Travel Ah City

We got back from Hawaii last night. The minute the plane took off from Honolulu, the two people in the seats in front of us reclined their seats a-l-l the w-a-y b-a-c-k. Ruthless for Annie and me, who are big girls (I'm 5'8 and she's 5'10 ... and we weigh, well, I won't go there). Although it may be a good yoga position, it's not fun flying with your knees curled up to your chest.

I hate flying but love to travel so I suck it up. I'm claustrophobic to boot, which makes sitting on the tarmac before the plane takes off torture. My doctor gave me some killer drug that I took on the way over--it made me feel like if the plane started spiraling to earth I wouldn't have a care in the world--but for the next 24 hours I was so agitated and blue I realized the backlash of anti-anxiety medications aren't worth it for me. So I went drugless on the flight home (unless you count a big, fat beer I drank in the airport ahead of time).

One thing I realized about flying is it's good to distract myself. I can't sleep, no matter how tired I am, so I listened to a book on tape and talked a lot to the woman in the seat next to me. She's 81 years old and was born in Hawaii but has lived in California since she was 18. She's of Japanese descent and told me her husband had been in a Japanese internment camp (Topaz) during WWII. I asked her if she had been interned too, and she said there weren't internment camps in Hawaii because there were just too many Japanese to lock up. Ah, the logic of racism.

We spent 5 days on Oahu. I love the air in Hawaii and the water; there's nothing like swimming in the ocean sans wetsuit. However, Honolulu is not my favorite place. I'm glad I experienced it, but I don't go to Hawaii for the city life. I like the nature. We were able to get up to the beautiful north shore for a bit. I'll post pictures soon.

I have a lot to catch up on ... and I want to get back to my novel. I feel time closing in on me. I like spring break but summer break reigns supreme.

A new kidney

This is an amazing story. I wrote last year about Savilla (sister of a friend of mine) and her quest to get a new kidney. The video explains what happened.

For more information or to make a donation, click here.

Aloha!

We're off!

It'll be a bit different from last time since it's a family trip (with my sisters and my mom) and we'll be doing a more touristy thing in a nice hotel on the island of Oahu, but trust me, I ain't complaining. I'll pick up a tan and drink in the sweet air (and a few special beverages) for ya'll.

Aloha: Hello, goodbye, love, peace, compassion ...

Taxes, books and aloha

Good thing I went back to check on the status of the e-filing of my taxes because I'd made a mistake I had to fix before the filing actually happens. Probably my unconscious was so pissed off at the inanity of the way we file taxes that it accidentally undermined me.

I have two more teaching days (which includes a 10-hour marathon on Wednesday) before we take off for Hawaii. My sisters, Annie, my mom and I are spending a few days on Oahu together. This will be our way of cherishing this moment because, as my dad used to say, the only constant is change. It's hard to believe that this St. Patrick's Day will mark two years since his death. Now we face all the perils of mom's Alzheimer's so we try to focus on having a good time in the moment in whatever ways the abundances of our lives permit.

I've been reading and writing like a fiend lately. I'm new to the Wally Lamb thing: Recently read and for the most part enjoyed She's Come Undone, and now I'm listening to his second book, a 700-pager called I Know This Much is True, on my ipod and am hooked. I like the lively voice and large scope of his books--and the way everything intertwines in surprising ways.

I just finished Jhumpa Lahiri's novel The Namesake. I liked the first 40 pages or so. I was very interested in the scenes in India and the way the characters perceived the U.S. after they immigrated. But soon I found myself losing interest. There were several problems. One is that Lahiri's novelistic style feels more like summary ("this happened, then this, then this") rather than a story I can experience through scenes. The voice was flat, and this was exacerbated by the fact that it's written in present tense. I never emotionally connected to these characters. I also got bored with the second half that focused on lots of rich, young New Yorkers sitting around drinking wine. I haven't read her two story collections, but I've heard she's a phenomenal short story writer--so I'll definitely give those a try. Seems like some fantastic short story writers (like Aimee Bender and Alice Munro) are pressured to write novels when in fact they are brilliant at the story. It's like asking a surgeon to be an attorney.

I jammed through My Life as Traitor, a memoir by Zarah Ghaharamani about her imprisonment and torture in an Iranian prison when she was 20 years old. She was arrested (more like abducted) for being involved in protests at her university. I found it very powerful the way her loving home life and rich portrayal of Iranian society was juxtaposed against the insanity and brutality of religious zealotry and totalitarianism. Not quite as powerful to me as Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, but in the same vein.

On the writing front, the new novel is finally taking off. I think I have what are probably (how's that for hedging?) 50 or so good pages. But who knows in the final draft what will happen to those pages. It just feels good to be getting to know some new characters. Right now the novel is centering on the conflicts and internal lives of a couple in their 40s and their two teenaged kids, a boy and a girl. Nothing is as it seems. At least that's the mantra playing in my mind as the tell me about their lives. Yes, when writing's going well, that's the way it seems: that the characters are dictating the words to me.

The blurbs for Complementary Colors are beginning to come in. Here's one from Cynn Chadwick.

As with her first novel, For the May Queen, Kate Evans explores not so much a coming of age story as a coming to terms story in her new novel Complementary Colors. Gwen Sullivan returns to the Bay Area after a stint teaching English in Japan. With nowhere else to go, and mostly only the clothes in her suitcase, she moves in with her boyfriend, Daniel, a genius but self-absorbed scientist who, though inviting Gwen to live with him, makes no accommodations for her presence—physically or emotionally. Along with her increasingly unsatisfying relationship and a job that doesn’t thrill her, Gwen decides to take a poetry class to ease her discontent; it is here that she meets Cat and Jamie, a couple of rollicking rough and tumble dykes, who are as intrigued by Gwen as she is by them. And while poetry may be the medium, a myriad of creative and sexual fires are alighted within Gwen against a backdrop of a widening void between herself and Daniel. As we follow Gwen’s journey for self-awareness, we are not so much rooting for her peace as we are cheering for her to come to terms with and embrace her truest desires. Whether she is imbued with confusion or clarity, we are rallying for Gwen’s appreciation of her creative and sexual self as she comes closer to realizing and living her own truth. A deftly crafted exploration of self-identity as only Kate Evans can achieve. Brava!

Paying for success, lazy writing, a few good things

The heat isn't working in my prehistoric office building so excuse my typos because my fingers are ice cubes. It's warmer outside than in here. You can bet our campus president isn't freezing his buns off right now.

Which reminds me of the fact that all the downsizing that will be occurring on my campus will involve cutting back on students and teachers. Not one administrator will lose a job or get a pay cut. Read more about it here if you like your blood to boil. We have been so successful at San Jose State that now, yes, we must pay for it.

Oh, but I'm not done ranting. I've never been a fan of The L Word and haven't watched it in a long time, but a friend of ours had a "let's watch the last episode party" otherwise known as the Dead Jenny Party. The L Word writers have been borrowing all season on the anachronistic laurels of the "Who Shot J.R.?" crew by leading-on viewers all season with the juicy fact that Jenny is killed--and the implication that the murderer would be unveiled in the last show.

We had to sit through an hour of anorexics with bad hair mouthing horrid dialogue to discover ... a trick ending. No, not a surprise (surprises are good) but a trick (tricks are the result of lazy writing). Thank goodness there were smart, beefy lesbians at the party and good food and drink; otherwise it would have been a waste of an hour of my living time.

The students in my fiction class this semester write stories a zillion times more engaging than anything on TV these days. Truly, there are some rockin' writers in that class. It's been a blast so far.

That said, I always find spring semester more of a trial than fall semester. The fall is easier, coming in off the energy of summer. All spring I keep looking over the hump of the week for the good weather and all that luxurious time off. I know all of you who get 2 weeks off a year feel just so sorry for me.

My morning writing sessions have been going so well (knock on wood) to the point where I'm actually enjoying writing again. Imagine that. Which is another reason I can't wait for summer because spending hours on end in the world of my novel with little else pressing is, well, heaven.

Overload

I graded papers for more than 12 hours on Sunday. That's what I get for not piecing them out and grading in small chunks over the course of several days.

Instead, on Friday I went to see my 8-year-old neice in a musical extravaganza about immigration. A highlight: a little blonde 8-year-old girl holding a suitcase and singing about being a mail order bride.

My mom came with us all too and enjoyed it. I like to have a good time with her while we can because her Alzheimer's is definitely advancing. She's getting frustrated because she can't do things she used to be able to do, like dial a phone. I remind her that the people at the front desk where she lives can help her out. It's why she lives where she lives so she can always get assistance when she needs it. We are very lucky in that way, I realize. Many people cannot afford an assisted living community, much less one that is as nice as Mom's. I call it our beautiful hell.

Saturday Annie, our friend Sharon and I went on a killer hike up in the Santa Cruz mountains. The only one who wasn't tired at the end was our little dog Max, whom we also call Winky because he often does just that. In fact, we caught him winking in this picture.

I also spent too much of the weekend reading Isabele Allende's new memoir, The Sum of Our Days. I'm too wiped out from paper-grading to write a decent review, but suffice it to say, I loved every word. How that woman can make me laugh in the middle of a story about death and chaos amazes me.

Tomorrow Aimee Bender will be on our campus. Looking forward to finally meeting her. I've read all her work and think she's a surprising, special writer.

Sneak peek...

This is the initial work-up of the cover for my new novel that's coming out this summer.

And here's what it's about:

What happens when a 31-year-old straight woman falls in love with a lesbian?

It's 1993, and Gwen Sullivan is agitated. She's been married and divorced and is now living with her scientist boyfriend who loses himself in dark moods. Her job at a tutoring center and her work on the Bill Clinton-for-President campaign leave her vaguely dissatisfied. She hopes taking a night class in poetry will help. In the class, the allure of two lesbians takes her by surprise. She can't get them out of her mind. This prompts her to question who she is—and who she wants to be.

Soon, Gwen cannot deny her intense attraction to one of the women, Jamie. As Jamie and Gwen become more and more entwined, Gwen must ask herself who she is and what she wants from life. She begins to see gender, sex and sexuality in new ways. As she feels compelled to “confess” her love for Jamie to her friends and family, she is continually surprised by their complex reactions that run the gamut from humorous to hostile. This leads her to make one of the most important decisions of her life.

Love to all on Valentine's Day

On our walk this morning we could see snow on Mt. Hamilton to the east, just a short drive from our house. It's cold here in the valley where a wind blows on us through the mountain.

A big week is ahead of me. I'm giving 3 readings: One at Ravenswood tomorrow, one on campus Wednesday and one Friday at the CATE Conference (an on-stage conversation about the coming-of-age novel with Nick Taylor). At the Wednesday reading at the library on campus, there will be a champagne reception--so if my book can't lure you, maybe free booze can?

My mom asked me to write a blog entry about Alzheimer's, the disease she suffers from. It's percolating and will appear here in the next few weeks. I'll get to see her tomorrow because she's coming with me to my reading. It's always bittersweet to spend time together at a literary event because I got my love for reading and writing from her--and she can no longer do either. Well, for the most part. She's keeping a journal of ongoing, short entries--writing it by hand because typing is too difficult. In her day she published several books and was a big reader. She told me she misses reading. Fortunately she has movies in her life--and a lot of family love.

News junkie detox, self-assured women and slow blogging

I've been feeling a bit hibernation-al since the election. Political burnout? I don't want to put my head in the sand, but when I listen to the news (mostly NPR), I find my blood pressure rising. Any mention of the words "economy," "stimulus," "partisan bickering" or "Congress" and I feel a need to hug a tree or enter news junkie detox.

Most of my energy these past few weeks has been put into teaching and writing. Lots of preparation for class and grading. Lots of hours working on final revisions of Complementary Colors, my novel that's coming out later this year.

I'm also writing on my new novel--by hand, in wide-ruled notebooks from Target. They don't have to be from Target, but they just happen to be. It makes writing feel as good as it did in middle school when I wrote long notes to friends in such notebooks. There's something that allows me to be more at ease with writing a shitty first draft when it's written in a notebook. It feels like there's more space for my unconscious and associational mind. It's hard to know if the writing's really any good, but I'm trying not to worry about that right now. Instead, I'm just moving along, gathering pages.

The reading at Books Inc. in the Castro with Patricia Harrelson was fun and intimate. (Intimate is code for not very many people in the audience.) It really was fun, though, and afterward the small audience, Patricia and I had a great conversation about being and writing, so to speak. One woman who attended I'd cyber-met on Goodreads. She, Annie and I really connected. How cool, we have a new writerly friend.

My next event is this Sunday, a poetry reading at Ravenswood in Livermore at 2 p.m.

A few new reviews of For the May Queen have been popping up, such as on Joy's Poetry Blog and The Feminist Review. I take a little issue with the notion that by the end of the book Norma has not "ditched her bad habits" nor "transformed into a strong self-assured woman." Sure, it's complicated--but from my view, at least, I see that she is living life more on her own terms.

Am I slow blogging these days? Kinda feels like it. Then again, this comment itself with the link might mean I'm not.

Walking and listening

Tonight is my reading with Patricia Harrelson at Books Inc. in the Castro at 7:30 p.m. Come by if you can!

I finally finished listening to Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. You know it's a good sign when you're in the middle of listening to a book on tape on your ipod and you can't wait to get out for another walk to continue listening. Elizabeth Gilbert's mellifluous, smoky voice was part of my life for weeks, and I'll miss her.

Bottom line, she's a very good writer. I enjoyed her witty insights into life. There were times when I felt she lingered too long on some of her twisting thoughts (especially with some of the god talk ... yes, I know, there is "pray" in the title, should have been a warning)--and that would be when I'd still feel the rhythm and tone of her voice but drift off a bit and focus instead on the trees, the car, my dog on a leash.

In the first part, "Italy," I noticed that as she talked about her depression she said she tried "everything" to get out of it before succumbing to drug therapy: meditation, hanging around positive people, exercise, prayer ... but I noticed her list was lacking one thing my mother always told me lifted depression: helping other people. When I was a teenager slouching around the house, bemoaning one thing or another, Mom would say, "Go volunteer somewhere, help some people, get outside of your pitiful self."

Or something like that.

That's what I wanted to say to Liz at times as she spoke into my ears. But listening to a book on tape is not a dialogue. Later, though, when she was in Bali in the last part of the book, it seems that is one thing she did learn. Of course nothing is as simple as it sounds, and I enjoyed the surprises in that section as she tried to navigate the cultural and personality differences between herself and the woman she was attempting to assist.

I loved the end of the book, the last image, the last line. It made me smile in a weepy little way as I walked down the sidewalk toward home.

The Fabulous Barbara Crooker

For a while I wrote a blog feature called "Poetry Monday," which I loved in theory because I got to write about and spread around wonderful poetry ... but in practice, it made my blog a job. An unpaid job. I don't need another unpaid job in my life.

That said, now and again, at random times, I will share with you some poetry by poets I think are fabulous. Today I share with you Barbara Crooker. These poems come from Radiance .

In Barbara's words, both poems are:

"ekphrastic* in nature. Also both are based on gardens, both my own, and ones that I've visited, and travelling in France. It seems that writing poetry is the only way that an English major/Art History minor, enthusiastic but amateur gardener, and would-be world traveller can come together!

*(poetry that has a conversation with art)

IRIS, 1889
Vincent Van Gogh

Out of the stony ground of his tortured life, these iris

rise, writhe, charmed like snakes by the song of the sun.

The wild blue heart of longing moves up, up,

from papery rhizomes, common dirt. Out of nothing,

armfuls of sky. They burn, flames in a hearth, as they dance

above the pale green swords of their leaves. It's all

or nothing, this loud shout, this wild abundance, a few short

weeks in May. On the canvas, they sing forever. The suffering

world recedes in the background. They lean to the left, pushed

by the wind, but not one stalk is bent or broken. Oh, the fierce

burning joys of this life; all the things of the world, about to vanish.

*

THE HOUR OF PEONIES

The Buddha says, "Breathing in, I know I am here in my body.

Breathing out, I smile to my body," and here I am, mid-span,

a full-figured woman who could have posed for Renoir.

When I die, I want you to plant peonies for me, so each May,

my body will resurrect itself in these opulent blooms, one of les Baigneuses,

sunlight stippling their luminous breasts, rosy nipples, full bellies,

an amplitude of flesh, luxe, calme et volupté. And so are these flowers,

an exuberance of cream, pink, raspberry, not a shrinking violet among them.

They splurge, they don't hold back, they spend it all.

At the end, confined to a wheelchair, paintbrushes strapped to his arthritic hands,

Renoir said, "the limpidity of the flesh, one wants to caress it.

"Even after the petals have fallen, the lawn is full of snow,

the last act in Swan Lake where the corps de ballet, in their feathered tutus,

kneel and kiss the ground, cover it in light.

*

Barbara Crooker’s work has appeared in magazines such as Yankee, The Christian Science Monitor, Highlights for Children, and The Journal of American Medicine (JAMA). She is the recipient of the 2006 Ekphrastic Poetry Award from Rosebud, the 2004 WB Yeats Society of New York Award, the 2003 Thomas Merton Poetry of the Sacred Award, three Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Creative Writing Fellowships, and has been a twenty-four time nominee for the Pushcart Prize. Radiance, her first full-length book, won the 2005 Word Press First Book competition, and was a finalist for the 2006 Paterson Poetry Prize. Line Dance was published by Word Press in 2008. Recently, Garrison Keillor read eleven of her poems on The Writer's Almanac, National Public Radio.

Football non grata

This Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Patricia Harrelson, author of Between Two Women, and I are doing a reading at Books Inc. in the Castro. If you're in the Bay Area, come by if you can!

Here's an interview I did with Patricia about her book, writing, life . . .

I've been noticing that reviews of my novel, For the May Queen, have gone viral on Goodreads and are multiplying on Amazon, for which I'm grateful. Well, I'm grateful for the good ones. And the bad ones? Some people just have no taste.

I'm in the process of writing another novel, and my new characters are front and center in my creative attention. They feel like people I'm living with--new roommates. We're negotiating our living space and our daily rhythms. The characters in For the May Queen, on the other hand, feel like old friends.

I heard a rumor that the Superbowl is today.