The Real Deal in Everyday Ramblings

Isn’t this pretty? I hope Kes and Most Honorable don’t mind, this is their backyard that I visited on Saturday. Noko, Sammy and Stella are all buried in the back there by where the pile of small bricks is near the side of the garage. I feel so fortunate that I have a place where I can go and visit them and hang out with the vital Leo and Jack, most handsome fellows indeed.

We had a lovely day even if the day itself wasn’t lovely. We oven roasted these beautiful big shrimp with a bunch of veggies and had that with polenta and it was delicious. A Weight Watchers recipe.

I took the train down and the bus train back and that was lovely too as I got to stare out the window at the wet fields with spring coming on and read the Confessions of a Comma Queen. That book is so funny and quirky and delightful I know I will read it again. The chapter I drifted in and out of was on the hyphen.

I need to read. I have three books due back at the library in a week and only one of them is renewable.

Somehow or other, and it is not because I sent money, I got on Bernie Sanders email distribution list and I have been getting emails from his team sometimes three times a day. I am glad he is running against Hillary so that people are talking about some of the issues that matter but I have a confession to make…

I absolutely hate the “Sisters and Brothers” salutation at the beginning of their communications. It makes me wince. I admit it too I feel the same when I hear a sitting President, as I have most of my life say “God Bless America” at the end of every communication.

Language matters. It is the vehicle for the narrative we use to tell us who we are.

And right now we appear to be a big roiling mess.

I heard an interview last night with the author Victor LaValle. The protagonist in his new novel is a bit of a self-identified con artist and he said…

“…Well, you know, on one level what I was sort of thinking about was the hustle of writing as a whole, right, and specifically the hustle of being a black writer, that time and again - and this is - there’s - I mean, if you’re a Southern writer, if you’re a Midwestern writer, if you’re a woman writer, if you’re a Jewish writer, there’s all these hustles that exist that if you play into them, there are already readers, there are already accolades, there are already avenues that have been set up to essentially decide that you are good at that because you essentially just look like someone who should be good at that. Right, it’s the idea that if you look the part, we’ll overlook your mediocrity. And that’s something that is always on my mind. As a black writer, I mean, there are certain avenues that I think - you could approach them in ways that have been done by geniuses before, and because it sort of looks like what a genius of a previous generation did, you may enjoy the glow of that genius, that secondary light. You can be a moon to their sun, and you can make a whole career off of essentially being that. And I was terrified at the idea of turning into someone like that, and so I wanted to funnel that into the book as, like, on some level that’s what Tommy’s doing. But of course, I didn’t want to make him a writer who’s dealing with exactly that issue because at least for me, few things are less interesting than a writer dealing with what kind of writer they’re going to be in a book…”

Hearing this to me was like drinking fresh cool water on a hot day, I have never heard one of my fears as a creative person and my pet peeves as a consumer of art more articulately presented. It is this huge thing that has annoyed me for years. There are so many wanna bes out there who do everything to look the part and sound the part that are…I am sorry…boring. Mediocre.

Time after time I have been to a reading with writers and I am asking myself, why them? Why are they up there and I am down here looking up at them? Yes, they did the work, but they are trading on something that isn’t talent or the deep meaningful work of an artist to communicate something that touches on many different levels.

I have made all this effort to use the spiritual tools at my disposal to suppress this tendency to feel and think and respond this way. When I talk to non-artists about this they encourage me to be compassionate and don’t quite get it. I tell myself to just be quiet and do the work but I am just going to say it, venture to wildly boldly arrogantly express an opinion here as that seems to be what Americans are doing these days…

The other day I was in an Athleta store buying these absolutely marvelous comfortable flattering yoga pants at an instructor discount and to get that I had to prove I was an actual real yoga teacher and as I was doing that I was thinking how wow I really am a yoga teacher. I have that authority and confidence and external confirmation (I had 15 students on Monday and we had a lot of fun, one of my newer students said to me after class that the hour was the fastest for her of the week, meaning she was fully present and in the flow of the moment) and I can’t wait, hope ever so much in this lifetime to feel that way as a writer, yes Virginia, as a … poet.

The real deal.

Last updated March 02, 2016