Reunited with Dad After My Sister and I Returned to Seattle from North Dakota

A couple days ago while I was in the library, I noticed I’d missed a call from my dad. I listened to his message as I walked through the reference area. The beginning of the message made me nervous—was he really pissed? By the time I sat down at a computer to look up some titles, my eyes were tear-full. This is what he said:

“Shira, I just want to tell you I’m kind of pissed off because I feel that you’ve taken unfair advantage of our relationship. I think that for you to use your black magic powers against me was unexpected to say the least. But I’ll just let you know how it turned out. I started with my new principal and she said all writing teachers have to become writers. It was the first thing she said, and I thought, Oh shit, Shira did this. So anyhow I’ve got my writer’s notebook, wrote a short story, I mean just a real rough draft for a classroom thing, but it was kind of fun. Anyhow, I’m not happy with you yet. Unless this really turns out to be something good, then I’ll thank you.” Read more »

This Is What a Great Thinker Looks Like

Today I thought we’d have a little writing contest. We’re the judges. The contestants will be philosophers. I suppose we can judge them both on the quality of their writing and their ideas. Of course, some ideas are easier to cull and enjoy than others.

“That is why it is so hard to be good; for it is always hard to find the mean in anything; it is not everyone but only a man of science who can find the mean or center of a circle. So too anybody can get angry—that is easy—and anybody can give or spend money, but to give it to the right person, to give the right amount of it, at the right time, for the right cause and in the right way, this is not what anybody can do, nor is it easy. That is why goodness is rare and praiseworthy and noble.”

–Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book 2, Chapter 9

“To be beneficent when we can is a duty; and besides this, there are many minds so sympathetically constituted that, without any other motive of vanity of self-interest, they find a pleasure in spreading joy around them, and can take delight in the satisfaction of others so far as it is their own work. But I maintain that in such a case an action of this kind, however proper, however amiable it may be, has nevertheless no true moral worth, but is on a level with other inclinations, e.g. the inclination to honour, with, if it is happily directed to that which is in fact of public utility and accordant with duty, and consequently honourable, deserves praise and encouragement, but not esteem.”

–Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysic of Morals, “The First Proposition of Morality” Read more »

“For example, this crazy ruffled tee is probably too out there to sell in either store. It's a little rugby-meets-beauty pageant. But I really liked making it. It felt silly and creative and exciting. I haven't felt that feeling in a while.”--Jen Schneider

I’m finally done with the teach-at-two-schools thing. I’m committed now to teaching just at the Colorado School of Mines, which is my favorite of the 40+ jobs I’ve had so far.

Now that my life is less stressful and I’m on summer break for about two weeks (though I have to plan the upcoming semester) I thought, Now I have to get some serious writing done. I began thinking about finishing stories and trying to get them published and that—well, that killed any sort of creativity I might have mustered.

Yesterday I was reading my colleague’s blog for inspiration about blogging. And I was so interested to see her drama with creativity. I hadn’t realized she was selling her sewn wares: Read more »

Which Goes First, Rules or Comedy?

We all know that no one can make fun of our mamas except us. Not that we’d want to, but this goes along with the idea that has been tossed around over the last couple weeks in Bark posts and comments: Many people seem to subscribe to the belief that it is in better taste to make fun of groups to which we belong than to make fun of those to which we do not. 

In her book, Stand-Up Comedy: The Book, Judy Carter suggests that the starting comic begin by making fun of him or herself. It seems like rich and considerate advice. But we don’t want everyone talking about themselves all the time, so we move the circle out to include family, profession (assuming you do something besides trying to make people laugh), sex, race, political party, country, those who agree with your views on globalism. I think it is becoming increasingly difficult to define which groups we “belong” to. We belong to many, have intimate involvement with many, and have good reason to criticize the corruption of many. Read more »

Tina Fey's Ridicule Helped Save the World

Over crepes and coffee this weekend, my mom and step-dad told me stories about unidentified clients who were on two-year waiting lists for shelters and eight-year waiting lists for Section 8 housing. Information like that is so disturbing it’s difficult to face.

Generally when people need a shelter, they need it right away. It isn’t like you calculate, “I think I’ll lose my job in two years and my house along with it. I’ll get on the waiting list for this bedbug infested shelter today so I can spend a few weeks there in 2012.” Similarly, you don’t want to believe that you are going to be destitute and in need of heavily regulated subsidized housing eight years down the line. It seems we have three ways in which we can respond to the horrible and horrifying: dismiss the information with a simple, “That’s too bad,” absorb the information and allow it to saturate our pores with gloom, or transform it into satire. Read more »

My Bad-Ass Dad

Some people get published without even trying. I’m thinking about my dad. About fifteen years ago, he took a fiction writing class at the University of Washington’s Extension program. His teacher asked if she could send his story, “Peep Show,” to the editor of Literal Latte. My dad agreed, and it was published. It was about a guy who cleans out the booths in a strip club.  

“Peep Show” was hilarious and brilliant and today I’m cursing my dad for not writing. He’s a genius, one of the funniest people to ever live, in addition to being wise, insightful, compassionate, and sensitive. I cry easily, a trait I got from him. He is super tough, has a swagger, listens to rap, and teaches gang members in the Seattle Public Schools, but he is not afraid to tear up in public.  

My dad has been on hiatus from writing since he started teaching high school. And I know what he is doing is important. His students love him and have ridiculously high graduation rates. He teaches students who are not welcome in the regular schools. I just hope that someday my dad will write again and share his hundreds of crazy stories, which he can fictionalize or not. Either way, they will bring readers to dark places and make them laugh there. Read more »

Sometimes Ugly Increases Funny

I’ve stolen few things in my life. One of them is a book called Stand-Up Comedy: The Book by Judy Carter. I discovered it on a shelf in Victrola, an idyllic coffee shop on Seattle’s Capitol Hill. It is one of those shelves that holds board games and books to help entertain the patrons who forgot their laptops, mole skins, GRE study guides, or novels. One day, I reached up and pulled down the comedy book. I passed the “funny test” and couldn’t resist. I slid the book into my bag.

I ended up giving the book to my friend, Fat, because he’s funny and I thought he should become a stand-up comedian. Five years later, he hasn’t yet, but he still might. I missed the book, though, so I bought myself a copy. Therefore, the hot copy is not in my possession. If you want to find it, I’ll give you Fat’s address.

It’s embarrassing to be seen with this book. I hide it in my sketch book. Maybe I’ll cover it with a brown paper bag. The book is unattractive, and it’s a ridiculous notion that a 36-year-old-failure-at-so-many-things would fancy herself a standup comedian. Yet, Judy Carter makes it seem possible. She offers step-by-step instructions for creating your own routine. She prompts you to list your negative personality traits, things you hate, worry about, and fear, and shows how each of these things really can be funny. Here are some examples for negative personality traits:

“I have low self-esteem. When we were in bed together, I would fantasize that I was someone else.” —Richard Lewis (Carter 25)

“I had to move to New York for health reasons. I’m extremely paranoid and New York is the only place my fears are justified.” –Anita Wise (Carter 25) Read more »

I Bet It's Not As Scary As It May Seem

Raymond Carver liked to get a draft of a story down in one go, “I write the first draft of a story as quickly as possible, preferably at one sitting. Then I revise it, and revise it yet again” (Conversations with Raymond Carver 80). Janet Burroway agrees this is a good method because, “you are more likely to produce a coherent draft when you come to the desk in a single frame of mind with a single vision of the whole than when you write piecemeal, having altered ideas and moods” and “fast writing tends to make for fast pace in the story” (Writing Fiction 16).

I am not a fan of being required to write a complete first draft in one day or even two, let alone one sitting. It was during a writing binge last week (for a deadline for my writing group) that I was so miserable I began seriously questioning why I even bother (see all the negative comments I left on blogs last week for evidence to support this claim).

I asked my mom on the phone why humans bother exerting so much time, energy, and thought to write stories that no one wants to read or publish anyway. She told me that even if one person gains insight from something another person wrote then it’s worth it. I liked that idea. She also said the self expression that occurs through writing must be useful to the writer in some way. I insisted that what I’m doing is far more complex than self-expression. Read more »

Should I Stay or Want to Go?

My mom was raised Catholic and my dad is Jewish so I’m entitled to a healthy dose of guilt. It can be useful, though, I’ve found. Guilt can be a catalyst for action. The current cause of my guilt is not replying to Steve Knezovich’s post from June 2, 2010 in which he asked, “I think all of us have writers who inspire us, but how many writers actually ask you to come out and play?” I’ve wanted to reply to Knezovich’s appeal for over a month now and I’m finally getting to it. The delay is not due to procrastination but to lack of information. I spend so much of my time doing what I should that I sometimes forget that I can read and write out of want. Should sure can govern most of our lives if we let it.   

I see now that in his posting the following week, “Invitation vs. Inspiration,” several people answered the question Steve posed (now I feel guilty that I didn’t read that post sooner). Some people have writers they turn to for inspiration, writers who seem to invite them to write, who ask them to come out to play. It just took me a while to think of any writers who do these things for me. The reason for this? I think I’ve had a bad attitude. I’ve been so caught in obligation that I can be reading the most exciting, inspiring, inviting thing ever and feeling like I need to find the use in it.    

This weekend I enjoyed reading Rare and Endangered Species, by Richard Bausch in which we get to see the inner feelings and mental workings of everyday people. Bausch tells us very little about his characters’ thoughts; most of his storytelling is done through action, description, and dialogue. I love how drawn in I become as I try to figure out the relationships and scenarios.    

I got the book at the library because a friend suggested I acquaint myself with Bausch’s work, but I actually read it because I wanted to, because it started like this: Read more »

Poems that Open the Summer of Your Mind

The best reading experiences seem to happen in summer. You’re finally free from the overbearing school year. You get to pick up the books whose petticoats you’ve been peeking up. Yesterday I turned in my grades for the science fiction class I was teaching and felt my first afternoon of summer. I picked up The Dragonfly, the poems of Amelia Rosselli translated from the Italian by Deborah Woodard and Giuseppe Leporace, published by Chelsea Editions.  

I was lucky enough to receive a copy of this beautiful book from Deborah who was one of my literature professors at the University of Washington in 1995 and who has remained a generous mentor to me ever since. And though Deborah is worlds beyond me intellectually—and, therefore, so are her interests and her work—I found The Dragonfly to be accessible. If I read it in winter or even this fall, maybe I’ll dig further into the philosophical layers and poetics, but now, in a summer state of mind, it purely entertained and infused me with the delirious logic that I love to soak in when reading poetry.  

Roselli uses repetition to dizzying effect. Do you remember how delicious it is to roll down a grassy hill? Roselli’s hills are covered in wildflowers, cottonwood puffs, feathers, leaves, grasses, strings, and as you roll you collect, becoming nestly and wild. She does this best in the title poem, “The Dragonfly,” which was originally published in Yale Italian Poetry. Here’s an example of what I mean:  

I don’t know if I rhyme from bliss or beleaguered
pain. I don’t know if I rhyme for enchantment or for reason
and don’t know if you know that I rhyme exclusively
for you. Too much sun has the sea drunk in its
placid prison, where the embroidery of the
sea refuses to lay a hand on sunken vessels.
Dawn shades to gray in the distance… (95)                               

The world of “I don’t know” rolls from intense feeling to intimacy to untamed natural imagery that is stuck in the confines of needlepoint and perspective. Here’s some more rolling and wild gathering: Read more »