Weekend Adventures: Galveston Island

This is what convertibles were made for: waking up early and heading out with a friend to get possibly the best bagels in the entire state of Texas from Hot Bagels in Houston. And then putting the top town, heading out on I-45 South, and driving to Galveston. And as you’re heading down the highway, knowing you’re probably already getting too much sun even though it’s only 8:30 a.m., but accepting that this is a fact of living in Texas, and deciding it’s worth it to drive down with the wind blowing all around you.

I spent most of the morning fiddling around with the different settings on my camera, which is why this is overexposed. However, I like it anyway.

Sunday was my first time in Galveston, and also my first time on a Texas beach. I’d seen the Gulf of Mexico from Florida, but was looking forward to see some of my state’s coast for once.

We hung around the seawall and spent the morning relaxing, alternating between the water and the sand. The waves were small at first,  but they started to pick up, and I had a ton of fun playing in them. There were also schools of fish that kept swimming by and jumping out of the water, as though just daring the gulls to try to eat them.

When the sun started getting intense, we headed out to get some food. Being on the coast made me want oysters, so we ended up at The Spot, where I indulged my whim and ate a full dozen oysters. Which I realize is not the most well-balance meal ever, but it was delicious, and exactly what I wanted.

The perfect lunch

Finally, it was time to head on back. Meaning more time driving my wonderful car, listening to good music, and enjoying the wind. And winding up with quite the sunburn, despite liberal applications of sunscreen. Welcome to summer in Texas.

Words Matter

Last night, the above joke appeared on my Google+ stream. At one point, a woman made a comment about how the “how can u” people didn’t do “any meaningful work.” Since I had insomnia anyway, I pointed out the classist assumptions in her statement. Education (both grammatical and sexual) and employment  are both associated with poverty level. To automatically assume that the “how can u” group doesn’t do any “meaningful” work is highly problematic. Working two part-time service jobs to make ends meet is certainly not what many people would call “meaningful,” but it doesn’t give us the right to call lower-class people lazy and make fun of them.

This woman and I tussled for a bit, and ultimately, she gave me the “it was just a joke” line. She told me that this joke, and discussions of poverty and education, were two different issues.

Words matter. I know this. Words matter because they are the building blocks of human communication. They are how we transmit ideas. The are how we teach. When we think, we think in the language we know. Words are one tool we have for developing our worldviews. It’s almost scary how much power they have.

Words always have meaning. It doesn’t matter if you’re making a joke. It doesn’t matter if you’re being serious. Words still always mean things, and those meanings cannot always be erased in context.

But words also are not always overt. In the picture at the top of the page, the punchline is that “Grammar Matters.” Now, I love good grammar. I love good punctuation so much that I have a tattoo of a semicolon on my wrist. I do believe that grammar matters.

However, this image isn’t just saying that grammar is important. The words don’t just literally mean that. They are also implying that if you don’t have good grammar, you’re the kind of person who gets STDs and doesn’t do anything meaningful to improve the world.

As I mentioned above, poverty can have a huge impact on education and employment. I signed a bunch of confidentiality agreements at my day job, but I can tell you that I spend 40 hours a week seeing the disparity of education levels between wealthy and poor communities. There is a huge gap between Dallas and Brownsville. Houston is so big and diverse that there are huge gaps within the city itself. Depending on where you are in Texas (in the USA, in the world), you may or may not be learning to write. You may or may not be learning about safe sex. You may or may not be learning basic concepts in math and science. You may or may not even finish high school.

The image above makes fun of the huge disadvantages that economically disadvantaged people face on a daily basis. On the surface, the words are saying, “Ha ha, let’s make fun of all the stupid people who don’t know how herpes is transmitted.” (Let’s not even touch on the fact that you can come from an economically wealthy community and be taught, in public school, that abstinence and religion is the only option you have available and doesn’t actually educate you.) But what it implies is that if you have not had the advantages of a good education, if you are poor and struggling to make end’s meet, if you don’t have energy after working 60 hours a week to fight global warming, or any spare money to invest in stocks, then you are less of a person. It implies that if you haven’t had the advantages of a middle- or upper-class person, you don’t measure up.

I don’t see this image and discussions of poverty and education as separate issues. The reason this image exists is because these disparities exist, and somebody thought it was funny to mock them. This is funny because there is class inequality in this country, and some people like to try capitalizing on that for their own amusement.

This image is not “just a joke.” It is a reflection of the way we view and judge the undereducated in the United States. And I, for one, am uncomfortable with laughing at those who haven’t had all the privileges I had growing up.

I believe that language has the power to change the world. One of the ways it can do that if if we stop using it as a tool to mock others who are undeserving of our scorn. Thing before you speak. And when you do, don’t just think about what your words say on the surface. Think about what they suggest. Think about what they imply. Think about what you might be really saying.

I’m Ephemeral!

It’s no secret that I’m a huge fan of poetry chapbooks — small collections, cheap enough that you can buy a bunch at a time and discover something new. That’s one of the reasons I also enjoy zines. They’re an easy, inexpensive way to discover someone or something new. I’ve never made one of my own; working on the chapbook is enough for now. But my friend Quinn Collard makes zines, one of which is called Ephemera. She just released issue #5 last week, and I have a poem called “Bonded” in it. My contributor’s copy arrived on Monday, and I’ve enjoyed flipping through it. I’m really excited to be included, and to have contributed work to a friend’s project. If your a friend of poetry, typewriters, and other miscellany, check it out!

My friend Quinn Collard

Farmers’ Market Report: The Triangle

I love farmers’ markets, but despite the plethora of them in Austin, I admit I’m a lazy about getting out to them. With all of the HEB locations, opened way more hours, I end up choosing convenience over awesome, sustainable, always-local food.

My friend Amanda just moved to Austin, and texted me on Monday asking if I’d scope out one of the many farmers’ markets. We both have commitments on Saturday, so I suggested we hit up the Wednesday evening market in the Triangle.

The Triangle market is smaller than the big Saturday markets, so we were done with our shopping fairly quickly. But although we didn’t browse for long, we came away with some delicious finds. I splurged on a pound of wild hog ribs (I love wild game, and farmers’ market meat means I don’t have to worry about factor farming — totally worth the price). I also came home with a large box of okra, some delightfully savory Italian peppers (one of which wound up in my omelet this morning), and eggplant. I’m looking forward to fried okra, and also to doing something with the ribs in the slow cooker.

After we finished, we sat in the shade and talked for a while, and came up with the idea of visiting all the area farmers’ markets this summer.  Here’s what’s in store for us over the course of the next few months:

Those are the farmers’ markets in Austin proper. And if we get through all those, we can also check out these:

It looks to be a summer full of great food and buying local. I can’t wait to explore.

The new Texas Poetry Calendar is here!

When I went to my poetry group on Monday, Scott Wiggerman handed me my contributor copy of the 2013 Texas Poetry Calendar. This is my second year appearing in the calendar, and I’m thrilled to be included again. My poem appears the last week of May this time around, sharing a page with the lovely “Crossing” by Elena Lelia Radulescu.

“290 West, Top Down” was inspired, of course, by the highway mentioned in the title. It was written in mid-September, after a late-night drive back to Austin after spending a day in Houston participating in one of the 2012 Texas Poetry Calendar readings, and then going dancing. I did a couple of late-night, post-dancing commutes last year, and it was thrilling to drive for several hours with the wind blowing around me and the stars bright above. Certainly a scene fit for inspiration. Perhaps I will have to make another drive like that soon, and see what transpires.

Weekend Adventures: Deep Eddy

(Note: In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve changed the focus of my Weekend Adventures posts. Rather than giving a rundown of everything I did, I’m focusing on one or two specific places I visited. They might be new, or they might be a revisit to somewhere I love, but right now I’m more interested in exploration and travel, even if I’m staying local.)
 

This past Saturday, my friend Carly and I went swimming at Deep Eddy. Carly is leaving Texas soon to take an amazing teaching job at the Illinois Institute of Technology, and while I’m thrilled for her, I’m going to miss her so much. She was one of my first enduring Texas friendships. So any time I get to spend with her this summer is especially important.

While I’ve been to Barton Springs fairly often (last year, when I worked in the ’04, I even had a season pass), and have been swimming at Lake Travis several times as well, I’d never been to Deep Eddy. But I’m glad we chose to swim there. Although the parking is just as frustrating as any other Austin hot spot, it was otherwise a smaller, more laid-back vibe than Barton Springs. As much as I enjoy Barton, it gets incredibly crowded on summer weekends, and Deep Eddy drew a smaller crowd. Plus, it’s exciting to say that I got to swim in one of the oldest (if not the oldest) public pool in Texas.

We sat under this tree. The sun shining through the branches was pretty much the photogenic highlight of my day.

Carly and I spent the afternoon just hanging out and talking. The sun was out, the water was cool, and the air wasn’t even all that hot. Though you can tell I’ve gotten very used to Texas when I describe mid-90s as “not that hot.” I don’t know what my Ohio self would make of me.

Deep Eddy is definitely a place I plan to visit again. It’s charming, laid-back, and relaxing. I need more summer afternoons like this one.

Like the rest of the writing world, I say farewell

My first encounter with Ray Bradbury was Farenheit 451. It was part of my ninth grade English curriculum. At the time, I fell in love with Bradbury’s writing style, but I came away with a fairly superficial understanding of the text (it wasn’t until my twenties, when I began to contemplate just how many hours I spent in front of a screen each day, that the novel became much more than an anti-censorship story). However, I was hooked enough to read more.

The summer between ninth and tenth grades, I read The Martian Chronicles and Dandelion Wine. I adored both, but it was Dandelion Wine that made me want to be a writer. In fact, the second I finished it, I put down the book, opened my journal, and wrote several pages about my future career. (Of course, it hasn’t gone the way I envisioned it when I was fifteen; for example, I didn’t see myself as more focused on poetry than on fiction. But I’m not complaining.)

Part of me wishes I still had that old notebook, so I could go back and read the words I wrote on the day I realized my true commitment to writing. However, when I moved to Austin in 2008, I threw out all of my old notebooks, with the exception of two that I kept because the books themselves were too pretty to go in the trash. At the time, I wasn’t writing much, but I planned to start again after the move. I’d decided that everything I’d written between ages twelve and twenty-four was no longer serving me. I couldn’t rely on my juvenilia and old ideas. Plus, dragging all of those notebooks across state lines, and from apartment to apartment, was literally going to weigh me down. It was time to be rid of everything. So I got rid of the notebooks and emptied the hard drive, and started fresh. (And I might do it again in my thirties.)

The purge of my old writing was in part inspired by Dandelion Wine. Back when I was fifteen, I was haunted by the character of Mrs. Bentley, an elderly woman whose house is packed full of souvenirs of her youth: record albums, theatre programs, hair combs, photographs. The neighborhood children, however, refuse to believe that she was once young, or that she was ever “Helen” rather than “Mrs. Bentley.” I know the denial of Mrs. Bentley’s identity is the true heartbreak of that chapter. But for me, the horror was found in the image of an old woman weighed down by her past. That image constantly comes back to me. So when it came time to move, I took a cue from Mrs. Bentley and got rid of my work, let go of what was no longer serving me. So I don’t have that old entry to look back on, but I do remember writing it. And the fact that I don’t have it is because of the mark Bradbury left on my life.

But back to Farenheit 451. A few weeks ago, on a hike, my friend asked me what I would do at the onset of the apocalypse. Rather than suggest something practical (I am probably doomed at the end of the world), I said I’d immediately decide which five books I’d take with me. (Books are heavy. I would only allow five. Except poetry volumes are slim, so perhaps I could double up on a few of those and it wouldn’t be too heavy.) But the next day, I remembered the closing of  Fahrenheit, where it is revealed that people have been charged with committing books to memory, as that is the only way to preserve them. Which made me wonder: in the event of the apocalypse, which book would I commit to memory?

It’s a hard choice, and ironically, I don’t have a Bradbury book as one of the finalists — but I imagine that in the apocalypse, there will be no shortage of volunteers who want to take on his work. Meanwhile, I linger undecided between four books: Orlando by Virginia Woolf, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, Sula by Toni Morrison, and Montgomery’s Children by Richard Perry. These are four books that I constantly recommend to people, all the time, no matter who they are. Orlando is delightfully feminist, modernist, and speculative. Their Eyes Were Watching God is — well, I can’t explain why I love it without spoiling at the end. Sula is my favorite of Morrison’s novels, and is a beautiful discussion on the complexities of friendship. Montgomery’s Children is a beautiful meditation on race and memory, and to top it off, it’s out of print (though I suppose everything will be out of print in the apocalypse).

By nature, I’m indecisive. So I think that, in the event of the apocalypse, I will have to make room in my mind for all four. And that’s all there really is to it.

So thank you, Mr. Bradbury, for helping me let go of the past before I became old. And thank you for making me love books so much that I have tasked myself with the difficulty of being the steward of four of them in the event that the world collapses.

May Accomplishments

Here’s what I did in May:

  • Wrote 32 poems
  • Submitted 24 poems
  • Submitted my manuscript
  • Finished and submitted three fiction pieces, one of which was accepted and published
  • Researched my NaNoWriMo 2012 project
  • Figured out the focus for my poetry collection

I did not:

  • Finish my poetry table (still)
  • Work on my epic poem

I’m noticing how fluid my goals are, not just over the course of the year, but over the course of the month. I intended to not work on fiction in May and instead focus on my epic poem, and yet in my free moments, my list of fiction-in-progress called to me.

I’m noticing a trend here. Poetry is a habit that I can commit to, but it’s hard to tell at the beginning of the month which prose projects or long poetry projects I’ll want to work on as the month progresses. There are so many factors that influence my desire to work on prose/long pieces: work, energy, business on weekends, etc.

It almost feels as though I don’t have to set poetry goals right now. The year isn’t quite halfway over yet, but I don’t even have to think about what I’m doing with poetry and having to check myself. I don’t have to stay on task with it. Writing, revision, and submission are like eating or sleeping — they’re what I do.

Meanwhile, fiction isn’t a habit per se. I’m good at working on something, but what my brain thinks I should work on and what my heart wants to work on are two entirely different things.

These accomplishment posts are starting to feel derivative to write, as well. I wrote  a lot of poems! I submitted a lot of poems! I did some stuff with prose, but not other stuff! Woo! Still, I enjoy having some way to track my progress on this blog. So I think I’m going to avoid setting the same old goals for June. I’m going to see where the month takes me, and decide how I want to summarize it on the 30th. We’ll see what happens.

May Reading Report

Despite being quite busy, I was a very productive reader in May. And most of what I read was brilliant and inspiring.

Borderlands 37. I was excited to find a number of Round Top poets in here. This is one of the best issues I have read so far, and it reminds me that I need to submit to this journal in the future.

Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris. No, vampires aren’t my traditional reading fare. In fact, anyone who knows me well is probably wondering what inspired me to pick this up in the first place. That would be sheer curiosity. Most of my friends love these books. It spawned an HBO series. I had to see what the fuss was about. Ultimately, I can understand why this was a huge cultural hit. And despite the fact that I wasn’t captivated by the book, Harris did keep me interested in reading until the end, and the big reveal managed to surprise me. I enjoyed it well enough, but I wasn’t enthralled to the point where I plan to read the rest of the series.

The Narrow Road to the Interior by Kimiko Hahn. I love this book. I love this book. I love this book. It’s one of my two favorites from May. Although it borrows on a text by Basho, it’s undeniably contemporary, and resonates well in the twenty-first century. My only lament is that I read a library copy, so I couldn’t highlight and underline important passages to my heart’s content.

Toxic Flora by Kimiko Hahn. This is the sort of book where I could understand it intellectually, but it didn’t have the emotional punch of Narrow Road to the Interior. However, poetry is subjective. This collection is well-crafted, and I understand why it’s gotten so much attention. I certainly admire Hahn’s work here.

Leap by Elizabeth Haukaas. This is a fine first book, though like Toxic Flora, I engaged with it more on an intellectual rather than emotional level. Still, just because it didn’t change my life doesn’t mean it won’t change yours.

I Am Your Sister: Collected and Unpublished Writings of Audre Lorde. This collection, edited by Rudolph P. Byrd, Johnetta Betsch Cole, and Beverly Guy-Sheftall, is a volume of Lorde’s prose pieces. It draws from speeches, introductions to works, lectures, and includes the full text of A Burst of Light: Living With Cancer, which was eye-opening to me on a number of levels. A must-read for anyone invested in Lorde’s work. (Side note: Maxwell, who has never before showed an interest in chewing books, for some reason decided to make a snack out of this one, much to my dismay.)

Spinning Goldfish by Karla K. Morton. This chapbook is based on the Sufi principle that to know the love of God, one must first experience secular love. This is everything that a chapbook should be. The theme is carried well throughout, and Morton’s writing is as strong as ever.

This Year You Write Your Novel by Walter Mosley. A quick read that ultimately didn’t tell me much that I didn’t already know. I am sure there are plenty of people who would get something out of this book, but it wasn’t quite for me. Although the section on why fiction writers should study poetry did make me smile.

Transfer by Naomi Shihab Nye. This is my other favorite from my May reading list. I was actually reading this while at the Round Top festival, so hearing Nye read poems from this book at the same time was extra thrilling. This collection deals with Nye’s loss of her father, but given that grief is universal, it was particularly resonant in light of my own loss this year (which was almost six months ago, which I cannot believe). “Cinco de Mayo” and “Chico Brothers #2” were especially important to me, but the entire book shines

Poets & Writers May/June 2012. A strong issue all around, and the feature on writing contests was great. It helped down just exactly where those contest fees go.

Weekend Adventures: McKinney Falls

A long weekend is perfect for exploring. This past Friday, I celebrated four whole years of living in Austin. On Sunday, I realized that, despite having lived here for four years, I have not once spent time at McKinney Falls, which is a lovely hiking/camping/swimming destination just a few miles away from the airport. So armed with a camera, a traveling companion, and a bottle of water, the adventure commenced!

When I say that I don’t like flowers, I mean that I don’t like flowers slowly dying in vases while attempting to symbolize affection. I very much enjoy wildflowers growing in their natural environment.

Most of the trip was spent on a hiking trail, trying to avoid poison ivy (I was not 100% successful in this endeavor). I also fell in the river, which was nice for the heat, but not so nice because I reeked of algae all afternoon. Also, thank goodness for waterproof camera bags!

There are turtles in this photograph! I swear! *sigh* I need a better lens…

After dealing with the chronic dryness of last summer, it was refreshing just to sit and listen to the water. We’ve had some decent rain in Austin this spring, and I wouldn’t mind a little more before summer hits us hard, but the chances for that are quickly passing us by. Let’s just hope this summer isn’t quite as intense as the last one. As much as I adore living in hot, dry climates, I do have an affection for water.