Zora Travels

Bubbling Characters

I had this vibrant image this morning as I wheeled my teacher cart down the sidewalk, bumping over cracks and dancing around sloshy mud puddles.  I imagined that I was a novelist, with words flowing from my fingertips.  The words bubbled on the page.  I had imbibed such life and luscious detail into the characters, that they took physical shape.  Pealing from the pages...moving into the room with breath and body.  My characters entered my life.  I smiled as we met.

Now, this fanciful walk was surely inspired by the gritty base tones of Toni Morrison, whose voice had filled my car yesterday evening as I drove home in a miserable clusterf--k of traffic.  She was reading from her new novel out next month, A Misery.  I ached to read about Florence and the Dutch trader who purchases her.  Toni scraped my soul in college.  She singed characters into my memory, most of whom have now joined hands with others from Jhumpa, Arundhati, Rohinton, Alice and Zora.  I can isolate a few of her moments of poignant humanity...which for my mind, is a total victory of literary genius.  Tiny babies slain before slave masters arrive, an old man jumping from a roof, a little girl playing with her blue-eyed doll.

Daniel struggles lately to unravel himself in his personal essays for grad. school applications.  I told him to simply "be natural" and to "write without trying to hard."  Yet, do I not sit here with my little blog and labor over each sentence?  Taking what starts as an energy-soaked kernel and overwatering or sunning it into a faltering sprout.

I laughed aloud last night as I curled on the couch, sipped warm Gewurztraminer with ice-cubes, and watched Smart People.  How does a writer pluck such succulent morsels of our common experience and portray them so artfully?  The cantankerous professor, the miserable Young Republican daughter, the poetic biting son.  It was a wonderful film that left my mind spinning with ideas of both how to raise a child that is equally brilliant with words (as the daughter is in the film) but also fluid within relationships.  A child that relishes the tickle of the SAT without scratching it raw.

Our eventual parenthood is often a topic of discussion.  It seems to creep into our thoughts after any time spent with the beloved children in our lives.  On Sunday, I slid, sang and smiled with my nephews in San Diego.  Trevor, a brown-eyed dynamo and Caiden, his mellow blue-eyed brother.  How can two siblings be so different?  Personalities that squish out from their very first faces and continue to spread wings that don't resembe one another.  Heather, their mother and my step-sister, had this book on "strong-willed children" and I found it riveting.  As her and my mother diced onions and carrots for the turkey soup, I soaked in passages that were completely opposite of every pedagogical article and text I've read of late.  "Be firm, do not offer options, do not praise proper behavior, enforce the rules, never back down, always battle in cases of disrespect and defiance."  I wondered how this would work in my classroom.  I wondered how this would work with some of the children I know...with the ones I may one day have.  Will I be as tough as I think?  Will I have children that don't interrupt, show respect as they enter and exit a room, use inside voices, and follow the rules?  Will they fear me?  Will I fear them?  Will they look back on their childhoods and be happy I was their mother?

Those are a lot of questions for someone with a bare finger and a pill popped religiously at 8pm.

A weekend which started with touching airy moon jellyfish in the bay, ended with kissing a monkey and an ultimate fighter.  Halloween with all of its candy, chocolate, candled pumpkins, and costumes will soon be here.  My mouth waters with the prospects of all the "borrowed" candy I'll pilfer from pillowcases and bowls.  Mara's children, lacking the raging sugar tooth of most youth, are always such easy and sweet victims.

A literary question

I have two choices this September.  Choice #1: read the novel, Rule of the Bone, that is normally read to the 10th graders.  Choice #2: select my own.

If I choose to flow with the norm, then my friend Kaitie (who is out on maternity leave) will hand me eight weeks of finely-sculpted lesson plans, quizzes with answer keys, and sample essays.  Thematic questions on transformation and change will be handed over for me to simply implement.  I'll come up with some key talking points; however, the bulk of the unit will stem from her prior work.  On the other hand, if I chose to select my own narrative, I will need to develop the entire curricula myself.

Narrative units are luscious.  Dollop class discussions of life, experience, and family against a fine piece of literary canvas.  The words on the page act as a catalyst that stimulates the students to reflect on their own lives, sense of loss, and hopes for the future.  Characters who peel back layers of unspoken fears and anger often invoke students to do the same in their writing.  And in the midst of their brave journey, my own mind finds the calloused traveling feet and satiated sensory experience of an imagined vacation. 

Another consideration for this unit...it might be my last (at least of the "inner-city high school English" variety).  Potentially the final unit that I unwrap with heart-pattering anticipation like a beautiful gift on Christmas morning.  Careful not to tear the shiny paper, gently nudging the taut bow off the corners, slipping my fingers under the tape on the back, wondering if it is really a coffee maker or merely a ruse.  The box opens revealing layers upon layers of tissue paper (it's definitely not a coffee maker).  I embrace the new treasure nestled between the crinkling pastels.

This is what literature and the teaching of it means to me, hence my struggle to teach a novel, albeit easier, that contains quotes such as:

"I'm like, Gimme twenty bucks up front or find yourself another protege.  Plus I don't do no sex with you.  No f---ing or sucking (36)."

"He had a bunch of stolen credit cards that he used strictly for phone sex with Orientals, Dial-a-Jap he called it, his favorite recreational activity...(47)"

"Joker or Raoul or Packer would be over in the corner on his hands and knees with his pants around his ankles humping some female from behind...Roundhouse sprawled on the chair next to them jerking off...(58)"

Is it a fair fight; however, when I purposely selected the most offensive and sloppily written blather above from Rule of the Bone and lovingly coaxed out the beautiful melodies of one of my favorite novels below for the comparison?  But, just for fun, here are the slightly-melted-dark-chocolate-with-a-glass-of-sweet-muscat quotes from Arundhati Roy's God of Small Things (a novel first brought to my attention by its greatest fan, Claire)

"Little events, ordinary things, smashed and reconstituted. Imbued with new meaning. Suddenly they become the bleached bones of a story (32)."

"Anything's possible in Human Nature ...Love. Madness. Hope. Infinite joy (112)."

"It is curious how sometimes the memory of death lives on for so much longer than the memory of the life that it purloined."

Now, I imagine settling my gigantic behind into the tall vinyl stool at the front of the room, I lick my lips and look out onto the sea of utterly bored faces and ask them to pick up their novels.  Several minutes pass as the students cluster themselves around the few who actually brought their novels, I finish scanning with my stink eye, I clear my throat, there is a palpable sense of anticipation, and my voice either casts these words out to the literary-starved 15 year olds,

"They all broke the rules. They all crossed into forbidden territory. They all tampered with the laws that lay down who should be loved and how. And how much (31). "

or I ignore the faint sting of vomit at the back of my throat, grateful for easy lesson plans, and say,

"The females definitely weren't skags but they weren't anything special neither.  Not babes (51)."

I realize that the debate seems pointless, the gauntlet cleanly passed before it even began; however, the quality of my personal life wrestles with my professional integrity.  First thing I must do is actually finish this bright yellow novel...all 390 pages of what I hope will turn into the novel that "is a work of can-do genius" (New York magazine).  I already know what awaits behind Roy's lily pad cover and dog-eared pages.  Page one will plop your mind immediately down into a quiet space of wonder, whilst page 101 of Rule of the Bone already has my mind slurping dredge off the sea floor.  But fair is fair and I have to at least finish it to justify my eventual decision.

 

Gentle Traveling Abundance

Riding up the blue vein to the heart of LA on Saturday, I spent time with the Columbian whores and nonagenarian journalist in Marquez' novel.  We disembarked at Pershing Square.  Wafts of urine, scurrying pigeons, and incense-burning street dwellers awaiting our arrival.  We circled the streets looking for the market.

Blond wood shavings curl on the contrete floor of the Grand Central Market.  It's a luscious sensory slip into the fruit, herb, and fruit stalls.  Amidst the piles of ripe melons and avocados, gentrifying couples and chin-strapped tourists jostle alongside sweaty day laborers.  Salvadorian pupusas competed with shiny kung pao chicken, aged falafel patties, and Mexican sopes.  My Berkeley memories of cheese oozing from thick cornmeal pickets, smothered in pickled cabbage salad and salsa, found us awaiting our calabeza, hongo, espinaca, and pollo surprises.  And soon, with laborious plastic-knife precision, lunch was finished and we waddled with greasy lips back into the subway's belly.

The Olvera Street of my adolescent recollection is highlighted by virgin margaritas with my aunt and uncle, stalls sprouting from the brick pathway enticing tourists with folkorico dresses, wooden toys, and vendors hawking the latest in Chinese and Mexican crap.  Saturday's vision was not an extreme diversion; however, the hammered tin crosses and thick shot glasses sold at my beloved Iguana were not only cheaper here, but also enchanted by the Mariachis and blind accordion player's ballads.

From El Salvador to Mexico to China we scurried.  Daniel and I make a point of visiting every Chinatown on our travels.  I think for him this honors his mother, who adores the plastic-wrapped, bamboo shoots, and dangling caramel pigs of all Chinatowns.  We have fingered satin slippers, ginseng root, and Boba tea in New York, San Francisco, Portland, and now in our own back yard.  San Francisco's dragon-tailed gate and hilly contents rise far above the rest; while Portland's one block of shuttered stores with cheesy Chinese accents lags behind its urban brethren.

This adventure spawned from Daniel's morning cyber-hunt for fatigue remedies.  Upon reading about the powers of ginseng and Wing Hop Fung Emporium, we both ignored the red tea box already lurking in our kitchen cabinet, and decided upon this tourist journey.  Red lanterns  (an image that never tires) swayed across the stone plaza, complete with dead-serious old men smacking tiles onto a wooden board, cursing (I'm confidently assuming), and leering with cigarettes dangling from their mouths at those tourists who found them irrestible to photogaph.

As we hustled towards the fanciful gold line station, we came across this spiral of Chinese characters.  This statement woven in concrete suited our adventure perfectly:  Encouraging the gentle traveling abundance.

***This is my first post sinced receiving a wonderous post on my friend Claire's blog, Life in Chicago.  I appreciate all of my new readers and encourage you all to visit her personal blog and the hilarious blog, She Wrote, He Wrote, that she co-writes with her "soon-to-be husband" Greg.***

The Hand of Fatima

Yesterday afternoon as balmy clouds swallowed the sun, I found a spot in Portfolio.  With my nutmeg-spiced mug of soy cocoa and a sack of new library books, I wiggled down into a worn chair and opened my journal.  I began to take out each book coated with plastic and bar codes, and remember what had drawn me to them.  My books cover liberation (The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted) and American divas in Paris (The Book of Salt).  Some of them garnered my attention because of their reviews...I mean how can you resist a book described as an "exotic brilliance of a saffron sky" (The End of Manners)?  And while Love in the Time of Cholera still beckons from my night stand and White Teeth lingers heavily in my backpack with a Golden Spoon napkin on page 102...I was drawn to check out another Marquez (Memories of My Melancholy Whores).

But just before the spice-flecked foam settled, I found my afternoon friend.  Gilded swirls with orange pom-poms and golden birds, flit across the turquoise wrapper.  The Hand of Fatima  lies gently near the title and Rabih Alameddine's The Hakawati became my current read.  I took a few minutes to take in my surroundings before diving into a novel that promises to be an epic that will take me from "the Koran to the Old Testament, Homer to Scheherazade."

To my left at the long table, slumped a petite intellectual, his dark glasses continually smooshing up his face as he tried to center clip-art on his Power Point slide.  He was working on "Topic 2:  The Development of the Modern Atomic Theory" and I approved of his choice in clip-art, albeit the slide itself was a little wordy.  A lanky musician to my right (pictured with the hand on his forehead) with navy loafers and skinny jeans bent over his sheet music notebook (I hadn't seen this before), musing over his notes, and marking large red A's in places that desperately needed them.  Outside under an umbrella, the alternative crowd, complete with the tiger-printed baby stroller being lightly shaken by a cursing mother with cherry slurpee hair and a gigantic metal spike jutting out of her chin, smoked and ranted about some dress that had been mistreated.

I should come here more often, I thought.  It offers far more for my senses than the parrot-screeching street and hyacinth entangled porch of home.  And they offer knitting class on Monday nights at 7:30pm.  I could finally complete the sweater arm/scarf/purse medley that lies wrapped in the back of my closet.  And maybe Ms. Slurpee Cursor or Professor Atom have a neglected project, too.

The Top Hollywood Cliches and The Tree

Daniel is studying for the GMAT.  Every day for several hours he works on either the GMAT or conducts research for his economics' thesis.  Today he's taking a full-length practice GMAT in the office; old fabric covers the french door window panes and I hear only the occasional squeak of the office chair as he adjusts his position.

Many years ago I dreamed of the man I would spend my life with.  His face and voice hazy underneath a gigantic white tent with twinkling lights.  We each held glasses in our hands (more beer stein versus champagne flute variety).  His laughter enveloped me and my heart filled with such assurance that he was "the one". 

Now, this "one" malarkey can be tricky.  It basks in simplicity as long as "the one" is eternal.  When "the one" fades/divorces/splits/betrays/ends, then it becomes a ridiculous step-child of pragmatism.

I can't and won't claim the cliches about Daniel and I that glisten within the factual and fictional depictions of other love stories.  I don't know for sure if he'd stand in the rain and hold up the boom box. And I think I'd be too nervous to ever shave his face.  He didn't have "me at hello" and I don't complete him.

What I do know is that when I hold his hand, I am proud, strong, reflective, and beautiful.  So, then he's "the one"?  No, because that implies that had he been living in London and I in Cologne, that we would have still found each other due to our mutual appreciation of One Hundred Years of Solitude.  What did happen is that on a sunny afternoon in March 2006, we discussed Said at The Library and knew that we had more to say.  He kissed me under an Ximeno tree weeks (yes, I said weeks) later.  I am so tempted at this point to end with a cliche.  My fingers literally hover over the keys itching to tap out the phrase; however, I shall instead let the following quote speak to what I hope we will one day become.  Not "the one" but simply one.

"Love is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. That is just being "in love" which any of us can convince ourselves we are.

Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Your mother and I had it, we had roots that grew towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossoms had fallen from our branches we found that we were one tree and not two.

- Captain Corelli's Mandolin. "Love is the beauty of the soul."
--St. Augustine