Blog on Vacation Until Next Week

This picture is actually one of a cove in Hawaii, not the North Carolina mountains where I'm headed, but I like its symbolism of both safety and unknown depths--an apt metaphor for a creativity retreat!

Resources for Swine Flu Season

This morning, I heard Laurie Garrett on National Public Radio (go here if you want to listen too). Until I read Natalie Angier, Laurie Garrett was my favorite Science writer.

If you're in the mood for a serious book on disease and its impact on culture, you can't do much better than Garrett's The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance. I spent yesterday rereading parts of it, and even though it was published in 1994, I still found it extremely relevant. Each chapter could stand alone, if a reader was only interested in one disease of the many that Garrett covers. But read as a whole, the book gives important insight into how diseases spread, and the steps humans can take to fight microbes. Along the way, Garrett considers pre-2oth century pandemics, and she gives great history lessons.

If you want up-to-date information about the current flu strain, I heard two level-headed programs on NPR yesterday. Diane Rehm covered the subject in her first hour; one of her guests was Dr. Anthony Fauci of the NIH, who is always a great guest. On Talk of the Nation, this segment also gave information that avoided hysteria.

But maybe you're not in the mood for balance and calm. Maybe you want to scare yourself silly. Well, consider that 4 of the past 5 mass extinctions involved microbes--climate change speeds up the changes that make life more comfortable for microbes and more dangerous than their hosts. I picked up that nugget of information on a Science Friday episode; the scientists were talking about whether or not we should be worried about something like a meteor hitting the earth, and one scientist pointed out that climate change could be (and likely will be) far more catastrophic.

Maybe you're in the mood for fiction. I still consider Steven King's The Stand as one of the greatest novels about plague and the ensuing struggle between good and evil. I've read both the shorter and longer version, and I even like the miniseries that came out in the mid-90s. I know, I should give the prize to Camus, but I like Steven King better.

When King's book, On Writing, came out, I thought it was worth the price on many accounts, but I must confess that I especially loved the section on how he wrote The Stand. Until I read this book, I hadn't realized that so many people loved this work best, and how disheartening that might be to a writer who is still writing; King says, "There's something a little depressing about such a united opinion that you did your best work twenty years ago" (page 201).

Yesterday, I reread T. C. Boyle's short story, "After the Plague," in a collection of the same name. If you're in the mood for a humorous look at the end of the world, this one is for you. I think that Boyle's Friend of the Earth is one of the best apocalyptic novels that involve a global warming theme.

Yesterday, several people who know how much I love a juicy apocalyptic scenario asked me if I was worried about this current strain of swine flu. But I'm really not (except for that niggle of fear as I wonder how many people in late adolescence are amongst the dead--that's never a good sign). I'm impressed with how the world is working together, and I have been since the days of the avian flu of the late 90s (which has resurfaced in Egypt just recently) and the SARS crisis. I'm impressed with how swiftly the various governments are paying attention. If you look at the history of the world, you expect to see new flu outbreaks periodically. It's important to remember how rare it is that a new flu, fearsome as it has the potential to be, flames into a pandemic like the kind we saw in 1918.

In Which the Apocalypse Gal Considers Swine Flu

I have been interested in the intersections of disease and culture (especially collapsing cultures)for several decades now. Coming of age during the early years of the AIDS pandemic can do that to a person. Plus, I'm drawn to apocalyptic narratives, and apocalyptic narratives that involve diseases are that much more compelling to me.

I've been on the outlook for the next flu pandemic for 10 years now. I thought that we might be on the cusp several years ago, with the recent strain of avian flu (H5N1--I didn't even have to look it up, although I did doublecheck--that's how much of a disease geek I am). But once scientists discovered that the disease did best in the deepest part of the human lung (bad for lungs, good in terms of reduced transmissibility), I began to think we might be safe. At least, safe from that strain.

Yesterday morning, I read various newspaper accounts of the recent swine flu outbreak and went to church. I was acutely aware of everyone sneezing and coughing and sniffling. Now, I'm not saying that I think we're seeing the early signs here in South Florida. No, not at all. But hearing all those respiratory noises and thinking about human-to-human transmission--one just becomes that much more aware of how easy it is to spread an airborne virus.

I came home in the mood to read an apocalyptic novel, but I couldn't decide which one. Many of my apocalyptic books are more sci-fi in tone and setting than I wanted yesterday.

So, I'm re-reading Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake. I remember reading it in 2003; I remember tracking down the one remaining library copy and going to a strange neighborhood, hoping and praying it would be there. And I remember feeling so happy when I found it on the shelf.

What I don't remember is much about the plot. So much more fun for me.

A few years ago, my friend and her daughter and I went to see Margaret Atwood when she came through Miami. What a treat. I love how her apocalyptic novels (sci-fi tinged, but would we call them true sci-fi? I'll keep blogging, while y'all argue terminology) are firmly rooted in stuff that's already happening or at least already possible. It makes it that much more terrifying. Try re-reading The Handmaid's Tale in light of what's happening in Pakistan, and see if you can still sleep at night, especially if you're female. Then consider that the book was written over 25 years ago.

If you were a fiction writer, you wouldn't put all these elements from our current real life into one book, at least not one that claimed to be realistic fiction and not some strain of sci-fi: economic collapse, global climate change (leading to impending climate collapse?), a new strain of flu that mixes avian, swine, and human types. It would just be too unbelievable to have all those things happen all at once, in one book. And yet, here we are.

"Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream . . ."

Last night I dreamed that I was being asked--no, forced--to teach a 5 class load on top of my 40+ hours that I spend on administrative tasks. If my dream had lasted much longer, I'd have probably jumped off a building or a bridge (and then I probably would have been asked to do all that from my hospital bed!).

I see this dream as a metaphor on so many levels. This week, for the past few days, I've felt bone crunchingly tired when I woke up. I'm usually an energetic person in the mornings. I'm told that can be annoying. But for the past few days, I could barely muster the energy to make some coffee. I wake up feeling as if the day's tasks are more overwhelming than they turn out to be.

Happily, this week I'm fleeing the Florida flatlands to go to an Arts and Creativity retreat in the N.C. mountains (you could still come too--go here for more details). I hope to come back refreshed. I had been going great guns on the poem-a-day project, but on Friday, I went to bed without writing a poem and haven't written much since. Hmm. Like I said, I'm in need of a retreat.

I also look at that dream and wonder if it's telling me that I miss teaching. I only miss some of the teaching that I used to do. I feel somewhat sad at not teaching sophomore survey classes or upper-level English classes anymore. I quit teaching those in 2003, when it became harder to juggle adjunct work with my full-time job, which was mostly first year classes. Happily, that full-time job also led to some Creative Writing classes, and then to my current administrative job.

The other morning, I woke up wondering if I could juggle a Victorian Brit Lit class along with my administrative schedule. I pondered that question for about 3 minutes before deciding, no, not really, not right now.

I wish I was the kind of person that returned to much-beloved classics on a regular basis, like my Florida friend who reads her way through Shakespeare as the year progresses, or my South Carolina friend who reads Anna Karenina on a regular basis. Much as I love the classics, I tend to revisit them only when I'm teaching them. Otherwise, I'm reading to try to fill in the gaps in my education or for escapist pleasure or for theological edification. Currently, I'm reading The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science and remembering how much Science I never knew or have forgotten--Natalie Angier is the most wondrous writer!

I think my dream also shows that for much of my working life, even as I've been happy with whichever job I've had at the time, I've wondered what I was giving up by keeping that job. For every door that opens, I worry that ten others have slammed shut permanently. One of the things I miss most about undergraduate school was that idea that every door was open, every choice was possible, and that there was plenty of time. Sure, those ideas might have been illusions, but I liked them, and I miss them.

Finding Traces of Myself

Last night, I picked up Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It's one of my books to read this year, and it's the next book my school's book club is discussing.

Before I picked it out of the bookshelves last night, I'd have sworn that I hadn't read it since high school in 1981 or 1982. But there, on page 120, was a Miami Metrorail transfer dated April 3, 2001. So, I'm thinking I must have started re-reading it then, when I was commuting to the University of Miami, but not finished, since the marker was only about 1/3 of the way through the book.

And now that I've found that evidence that I'd been to the book before, I have vague glimmers of a memory of re-reading it then. But do I really? Or am I creating those memories in response to a transfer ticket? And why did I decide to stop reading it?

It bothers me that I've forgotten this re-reading attempt, which happened fairly recently. I've grown resigned to memory lapses and forgetting earlier times--when I search the Facebook people for graduates of the high schools I went to, around the time I was there, I don't recognize most of those people--not their names, not their faces. How scary is that? I have yet to dig out my high school yearbooks to see if that helps. No, I expected to remember them, but I'm not freaked out that I don't. It's getting to be awhile ago, and I haven't kept in touch with people from that time period very well.

But I expect to remember books I've read, poems I've written--but I don't. Sometimes, when I've decided a poem is done, I leaf through the pages of the rough drafts that surround it--and I don't remember writing some of those poems. Some of them aren't very good and some are just fragments. But I've come across some gems.

I used to type up poems right away, immediately after I wrote them, and I would send them out to journals. Now they percolate in my purple poetry legal pad. Perhaps I'm letting them sit and stew for far too long. Of course, if I can't remember writing the poem, it does make approaching it with fresh eyes fairly easy. I'm reading it as a stranger would, which I would tell my students would make the revision process easier.

But does it? Only some times. Other times, I still look at a poem that needs work, and I don't have the slightest idea what to do. Happily, I have plenty of other poems percolating, and I move on to those.

Of Tie Dye and Poetry

Yesterday, my department put on its quarterly festival. It began as a tie dye event that had a tie-in to a writing class, but it's expanded into something larger, with beading, free lunch (hot dogs, hamburgers, chips), and sales of various things, like shirts to dye and books and other art. After doing some research on student retention, we moved the festival to week 3 of the quarter, in hopes that an event like ours would give new students an opportunity to feel connected to the school.

You might say that administrators should be doing something else, like working on curriculum, rather than coordinating a festival. You might be right. Yet it's one of my favorite events. I love serving the food, even though it's not the healthiest food; the students are SO delighted to have a free lunch. It's one of the few times I'm not being barraged by complaints or demands or yearnings (made by students, by faculty, by administrators). It's so nice to hand out food and face nothing but gratitude.

The other day, on NPR, I heard about a restaurant, The Nickel Diner, that's in the Skid Row section of L.A. (go here to read or hear the story). The owner asks the homeless men who are just hanging around what they'd like for dessert that evening, and she makes it and invites the men in for dinner. I heard the story and thought, yeah, that would be a cool job--dessert maker for homeless people. I envisioned a similar gratitude from those homeless customers. Then I wondered how long it would be before people criticized my peach cobbler because it wasn't like their grandma's or I was berated by someone who really had a hankering for red velvet cake. I wrote a poem that ends:

I imagine the joy of a daily deadline
determined by the time of dinner.
I yearn for the sweetness
of a career soaked in sugar.
I indulge in the fantasy
that no one would complain.

I also love doing tie dye, even though I end up with hands of an inhuman color (last night I went home with teal hands--exquisitely beautiful, if odd). I love the whole process, but what I love most is that I'm never sure what the shirt will look like. I'm not sure how the colors will interact with each other and how the rubber bands and twisting that I do will affect the dyes. I don't do tie dying often enough to be sure.

I love the moment when I undo everything and see the shirt that I've created. It seems like a fitting metaphor for artistic processes of all sorts. We may begin with a vision, and we may end up with a product that's exactly what we expected. But so much more often for me, I start out with a glimmer, and just follow that glimmer to see where it leads. I often end up with something that's utterly different from what I thought I was creating--yet I don't feel disappointed. I feel delighted to be creating--the process is what's essential, not the product.

Seeing Denise Duhamel at the Molly Peacock Reading

One of the coolest things about the Molly Peacock reading was seeing all the poets there. I'm lucky to live in an area that has lots of poets who are writing work that I love, even if they're not all well known.

Just as the reading was about to start, Denise Duhamel walked in. I thought, this must be what it's like to live in New York City, where one might be likely to see famous poets at a poetry reading.

It was doubly strange for me, because I had just spent the morning Googling any number of word combinations that might give me insight into her writing process that she took with her collaborator Sandy McIntosh in their new chapbook 237 More Reasons to Have Sex. I didn't find much out there, and then to have her come to a reading--well, it was just too good to resist. I knew I had to ask her the questions that my Googling failed to answer.

I worried that I might seem like some kind of odd stalker. I worried that it might be weird or rude to approach one poet at the reading of another poet. As always, my inner awkward high schooler comes out ("My hair doesn't look good today, I can't talk to her, she's cooler than me, what if she snubs me, what if I say the wrong thing, what if I really am destined to always be this geeky person, what if it's a phase I'm not going to grow out of"). Luckily, I've gotten better at just ramping up my courage, ignoring my inner critics, and approaching people.

Denise Duhamel couldn't have been nicer. We talked about her chapbook and the fact that Entertainment Weekly just gave her book Ka-Ching a very nice microreview (go here to see it). Once I took a workshop on collaborative writing with her at the Florida Center for the Book, and she asked how my writing was going. She complimented my bracelet.

I see her periodically, and I'm always impressed with how enthusiastic she is, how cheerful and generous with her time. I know some people who have studied with her at Florida International University, and no one has a mean thing to say about her. It must be exhausting to be so instantly recognizable, and yet if she ever feels hounded or wishes for anonymity, she gives no outwardly sign.

If I should ever achieve a modicum of Poetry Fame, I hope that I can exhibit a similar graciousness. But why wait for Poetry Fame? The world would be a much better place if we all worked towards a gracious, generous spirit now.