which “people were said to have celebrated by kicking the heads of Pequot people through the streets like soccer balls”; the “old Cheyenne story about a rolling head”; the “drawing of the head of a headdressed, long-haired Indian depicted, drawn by an unknown artist in 1939, broadcast until the late 1970s to American TVs everywhere after all the shows ran out”; or even Mel Gibson’s depiction of “the heads rolling down temple stairs in a world meant to resemble the real Indian world in the 1500s in Mexico.” 

“One thing we should keep in mind,” Orange reminds his readers in the midst of all the head-rolling, “is that no one ever rolled heads down temple stairs.” That, and so much of Native history as has been taught, was fictionalized. Orange’s work is here to set the record straight, to let his characters tell in own voice what it means in this day and age to be Native. “We’ve been defined by everyone else and continue to be slandered despite easy-to-look-up-on-the-internet facts about the realities of our histories and current state as a people,” Orange says. “Getting us to cities was supposed to be the final, necessary step in our assimilation, absorption, erasure, the completion of a five-hundred-year-old genocidal campaign. But the city made us new, and we made it ours.”

These thirteen characters show the full versatility and variety of the Natives living in Oakland, as well as farther afield, but each are drawn together by one overarching theme—the big event—the Big Oakland Powwow. But what even is a powwow, one young character, Loother Red Feather, asks. His older brothers Orvil and Lony laugh at him but don’t ultimately answer—they don’t know either. Their aunt, Opal Viola Victoria Bear Shield, one of the other narrators, has hidden that part of their history from the boys, discouraged them from asking anything to do with their Native culture: 

Ever since they [Orvil and his brothers] were in her care, Opal had been openly against any of them doing anything Indian. She treated it all like it was something they could decide for themselves when they were old enough. Like drinking or driving or smoking or voting. Indianing. 

Opal has her reasons for what might be considered cutting off her young nephews from pivotal parts of their lives and identities. Her twisted, tangled story and tribal involvement is an open, aching wound for Opal that she struggles to overcome. Her nephews, though, have no experience with their ancestral roots, good or bad. Orvil in particular is nervously keen on learning about it, and he signs up to dance in the Big Oakland Powow even without an idea of what that will require of him. The juxtaposition of Opal and Orvil demonstrates the discrepancies between what it means to be Native for each individual character: for some, it is not an active thing. It is the color of their skin and the shape of their eyes but it is not part of how they live day-to-day. All Natives are not born one and the same, even if they do belong to the same tribe and heritage. They are not all born inheriting the knowledge of their ancestors on how and who to be as Native Americans.

There There is a novel that serves not only to entertain, as witty, humorous, and well-written as it is, but also as a platform from which to clarify or condemn misinformation surrounding Urban Indians. So many of the characters don’t know what that means, to be Native, to be part of a community, to be themselves. They have their stories, collected not only in this book, but collected and shared—or not shared—within the book. Dene Oxendene uses a video camera specifically to capture the stories of the Native community in their own words. Others describe Dene as: “a young guy in a baseball cap with an indistinct tribal pattern on it. If he didn’t have that hat,” Calvin, who works with Dene wonders, “[he] doesn’t know if he’d have guessed he’s Native.” Dene has applied for a grant to “document Indian stories in Oakland.” He aims to “let them tell their stories with no one else there, with nor direction or manipulation or agenda.” The result, then, is that Dene will “bring something new to the vision of the Native experience as it’s seen on the screen. We haven’t seen the Urban Indian story.” This is a very meta, self-aware novel, with the loop of characters telling their stories in this novel comprised of stories. Orange uses Dene’s videocamera as a way to capture on film what Orange is capturing on paper—the stories of real Natives. And those are hard stories to tell. 

There, there—a comfort to a child. No such comforts exist in this book. The Urban Indian with urban problems. There is no escaping the Native history of alcohol, suicide, plague of the mind and body, but these histories alone are not what make the characters what they are. These generalizations and stereotypes do not make up Native people. There is an honor to recognizing these parts of themselves and not hiding their histories but in making and naming them. But with that comes the new problems to be faced with living in the city: violence, drugs, suicide, depression, alcoholism and substance abuse. Those problems are not relegated to the reservations or to just this group of people, but the scope of the issues are magnified and intensified with the steadily increasing volume of people inhabiting the same small spaces. 

The arcing, scattered storylines of so many characters can be deceivingly interconnected. One cannot help but sense the struggle of community here in this work: so many characters the reader is unsure how they all connect beyond the draw of the powwow, until deeper truths are revealed. On the day of the powwow some of them go for the money, the cache of Visa gift cards ripe for the taking. Some of them, having worked from the very start to bring about and organize the powwow, are thrilled as the stadium fills with the smell of fry bread, the laughs and cries of children and old friends. The reclusive Calvin Johnson watches from the dark comfort of his basement as the powwow begins, overseeing from the eyes of his remote-controlled drone buzzing overhead. While the book begins with a list of the violence committed against Native people by colonists and invaders to their land, the ultimate violence of the book is committed by themselves, Natives, against themselves. 

What happens there at the powwow shakes and shatters and restructures the lives of all who see, of all who attend. It is impossible to tell by the last page how resolution will follow—but it must, and it will. Orange has shown us the resilience, if anything, of these characters. No one in this book is as alone as they think, but the dramatic irony of this novel pervades every corner: characters go on stumbling past one another, oblivious to the connections and family and blood they share, and it takes a big event—the Big Oakland Powwow—to both bring those people together and, ultimately, to tear them apart. 

And through it all, a white gun. Is the symbolism intentional? How could it not be? Orange has come too far to not know what he has done with this work such as to set a lit white gun into the middle of the table at which these characters sit, or perhaps, as it were, onto the middle of the pounding drum that drew them all together in the first place.  

A poignant and unforgiving tale, There There by Tommy Orange is a magnificent and triumphant debut. Orange is a new writer to watch and a new voice to be heard. 

Read Me

I’ve been working on short, timed generative writing.

I have been following Natalie Goldberg’s rules for writing as detailed in her classic book, Writing Down the Bones.

I am posting some of what I write on Medium, and I will attempt to copy and post links here as well.

Thank you for reading.

Manifest Destiny
how I manifested my husband breaking up with his girlfriend, and a then gas leak to get out of work.

New Essay for PRIDE Month

I was shocked and honored last month to receive a ping in my inbox that was not a rejection of my writing, but an acceptance of a piece I’ve been working on for over two years.

The first “yes” in a 31-rejection-string of “no”s, this phenomena had me about in tears at my desk. There I was, in front of a computer monitor working for one of the best companies, missions, and people I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting and working with (hey, did you know I work for the library, and hey did you know it’s literally the best job in the world?) and yet nothing that week, no interaction or task had me nearly so fulfilled as hearing that someone besides me wanted to hear what I had to say about the world, about my life, and about some of my most private, personal experiences.

It was mind boggling and validating and I craved more.

More sharing, more “yes's", more writing. More bridging between people, more dialogue, more communication. That is, I hope, what my writing achieves. That is my aim.

More “no” to come, for sure. There will (hopefully) be more “yes,” too. Hells, there was even another “yes” just this afternoon. Just after I sat in the middle of a crowded movie theater, surrounded on all sides by screaming children, another ping from my email said someone wanted to feature my essay on atheism, on faith, on not belonging, on growing up queer and Roman Catholic in the heart of Montana and how one of those things stuck and the other dissolved with my parents’ marriage when I was twelve.

But that’s a story for another time (sometime in mid July, I think—you can read it here when I post that link, or find it on any of my social media).

For now, though, if you’d like, here is an essay about my first love. A queer love. An important love. A love I still hold, shimmering, like a torch lighting my darkest days. I hope you enjoy. Thank you, as always, for listening and for reading and for sharing.

Her, by Paige M. Ferro

It's Been a While Since I Posted...Here Is a Story

It’s been a while since I posted something. Here is a story for you, dear reader, for being so very patient with waiting for something new.

This might be a true story. It is not a love story, even if I might have tagged it as such.

Sometimes we know we shouldn’t do it. We know before we even begin that this isn’t something good.

I didn’t get lost in the dark, we didn’t crash the car. The snow didn’t skid under our tires. The wrong turn was getting in the car in the first place not because the car or the snow or the place was unsafe. I knew it was unsafe to get in the car with that boy was the wrong turn. I did anyway. That boy didn’t hurt me—not that night. But I always knew, from the very beginning, I shouldn’t get in the car. I did anyway.

Read the full story here.

Do Tell

We live in a world of tell. Not show and tell, but sit and let me tell if you'd like to listen. 

Sit and let me tell you about my life. You're doing it now.

Blog posts, Facebook posts, Instagram, even email. Sit and let me tell you about my life, about my day, about the food I'm eating, about what I’m wearing.

We listen. We're intrigued. Somethings are more intriguing than others. We key in a little more. But we listen. We agree. We disagree. And we talk back. We communicate. We tell in return. 

This isn't new. We've always lived in a world of tell. People wrote letters before they wrote tweets, but they were still telling. 

The most important part is to think about what you say. 

I may be writing letters--letters to who? To anyone that will listen. You don't have to learn anything, but thank you for listening. 

I’ll try more to think about what I say.

Things I Should Make Very Clear

Things I should make very clear as you scroll through my OkCupid profile, things I should say on there, things I should tell you up front before you go any further and do something stupid like message me or something: 

1. I am married. I know my profile says that already, but really I feel it is worth repeating and maybe by saying it again I will get closer to the real heart of what that means. You have no idea, really, you have absolutely no idea what that even means, marriage. I'm telling you right now, you have no idea. 

2. I like the feel of apples crushing under my shoes on the sidewalk.  It's a fixation of mine. I can't help myself. Surely you can understand that, the idea that you just can't help yourself with? 

3. I dream of pigeons and umbrellas raining from the sky. I dream of battleships and doctors and cats and my family. I dream of what comes after and what comes before. I dreamed long before I met you, I will dream long after you are gone. I dream alone.

4. I walk away sometimes. I get lost, or I trip over my feet and I stumble off onto a dirt path that I didn't see before, hidden in the trees there. Don't try to follow me; if you love me, let me go. If you love me, let me know. Just don't expect that I'll say it back. I do, I really do, think that you can love more than one person at one time. But I'm a little busy here, you know, trying to learn to love myself. I take up so much of my time. 

5. I am human. 

6. I am human. 

7. I am human. 

8. I might not cry when I tell you goodbye. I might not cry when we fight, either, and I won't hold it against you that you will. I just can't, and won't, force what isn't there. I might not have a reason. I might have reasons too many. But how far can someone go if they are always looking back, and how far can someone go if they never look back, and either way it happens, whichever way it is that you end up in the rear view mirror, then maybe, perhaps just maybe that is where you belong. I won't come looking for you. 

9. I might never tell you the truth. It's so easy to lie. 

10. I might never lie to you. You won’t be able to tell the difference.

Recent Publications

Follow my writing as it snakes its way across the universe! 

Article on morel hunting in Central Oregon, published with Paleo Magazine. 
https://paleomagonline.com/a-landscape-of-ash-and-dust-morel-hunting-in-central-oregon/

Review of Porochista Khakpour's new memoir, Sick, published on The Coil. 

https://medium.com/the-coil/book-review-porochista-khakpour-sick-paige-m-ferro-17ab37045efc

Top 10 Books of 2017 (well, Top Nine)

Here are my recommended readings for 2017. I read a lot of really great books, but as always happens I was on the wrong side of all the best books recently coming out so I am now scrambling to suddenly read more than 50 of "the best books published in 2017". As such, I only have nine recommended books that were actually published in 2017! Didn't quite make it to 10. But hey, I think we all have book lists longer than our arms, so you can thank me later for not adding too much to your growing pile. 

I hope you enjoy Paige's Top Nine Books to Read from 2017! 

1.       My Absolute Darling, by Gabriel Tallent. Don't pick this one up unless you're intent on not thinking about or doing anything other than it, this book, this story. Even then, after you've put it down, after you're finished and you want to bury it in the ground and cover it in dirt you'll try and get it out of your head, you might even try shooting it right in the face and yet it will won’t leave you. Trigger warning; this book will hurt. It will be worth it. 

2.       Lincoln in the Bardo--George Saunders. George Saunders gives voice to the dead. 52 different voices, actually, or some other staggering number like that. Each of them distinct and heartbreaking and heart-mending. Five stars way way up for this Man Booker-prize winning novel. Part history, part fantasy, and all love.

3.       The Lonely Hearts Hotel, Heather O'Neill. This was a riveting book: I couldn’t put it down. Two orphans orphaned under unusual circumstances find and lose each other and themselves in a whirling world full of naughty nuns, circuses of sad clowns, and all the similes.

4.       Priestdaddy, Patricia Lockwood. The memoir of a daughter of a Catholic priest. Her father literally became an ordained priest AFTER being married for years and having a daughter. Also, he’s oddly obsessed with pork rinds. It was a fantastic and very curious read. Poetic and true and it deeply resonated with me and my Catholic upbringing.

5.       Norse Mythology--Neil Gaiman. Amazing. This book sold out its first printing faster than Thor's hammer could call down lighting from the sky. And this book also tells you HOW Thor got ahold of such a hammer that could call down lightning from the sky! I was very interested in Gaiman's matter-of-fact interpretations of the origin stories for the Norse gods and goddesses; he sounded like an anthropologist relaying his thesis, tracing the lineage and origin stories for these names and figures that are at once recognizable and yet still so unknown. The book focuses on Thor, Odin, and Loki mostly, but it draws in all the gods and goddesses at some point, from their births to their deaths at Ragnarok. And he still managed to end it in true Gaiman fashion--teasing, not telling, not giving anything away about what might come next. 

6.       Spoonbenders, by Darryl Gregory. This is the story of psychics, the mob, the Cold War, teens discovering themselves, and dysfunctional families. The family dynamic here was genuine, messed-up, and so loving. Original concepts and brilliant execution. Buddy’s storyline was my favorite.

7.       Down Among the Sticks and Bones, by Seanan McGuire. What happens to the children that fall down the holes, or crawl into the wardrobes, or peek between the leaves and find a door, a door that leads them off to distant lands so unlike those they came from? What happens when those children, lost for years or eternities or jus the blink of an eye come back to the homes they left to suddenly? This book, the second in the Wayward Children series gives what Alice faced after returning from Wonderland, how Peter and Susan and Edmund and Lucy felt after returning from Narnia. And the biggest question of them all lurks throughout these pages—can you ever really come home again?

8.       A Court of Wings and Ruins—Sarah Maas. This is the third book in the series: the first is A Court of Thorns and Roses, a retelling of the classic story of Beauty and the Beast, which stands to this day as one of my favorite fairy tales. Only, this retelling actually HAS fairies. Sarah Maas captivates with her spunky heroines, the twists and turns of adventure and love and heartbreak, and her leave-you-wanting-more flair.

9.       No One Can Pronounce My Name--Rakesh Satyal. Rakesh’s first book, Blue Boy, won the 2000 LAMBDA Literary award, and that alone was enough to put a spotlight on this author for me. Following the lives of Indian Americans living in Ohio, this book speaks to self-identity and finding a niche somewhere you feel you don’t quite belong.

A New Desert Home

Contentedness looks marvelous on the face of your love. The shine in his eyes, the huff of his breath, his mouth wide, curved, red. He glows here. He shimmers. He is iridescence on the face of the desert; you can barely stand to look at him for fear he will burn your eyes. But you cannot take your eyes off him for fear he could vanish into the heat, a mirage of the desert.

You realize something: this is not contentedness on his face. This is happiness. This is joy. This is something altogether different—fulfillment. He belongs here.

Is that it? No. It can’t be, can it? So soon, just like that, he is in love and that’s all? He always did have a habit of falling in love quickly.

This place, this new place you live now, this desert with the river not so wide as the ones you are used to, this desert with the blue birds and the green trees and the white mountains—is so different from how you thought it would be. You don't know what it is you feel here, but it is not joy, no. You are not happy here.

You don’t feel content in any which way. But you don’t want to. Never “contentedness,” such a word that is the epitome of average. You promised that to one another, those five years ago. You promised to leave contentedness behind. That is why you are here in the first place; you are leaving contentedness, mediocrity, just-so, status quo, settling in, all of that, you are leaving all of that behind. You are striking out into the unknown. 

You promised. Standing together before the judge, fumbling with sweaty fingers that slipped and fidgeted. You promised to take hold of life and never let go, not so long as there were words left to say and adventures to take and breath to breathe. You promised to live more, to be more, forever and ever, as long as you both shall live. 

And who knows how long that will be, how long forever will last? you ask. Who knows how long forever will be? Not you, no certainly not you, but you agree forever has yet to end, you have yet not come undone. So you slam down the trunk lid and brush back your hair from where it has stuck to your sweaty lips, your sweaty forehead, the sweaty corners of your eyes that won’t dry. You bring the rest of the boxes upstairs to the apartment that smells of sawdust and plaster. You fumble with the new keys. Your eyes take hours and days and months to dry, even in the desert.

When will this new place feel like home? When will the desert become home? What does home even feel like anymore? Bit by bit your home vanished until all that was left of years of you was packed up into twenty boxes in the corner of the apartment, and seven more in the trunk of the car. You stared unseeing through the windshield and couldn’t remember the contents of those seven boxes you brought with, all you could fit after the suitcases and the cats hissing in their carriers, and you wondered why you had any of it at all. Covered in the dust of the road, the dust of the burning desert, you wished all of it would go. 

But you are here now. Your new desert home.

It’s time to look forward.

Today

Today was rough. The alarm went off too soon--4:30 am. My phone rattled and jingled against the hardwood floors, chiming in with my husband's phone singing from his office. Another alarm was set to go off in fifteen minutes, if we somehow slept through the first two. Just in case. 

We pulled ourselves out of bed. It was chilly in the room, the early-morning chill I remember from when I would walk to school as a kid. It seemed to strike in the days before winter took hold and before it let up, the last dying days of Fall and the first days of Spring. This kind of chill gets in under your sweater, under your jacket, in the space between your scarf and your hat; it gets in and settles like a wet blanket across your skin. Cold. Heavy. Damp. 

I sat in the car, shoulders scrunched up to my ears, willing the heat to kick on. My husband pulled the apartment door shut, locked it, and slipped the extra key into the mailbox, just in case. He got in, buckled up, arranged his bags in his lap, and off we went, to the airport. 

There was no one else on the road. Or rather, there were more people on the road than I would expect at 5 am, but few cars straggled by. As I made my way to work just a few hours later I would battle three times as much traffic and would narrowly avoid a wreck, but no one challenge us this early in the morning. We pulled up to the airport an hour before he had to board. Just in case. 

My husband was going on another book tour. I was staying home. He would be gone a little less than a week, leaving in the middle of the week and coming back on Easter Monday, our two-year anniversary. 

I made a plan for while he was away; clean out my closet, finally, and get the apartment cleaned, room by room. Read all the books. Watch a couple movies I'd had queued up forever. Take a bubble bath. Relax. 

My husband was only gone twelve hours and I was feeling panicked, overwhelmed. In a slump. 

I could blame the early morning--I was bone-tired by three pm.  

I could blame it on the weather--it was gray, gloomy, cold in my office, like the early-morning chill had never left. 

I could blame it on my recent eating--I was binge-eating Easter candy and it was definitely taking its toll.

I could blame it on a lot of things, or I could take ownership. 

I am feeling tired today. I am feeling stressed out. I am feeling grumpy and fat and worn-out and creatively blocked and anxious and like I have too much on my plate. 

I am feeling frustrated that I am not the one going on tour. I am feeling left behind that my husband is off visiting far-away places I have only heard about in books. I am feeling like a loser because my book is done in its first-draft form and I know it has a whole lot of work left to be done on it. I am feeling despair that I will never find a job in the cities we are trying to move to. I am feeling strangled by the amount of cat hair and dust clogging my house. 

This is how I am feeling today. 

But now that I've said it, I don't feel nearly as bad, or as much of these things as I did before. I feel better. I don't feel great, I don't feel 100% yet, but I feel better. 

I might sleep in tomorrow, though. Just in case. 

Micro Tears

I am making micro-tears in my perfect universe. 

Micro-tears in my muscles. That's strength. 

Micro-tears in my comfort bubble. That's growth. 

Micro-tears in the fabric of how I live, so carefully woven and cut and sewn just right. Micro-tears that give me a little more freedom, a little more move, a little more space to breathe deep and new. 

I am making micro-tears in what came before, to make room for what is coming next. 

Montana

Thanks, Montana. It's been a great 24 years.

The time has come to set off, to see what we can see. 

I'll never forget you, Montana.

You've done a great job raising me. 

I learned courage from you, and resilience, and strength. 

I learned to wave at people as I passed them by. 

I learned even the worst of storms will end.

I learned the smell of wheat and sun and earth.

Big Sky, big hearts, big open plains where you encouraged me to spread my wings. 

Skies wide enough to fall in; the clouds will always catch you.

Goodbye, my friends, my loves. 

Until we meet again.

Adventures call to me from the tops of those distant mountains. 

I'll always come back to you, Montana. 

Nothing can keep me from coming 

home. 

Currently Reading: March--Science Fiction and Fantasy

In March I am diving back into Science Fiction and Fantasy works I have been putting off in favor of other, more "literary" works. But at heart I AM a fantasy writer and I will always appreciate the nuance of fantasy that allows writers to delve into the most gripping social and cultural themes and leaves the reader with something to take away, a new way of thinking about these problems. Science-fiction and fantasy present such difficult subjects as racism, homophobia, war, stigma, terrorism, supremacy, and even death and offer readers, if not comfort or answers, an outlet through which to process that which cannot be comprehended. 

February I was focused on works of non-fiction, mostly memoir and personal essays; I am almost 50,000 words into my first book of personal essays,short stories, and poems,and I am even submitting excerpts from my book to publishers and magazines and they are actually being picked up. I focused on non-fiction works to help propel my own work along, and I am in a great rhythm with it now. I am excited to finish it so I may focus on my first novel again, which is a work of fantasy. 

In February and early March I finished reading the following books, and I would recommend them all. Especially David Sedaris. He is just too honest about real life and it made my soul happy to learn other human beings on this Earth as possibly as crazy and messed-up as me. Enjoy.

Me Talk Pretty One Day--David Sedaris. This was the first taste of Sedaris for me, and at first bite (or essay) I was hooked. Sedaris has a way of drawing his readers in, a compelling writing style that is very roundabout and non-linear and riddled with bad words and even worse imagery (cum and spit and toilets and poop) and I couldn't turn away even as badly as I wanted to. He makes the nitty-gritty relatable, awkward as it is. 

Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls--David Sedaris. Again, I was laughing out loud and cringing visibly and enjoying every moment of it with David Sedaris' essay collection that only briefly mentions owls. 

The Wave in the Mind--Ursula Le Guin. This is a collection of essays spanning years and topics and themes and I loved it. Le Guin is a new-to-me artist and I am mildly disappointed in myself that I did not discover her earlier. This year the "Big Read Under the Big Sky" in my hometown was Le Guin's Earthsea novel, A Wizard of Earthsea and I was all but dragged into the magic of this world. I had to have more Le Guin, and I was thrilled to discover a collection of readings, essays, and even prose poetry and evaluation and diagramming of prose and passages from some of Le Guin's favorite writers. Fantastic, all the way through. 

Grace (Eventually) Some Thoughts on Faith--Anne Lamott. I all but devoured Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird, and for good reason--she is an amazing writer. I enjoyed a lot of the essays in this book but some of them I disagreed with, and some made me downright uncomfortable. After all, Lamott is a pretty devout Christian, and she is a bit of a hippie, and she has a now-grown son and I just could not relate on a lot of those things; we had trouble seeing eye-to-eye at times. Still, a good read by a great writer. 

A Confusion of Princes--Garth Nix. This one was a little more science-fictiony than I normally read. I can get bogged down in the creation of the worlds and the tech and it can hinder my interest, but this story was fun and different and it really picked up speed for me a little later on. Plus, I got to revisit the world in the next book I read, which was an unexpected treat. 

Shade's Children--Garth Nix. This is a weird one; an alternate universe where overnight all adults (people over 15 years of age) disappear and giant humanoid creatures come to gather all the children left behind, taking them to a giant warehouse known as The Meat Factory. The strange new fantastic creatures that now run the world keep the children in storage until they reach their "Sad Birthday" at age 15 and are killed and dissected, organs and legaments and body parts used to fuel grotesque creatures like the Ferrets, furry men with elongated bodies and claws and teeth that sniff out the children who have escaped, and the Mormidons who look like giant spiky robots and who stomp around in groups of six, fighting enemy Mormidons and also tracking down children who manage to escape The Meat Factory. This story is about a group of children who escape the knife and find each other and an AI/holographic memory-of-a-man named Shade. Together with Shade's instructions these children try to put the world to right again and bring back the humans. By the end of the book I'm not so sure they succeed, or whether we are all doomed. It may be an allegory I never picked up on, but supposedly this is a YA novel. I first read it in 8th grade--I haven't been able to get it out of my head since. Nix will do that to you. 

To Hold the Bridge--Garth Nix. Seriously, Garth Nix. Read him! Read Sabriel and the Old Kingdom series. I don't care if you don't end up liking it, you should support this artist anyway. He is great. This is a smattering of different works by him, of all themes fantastic and mythical. Some are funny, some are gross, some were a little confusing and full of too much backstory to hold their own (or my attention) but this collection starts with an Old Kingdom story and I will never stop wanting to explore that world more and more. 

8 Things I Wish I Knew about Polyamory Before I Tried It and Frakked It Up--Cunning Minx. Personal growth comes with growing pains just like bones.  

Magic Bites--Ilona Andrews. Ilona Andrews is actually a pen name for the husband/wife duo that write this series. I was not immediately hooked, but this book has popped up on my radar for a number of years now and I finally  buckled down and got it. I was drawn in about a third of the way through, and I am eager for more of this sassy character. I want her to be more than just sassy, though; I want my fantasy characters to be more than thick-skinned, sword-wielding badasses. I want them to be able to cry more, and to think how unfair the world is, and to like the girl and not the guy, and to have more gratuitous sex, because in a post-apocalyptic world like this one I am fairly certain more people would be fucking like rabbits. I want my heroines to be real flesh-and-blood people even when they aren't really, even when they turn out to be ghosts, and gods' daughters, and part fairy and what-not. Bu having a main character be a woman in a mostly male-dominated genre like fantasy, though, is hard enough without trying to work in the subtlety of having a woman character who can cry and throw a punch and be taken seriously as a sexual being and also save the world. That's a hard day's work even for the best of us. Still, Joss Whedon managed it, so the impossible is not impossible. 

Norse Mythology--Neil Gaiman. Amazing. This book sold out its first printing faster than Thor's hammer could call down lighting from the sky. And this book also tells you HOW Thor got ahold of such a hammer that could call down lightning from the sky! I was very interested in Gaiman's matter-of-fact interpretations of the origin stories for the Norse gods and goddesses; he sounded like an anthropologist relaying his thesis,tracing the lineage and origin stories for these names and figures that are at once recognizable and yet still so unknown. The book focuses on Thor, Odin, and Loki mostly, but it draws in all the gods and goddesses at some point, from their births to their deaths at Ragnarok.  And he still managed to end it in true Gaiman fashion--teasing, not telling, not giving anything away about what might come next. 

The Magicians--Lev Grossman. This book spans literally decades, and has almost eight main characters. It is no mean feat to introduce so many criss-crossing plot arcs, one shooting over atop another and another, each one coming in with a bang and then fizzling out until one day, just when you think the sky is clear, they all come shooting across again in an even bigger light show, but Grossman manages to pull it off. A well thought-out coming-of-age story. Though the book gets a little muddy for me in the middle with the main character's constant whining and sense of disillusionment with the world and with his life, even besides the fact that he's a fucking wizard who does magic and can pretty much mold the world in his hands, the plots all tie up nicely in a bow at the end and you end up smacking yourself in the forehead for having not figured it all out before. That's the best kind of writing--everything written there, plain as day, and you combing through the bushes in the dark, convinced you've been tricked. 

House Immortal--Devon Monk. Devon Monk is an author I read religiously for a number o years. Her series Magic in the Bone with Allie Beckman was very compelling, and rather long, and I read every one, some even more than once. This is a new series by Devon Monk, and while it has everything I liked about her writing (sassy main character, well-built universe, rounded-out characters who don't go throwing themselves into things unnecessarily) I was not as intrigued by the new character, Matilda, who is a stitched-together (think Frankenstein but a woman, and hot) creature who lives off the grid with her two-headed farmhand, who one day opens her door to a wounded (hot) stitched-together man, the only other person like herself she has ever met, who has come to warn her that bad people are out get her, and he knows how to save her. By the end of the book I was interested enough to want to go searching out the next chapter in the story, but I am not pounding down the doors for it. In the end, Monk is a bit of an airport writer--someone I pick up because I know her work will be entertaining and a quick read, but not someone I can see being canonized for her genius. 

One Step at a Time

What just happened?
What have we done?

 He was just elected president. He has won.
What have we done?

This is happening. 

This sucks, this
fucking sucks. 

Do they know what they’ve done? He’s a bigot, 
I’m unsafe, the world’s so rigid.

We’re unsafe,
guns on a rampage.

What the fuck America?
What are we going to do?

I don’t know what to
do. 

This is happening. 

I’m so angry, everyone is so angry and
crying 

and I’m trying
to hold it together. 

Make America great again?
How about make America hate again. 

How could we. 

This is happening. 

I tried to have hope.
I put in my vote. 

And everyone is crying
and he’s defiling 

this system. 
No one will listen 

to each other.
Father turned against mother. 

But it’s alright.
It’ll be alright.

We’ll fight the fight.
Put it to right. 

One step at a
time.

One step at a
time. 

Great Legs

I hope you don't mind...I just gotta say...you have great legs. Ya know that? You just do. I'm sorry, you'll have to forgive me, I just had to say it! 

Thank you, sir. I know, sir. Yes, sir. Thank you. 

I know I have great legs. They are powerful legs. They take me places I need to go. They let me walk, run, move, shake. They are great legs. They do work. 

I do work, too. Me, the person attached to these great legs. I am up here too, you know. You talked to my legs almost as if you forgot there was a human powering them. 

Yes, sir, I know I have great legs. You really didn't need to say it. 

Currently Reading: February--Memoirs

Franzen and I did not get along. I picked up his memoir The Discomfort Zone but I almost immediately zoned out and did not finish it. 

I firmly believe that life is too short to read books you are not passionate about--that philosophy dictates much of how I live my life. I want great food, a healthy mind and body, new challenges that excite and engage, and Franzen's memoir was not a challenge that engaged me. 

I put aside Franzen and turned to Joan Didion's The White Album, but I am sorry to say the same thing happened. I am seeking out inspiration for my current personal essay project and I need to read pieces by authors I feel connected to and inspired by--authors with similar voices, thoughts, subjects, and experiences. 

Sometimes you have to look no further than your own bookcase to find the right work for you, and I almost smacked myself in the forehead when I realized I already had what I wanted to be reading. I had a stack of library books urging me to start diving in before the return deadline loomed too close, and yet I still turned to my shelf and pulled out Inside Out: Lesbian Theories, Gay Theories.

This work pulls from myriad voices in the LGBTQ community, voices similar and very different from my own. Sometimes the right book finds you at just the right time; I had bought this book four years ago in my final semester at university and had yet to crack it open, but I am glad I did now.

More updates to follow. 

Currently Reading: January 2017--African American/Black British works

I have made it my goal to read 75 books in 2017, from January 1st to December 31st. I am an avid reader and while this goal means I'd need to read an average of 1.5 books a week, I am confident I will be able to succeed.

I have discovered the great joy of reading books in series. Not necessarily books OF a series, but books that have common threads, themes, and thematic elements that draw correlations between them. This could mean reading books by just one author, from one time period, or regarding one theme. 

I got my hands on a few of the "Best Books of 2016" over the Christmas season: The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead, Swing Time by Zadie Smith, and Homegoing by Yaas Gyasi and this drew my attention to a group of authors I had studied much of in university but had since not delved back into: African American/Black British authors.

I began to scour our four bookshelves, approximately 500 books worth, for works written by African American/Black British/African writers and I was pleased to come up with a reading list of over 15 books. Works by such authors including Maya Angelou, Alice Walker, Langston Hughes, Ann Petry, Toni Morrison, Zora Neale Hurston, Charles Johnson, and of course Whitehead, Smith, and Gyasi, sit, amassed, on my desk, waiting to be explored.

This group of works have brought to my attention many interesting ideas; discussions on identity, belonging, heritage, self-worth, what makes us human, culture, what makes us laugh, how we express ourselves, and the nature of language, to name only a few. Many of these works are canonized and a few I have already read. But there is never any harm in familiarizing yourself with a great book again, living out once more a story that has touched you. 

Here is what I read in January, 2017:

1. Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. A very good read, and one I immediately passed on to another friend. A great way to start the new year, too. This book was a lesson directed to the reader by a very unusual and poignant teacher. Ishmael touched on ideas of responsibility, culture, and how humans view the world around them. I will say, about halfway through the book I had to take a break, even though the novel is not very long. I felt I needed to sort through what had already been said before I could go on; I needed time to compartmentalize the various lessons being taught. 

2. Homegoing by Yaas Gyasi. One of my favorites I had read in a long time. This book takes place over literally hundreds of generations, with multitudes of characters that weave in and out of the book. It was thrilling and tragic and engaging and masterfully paced such that each time a chapter ended, the reader was eager to go on to the next, envisioning what next could lie ahead. This author's voice was distinct and powerful. I cannot wait to read more of her works. 

3. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. I am rereading this one after reading it first in university, four years ago. Still amazing, four years later. Hurston's dialect is unmatched in its elegance and execution. The reader is drawn entirely into Janie's story of love, heartbreak, resilience, and self-awareness. Once you get into the rhythm and flow of Hurston's dialect, the story envelopes you and never lets you go, even after you've finished it. 

4. Swing Time by Zadie Smith. This was my first encounter with Zadie Smith and everything I have heard about her rings true: she has a voice deep with wisdom and soul, even for how young she is yet. This is a story of two young friends who meet in a dance class in urban London with the same dream--to dance. But only one of them has the feet for it, and their paths diverge as cause of it. The girls' differing paths take them far from what they know, out from London to the far coasts of West Ghana, but throughout the book their interconnecting destinies remain a taut line linking them to each other and their heritage, even as they both struggle to let go. 

5. The Color Purple by Alice Walker. Another rereading, as well it should be. Alice Walker says Their Eyes Were Watching God was the book that most influenced her own writing, and that is very apparent in Walker's use of dialect as well as her strong, tradition-defying women characters who break away from the drudgery of lives chosen for them and seek to become self-actualized, independent creatures of their own making. This book is composed entirely of letters written by the main character to God, and later to her sister Nellie. The letter format is engaging and compelling, giving the reader a keen glimpse into the development of the character through her most private, intimate thoughts and experiences. 

6. Smoke Screen by Sandra Brown. A complete deviation from the theme series and from what I normally read--I borrowed this book from a friend I was visiting because drunk Paige thought it looked interesting. It was okay. It is what it sounds like: a semi-trashy airport novel without much depth and a little casual sex, murder, mystery, and sexy firemen. 

7. The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead. This book won the National Book Award and it is very apparent why. This work takes a staple of American History, the urban myth of "the Underground Railroad" network that runaway slaves used to escape the bonds of Southern slavery, and turns it into a reality. The way in which Whitehead takes one of the most important, notable metaphors of American culture and flips it the other way is praiseworthy. Whitehead invents an actual railroad with actual stations and trains and conductors that help escaped slaves travel North. It was enthralling and provocative and masterfully executed. Whitehead actualizes the metaphor just enough and does not reveal even half the mystery of how the railroad operates. He tantalizes the reader with magic but never reveals his secrets. 

8. Goldenhand by Garth Nix. I have been waiting to read this book for a long time and I finally got my hands on it. Garth Nix is my favorite author. He writes works of fantasy, many of which are geared to Young Adult audiences. I discovered Sabriel, the first book in the Old Kingdom series, at the local library when I was in middle school. The overly dramatic ink drawing cover was what drew me in, and I was immediately hooked. The series takes place in a magical world that consists of the Old Kingdom, a place of magics unlike anything else--Charter Magic and Free Magic---, and the non-magic kingdom, Ancelstierre, that borders it. 

The Old Kingdom series begins with Sabriel, a Necromancer (someone who can control the Dead and bring things back to life.) But Sabriel is no ordinary Necromancer--she is the Abhorsen, the person whose sworn duty it is to put the Dead down again and protect Life from that which should stay dead. She must protect the Old Kingdom and Ancelstierre from an evil unlike anything anyone has seen for hundreds of years; a Free Magic Creature of great power has risen and is hell-bent on taking over the world. Nothing a 16-year-old can't handle with a magic sword, a bandolier of bells to control the Dead, and a magic cat-like creature with an attitude. 

Goldenhand is the fifth in the Old Kingdom series and it is just as enthralling as the first. I recommend Garth Nix to anyone, young or old, who needs a spark of magic in their life. And who isn't too squeamish. 

I did not quite make it through all 15 of the books I pulled off my shelves, but I am not yet done with this exploration into culture(s) so different from my own. I will take a slight divergence in February to study essays and personal memoirs, but I will delve into Maya Angelou's All God's Children Need Walking Shoes as a way to bridge the gap back into African American/Black British exploration. I still have Toni Morrison, Langston Hughes, more Zadie Smith, and Ann Petry to enjoy.  

I am currently about halfway through the writing of my own personal memoirs and I am seeking inspiration from some of the greats such as Joan Didion, David Sedaris, Jonathan Franzen, Mary Karr, and even notes by some of my favorite writers such as Ursula Le Guin and Stephen King. First up for February is Jonathan Franzen's work, The Discomfort Zone. This one in particular called to me as much of what I am currently writing is very personal, deep, and something I hope no one in my family ever reads. I think Franzen and I will get along very well.

Me and My Label Maker

This is a talk I was honored to be able to participate in with Linda Stein's exhibition, "The Fluidity of Gender" through Have Art: Will Travel. 

https://www.facebook.com/HaveArtWillTravel/videos/1089835891053219/?pnref=story

Dear Friend

Dear Friend--

May I call you that? I feel I should, considering how long we have talked, how much you know about me. I would like to call you Friend. 

Dear Friend, 

Please tell me. Please ask. It's alright to have questions. It's alright to ask. 
I know you wonder, reading this and the others I write to you, that you are curious about what it is I say, about things I share. Curiosity is only part of being human. So is wanting to share, to tell stories--that is what I do here.

You may not like my stories. That's fine. You may not want me to tell you so much. So don't read. But if you do read, and if you want to share a story or tell me something in return, please do. 

I tell these stories, I tell you my thoughts because I hope they will help. It helps me to write them. I hope it helps you to read them. 

So please ask. Tell me you've read what I said and then ask me the questions you think. I don't mind. I want to know what you're thinking--I'm an open page and your mind remains locked up. Share with me and I promise to listen. It's only what Friends do. 

Thank you, Friend. You're more important to me than you know. Next time, let me tell you in person. 

Until then, all my love. 

Your Friend