As far as I can tell she doesn’t speak a word of English, though she understands some, and her Spanish is way too fast for me to follow, but somehow we communicate. In fact, the language barrier didn’t stop her from talking me into buying a bag of cactus one time. I’m sure cactus is lovely in meals, but as I haven’t a clue how to cook it my one foray into adventurous cooking was not all that successful. Still, I’ll probably buy another bag if she brings it again, but my favorites are the fruits and, of course, the tamales.

She’s probably in her 50s or 60s and, come to think of it, she may not actually be Mexican. I say this because, for one thing I really don’t know, and for another … well, when she first started bringing around the tamales they were pretty awful – bland and the masa falling apart and all kinds of stuff. Not, of course, that all Mexicans or all Latin@s are born knowing how to make tamales, or anything – she may have been an office worker or a doctor or something in her home country and is just selling tamales here as a way to make a little extra income - but if one is going to sell them, I think they should at least taste good, no?

Anyway, she kept bringing them and I kept buying them and over time they got better and better, until now they are very tasty, the masa is firm and they are well-wrapped. Yum. I look forward to her ringing the doorbell even if she does keep her finger on the button so that it goes ding!ding!ding!ding! – I can live with that.

Except when she showed up at my door yesterday, I wasn’t so happy to see her because I didn’t have any money for tamales or anything else. Feeding six people is a lot different from feeding two, and we tend to run out of money and food long before we run out of month, as they say. So when she rang – ding!ding!ding!ding! -and said somethingsomething tamales! I opened the door and said, “No, sorry. I don’t have any money!”

She didn’t quite understand at first and for the life of me I couldn’t remember the word “dinero”, so I rubbed my fingers together (I think that is the international sign language for money?) and shook my head, saying I don’t have any money, no cash. She nods as if she understands and then reaches into her basket and starts picking up tamales and putting them in the foil wrapper anyway!

So here I am out there saying, no no, and here she is saying who knows what (she really is the fastest talker I have met in any language) and calmly counting out a bunch of tamales and putting them into the foil – and then all of a sudden I catch the word “Sabado”.

Sabado? I say. I can pay you on Saturday? She smiles, nods decisively, puts the package of tamales in my hands, says a bunch of stuff and repeats Sabado and starts to walk off again with her basket almost before I can thank her.

Tamales are a treat anyway but that night they tasted especially good – not only because they made a change from the simple, spare meals we’d been having, but because they were flavored with… what? The milk of human kindness? The graciousness of one woman who saw more than just a customer, and more than what her customer told her?

I don’t know, but sometimes someone shows up at just the perfect time to remind me that although all may not be right with the world, some people make the world worth living in.

[tamale photo is from here]

Nap Time

When I was very young I wrote stories all the time, and sometimes even illustrated them. The older I grew, though, the less I wrote and the less confidence I had in writing at all, to the point where I just haven’t written anything resembling fiction in years.

Well, until last week. And, strangely, what broke the logjam was my cultural diversity class, where I had to write a journal as if I was a member of a minority group (not much fiction there, lol). The journal needed to cover where the group originated, was the area colonized and all sorts of things like that. As a Black woman who is researching her family history and slavery and African origins and all that, the assignment could almost have been made for me.

So, I wrote as if I was a Chinese woman immigrant. Or, rather, a series of them, four generations I think, and included stuff like the Chinese Exclusion act (of course) and such. Difficult to put it all in 1000 words, but that too was good practice and certainly more challenging and requiring more research than if I had just written what I know. There is not, however, a lot of readily accessible information on early Chinese female immigrants. I thought of asking Kai, but it was for such a short piece (and in such a short amount of time) that I just looked for myself. I am curious now, of course, so will probably do more research on my own as well.

Anyway,  the point is the entire thing ( all 1000 words lol) was fiction, and since I had to do it, I did it. And it was fun! And easy and I think that that tiny, quickly and not very well written piece has helped me overcome my fear of writing fiction a bit.

Might as well start creating some worlds, no?

[image at top is a fantasy spider mom and baby that I made years ago]

I had the flu last week, leading into the final project weekend for my classes. One thing I did learn… I can write still when I am feverish and doped up on dayquil/nightquil, so there is no excuse for not doing so when I am just tired or something. Only, I didn’t do the best on one of the papers because I was too wacked out to understand what I was supposed to be writing about (the perils of doing things at the last minute), but still, the writing was goodish, if wrong.

Finally, though, we have started some interesting classes. Environmental science and cultural diversity. It will be a lot more fun now, though I do realize that we had to learn about writing academic papers and all that, but boy is that stuff boring. I am still ambivalent about the online learning system. I think I would prefer a brick and mortar classroom, but that is just not an option for me right now, so this will do. I do like the convenience, too. When it comes time to go for the Bachelor’s in English, though, I may look at the other, well established offline schools who are offering online classes for that.  I’ll have to see how much of my stuff will transfer, though… if I do the BA in English through UoP, it’s just another two years because I am doing the prerequisites now. If it will take longer at a different school, I’ll probably just stick with this one.

I must not jinx things, but maybe…. just maybe… this is the last month of a full house. Throw salt! Knock on wood!

 Adam & Eve / The Scrap Paper Project – Gordon Wiebe

Of course writers through the ages have come up with that same solution – and, being the creative folks they are, have also come up with a gazillion different ways to make it work for them. Thought pots, idea traps, journals, what have you, are very personal, and until you find the one that fits how you work and think – if my experience is anything to go by – you’ll start channeling your inner Goldilocks, hopping from chair to chair to find the best tush cushion.

Me, I tried paper notebooks/journals (I can’t read my writing), desktop diaries (a couple of computer crashes cured me of that one), Evernote and OneNote (too scattered and mixed in with other stuff) and different online organizers (great for remembering stuff, but not for this, for me). And who knows what else… I read a few  writing blogs and just about any suggestion or blogger’s personal solution, I’d try it. Or at least think about it until the urge to throw even more time to the winds moved on.

But, you know – I think I’ve finally hit on the almost perfect system for me. And, best of all, as of today there are 55 posts in my drafts folder, but they have lost their power to frighten me into silence – or, worse, bumbling speech – whenever I think of them.

See, on querying myself (instead of everyone else) I realized that my stuff winds up scattered here, there and everywhere because that’s where I need it to be. Logistically, but creatively as well. What I craved was not a way to corral my thoughts, to get them into some sort of order. I needed a way for them run wild and free, to roam in the wide open spaces and peer into the dark corners, be silly or catty, or to just flop down and lay there watching the carousel of clouds floating across the sky.

Ahem. In other words, I wanted a virtual messy desk, complete with corkboard and somewhere to slap up the sticky notes of scribbled, incomplete ideas that just pop into my head. One that I could take with me everywhere, and access from anywhere. The solution, of course, was so simple , so obvious, that I think it qualifies as yet another “duh!” moment.

Create a blog. A place not so much for writing as for the not yet written – the scribbled, the inane, the half-thought out speck of genius, the better off not said, the anything and everything that might maybe be used one day, sooner or later. A place where posts don’t glare at me in silent rebuke for their undone state, because when they are in this one spot they are supposed to be unfinished!  How perfect is that?

That was a beginning, but I still needed a way to have this repository with me, and have access to it, almost anywhere I was. Simple enough, that, as well.

First, I created the blog using WordPress and set it as private. I named it; that seemed like an important step to me, so that I would know it was just for writing. I use Windows Live Writer for blogging but for catching stray thoughts when I am surfing the web or doing just about anything else on the computer, I needed something different, something separate.

Since I use the Firefox browser, the Firefox add-on Scribefire seemed like it would be a perfect fit; it can be used offline (just save whatever you post as “note”) or online, so that items go directly to the site. The only blog set up on Scribefire is the one for the bits of writing, so that I can just write and not have to think or worry about sending gibberish to the wrong blog when something strikes.

I also have WordPress on my Blackberry, so I can send badly typed notes to the blog from there, ready for deciphering later.

The best part of all this is – what I write to the blog from one place propagates to all the others so that, even if I never visit the site itself, it acts as a sort of central idea station. My disconnected blatherings are all right at my fingertips, so that wherever I am I can scroll through and see if anything yells out that it’s ready to head for the finishing room.

All this lets me send stuff from anywhere and then forget it. No drafts, these – all published posts. Granted, I am the only one that can see them, but it still makes a difference in my puny brain. 

I say my system is almost perfect because I’d like the ability to just visit the front page of the site and have the posts randomized, whenever I reload the page. Like shuffling index cards or something. I’m pretty sure there is a way to do this, and I’ll check that out next. Once I can do that, it’ll still be almost perfect, but at least closer to my ideal.

 
Yeah, that’s not me. I so want it to be but I am not, I have discovered, an early morning writer. This realization has been a shock to me, because I really love mornings, particularly that time just before dawn. Even if I am not watching it arrive I know the light is on its way, the birds are twittering their greetings, all else is city silent – this is my favorite time of day. But it turns out it’s my favorite time to be – not to do.

And really, I should have known. Instead of trying to fit myself into some writerly writer mental image that I have, it would have been a good idea to remember that, unless there is an emergency that requires me to get it together RIGHT NOW, I tend to wake up somewhat incomplete. Parts of my psyche, it would appear, take off as soon as I go to sleep and I spend the first couple of hours after I wake puttering around, coaxing them back into place. I still get flashes of inspiration before I am completely reassembled, mind you – those whispers of the dawn breeze – but my transcription of these undoubtedly brilliant insights does not soar; it plods along, staggers a bit and then flops. Kinda like trying to launch a turkey into an eagle’s nest.

So, what to do? Go with what you know, sure – but also go with who you are, seems the best idea. I can still make those early mornings work for me, as a writer, but only if I change things a bit. Throw out all my writerly writer preconceptions (and misconceptions) and work with my mornings, instead of against them. How to do that?

Let them be. Let the dawn evolve, allow my mind to wander at will over anything and nothing. If a thought occurs, there is no need to rush to get it into a blog post or something. Maybe that thought is only a teaser. Perhaps if I instead take the time to examine it, turn it over and peer into its depths, and scrape away any excess I’ll find that what I was really looking for (or what was really looking for me) lay just underneath.

If it’s shy or coy, it may take more than one morning, or one week so take notes along the way, but let things develop as they will. And when ready, write.

[photo of typewriter keys by Laineys Repertoire via Essential Prose – which looks like a good blog to bookmark itself.]