Call me Kate

Still busted flat in Santa Fe.

2010-06-24T10:10:00.003-05:00

"Se habla Espanol." So the pump was loaded onto a truck in Denver (Fed Ex? UPS?) But the driver didn't stop in Santa Fe. So the pump went back to Denver. (Why? I can hear you asking. I'm not here to explain it. Just to report it.) Another pump was found in Albuquerque, which the parts manager picked up. The Jeep is being worked on (I hope) even as we speak. Tim, the nice man we've been dealing with, is taking the day off. But not to worry. When the technician finishes with the car, the billing department will phone us. At which time, we'll call Jose, the courtesy driver, to come pick us up. Though, according to Tim, Jose doesn't speak English. So we'll need to give him very careful instructions. But, no habla Espanol.

Sprialing

2007-10-25T13:54:00.001-05:00

twist0001
Originally uploaded by kaycalkins

This morning, I began looking for something I wrote two years ago, something about the winter solstice. I was digging deep for a new story, digging through my old posts on Shut Up & Write and on the Writing Loop, sites for people who had studied with Natalie Goldberg (which I hadn't) or with Rob Wilder, which I had. We did timed writes. Kind of like blogging, but only to be read within a closed circle of writers.

I looked back at some of my old posts today, and I thought, Wow, I could write, then.

Trolling through old material, I realized it's the same material I'm working with now. I'm in the same place in terms of a north/south/east/west orientation, but on a deeper level, I hope. Imagine a spiral. I've gone deeper, towards the center.

Here's something I wrote two years ago: Oh, I love this quote: "hopelessly flawed, shot through with rot. Not to mention the sapping of vitality, that's what hurts."

The relief of admitting that I'm hopelessly flawed. The laying down of expectations to be perfect. I don't think it's a bad thing, necessarily, being hopelessly flawed. Like I can admit my humanity. Makes me want to celebrate laxness, letting go, making mistakes, goofing, screwing up. It's good to be human. How else could I be? It occurs to me that perfection is walking the straight and narrow. Where's the posssibility of joy in that: Or love? Or friendship? Or creativity?

Writing now, today: This is a serendipitous find. At Carol Lee's funeral, realizing that the person at the heart of the family was gone. The one face I looked for at every family gathering. I loved being with her because she was funny; she'd been places and seen things and had her own ideas about them. She was good company.

My mother criticized her. Carol Lee was fat; she was lazy; her house was a pig sty. My mother criticized almost everyone. My mother, who cowered behind a mask of perfecton, diverting attention to the flaws of others. For a long time, I was my mother's daughter, in that way at least.

Here's more of that 2-year-old-post: Shot through with rot. Hard to put a positive spin on that. Oh, the sapping of vitality. The story of my life. Holding my breath. Rigid muscles. I don't have an external shell to protect me, so I've constructed an internal shell. Control. What a miracle that so much good has gotten to me, past the dam I've constructed to keep the unpredictable away.

Now: No longer holding my breath, no more rigid muscles. Thank you, Nancy. But thinking again about the flaws that prove we're human. Does the twist in the tree make it less of a tree? No, I specualte about its eventful life. What happened to make it such a unique individual, unique in all the forest of trees. The one tree I wanted to photograph last Sunday.

At 20, I had this thought: When I'm an old woman, will I look back and think I lived an interesting life? And this morning, one of my first coherent thoughts was that I'd better get a move on. Just as I say, when I was 31, I moved to Taipei. And when I was 40, I moved to Osaka. I want to be able to say, when I was 58, I moved to Seattle.

The past again: I'd forgotten, 'til I read something another Looper wrote. About the spaces betwen things. Last month I was inspired (by another Looper) to think about the spaces in my live, to live in the spaces, to appreciate the spaces. And then I completely forgot about it.

Within a 5 day period (12/05): sinus surgery, the birth of my granddaughter (4 weeks early and half a continent away) and my mother's stroke.

This is an example of the unverse offering lessons time after time until I finally get it. Maybe I've gotten it this time (I said 2 years ago), but who knows.

Yesterday, driving home, I thought about how unhappy I was. I was unhappy because I hated my job. A sudden insight: No, I don't hate my job. It's a lovely job. Working in an academic library, what a gift. A job which fell out of the sky when I wasn't even looking for a job. I was unhappy because I was unhappy.

Someone asked me once what I dreamed for myself, what I hoped for, and I drew a blank. Now I can recognize dreams after the fact. Going to the Taos Writer's Conference was a big one. I still dream about it in my night-time dreams. That was huge: investing in my writing, when I could have found so many excuses not to.

The spaces between are for processing, internalizing, waiting to swing back. I've begun dreaming anew. Shot through with hope.

Ghosts

2007-10-16T12:02:00.001-05:00

oil well
Originally uploaded by kaycalkins

The details haunt me.

Willa Cather said in an interview in 1921 "...the years from eight to 15 are the formative period in a writer's life, when he unconsciously gathers basic material. He may acquire a great many interesting and vivid impressions in his mature years but his thematic material he acquires under 15 years of age."

When I think of cold, I see and feel and smell Christmas Eve day, circa 1960. Driving with my father to pay a Christmas visit to his family, we pass a country school which seems to be in session, and I am shocked at this foreigness. When I think of this day, the phrase in my mind is "iron cold"; there's a metalic smell in the air. The trees are stripped down to their bones, the waist-high grass stands frozen on the shoulders of the road.

I think of Grandma's house as being at the end of the road. It's not really, you can see the road from the front porch, continuing on, the dirt road flying arrow straight to the brow of the hill. It's the feeling that the weary people in my father's family reached a psychic end of the road and stopped, laying down possessions and history, without the will to travel further.

At Grandma's there were gas heaters in every room, hissing and smelly. Uncle Jack would have been wearing overalls over a flannel shirt and thermal underwear.

Jack--40 years later I would hold his hand as he lay dying. The men were frightened of death, afraid to come too close lest it snatch them, too. My cousin's wife, Donna, would stop off at Walmart to buy Jack a new pair of overalls; he had expressed a wish to be buried in them. Buried in the family graveyard. It was early June; someone would have mowed in preparation for the funeral, exposing Grandma's headstone, and Aunt Alice's.

The home place had oil wells, but no oil wealth. Grandpa had signed away the mineral rights with an X. Poverty, deep poverty, and isolation.

Aunt Alice and Carol Lee lived together until Alice's death, sometime in the '80s. I was in Taipei at the time, so I missed her funeral. For the next 20 years, I imagined Carol putting one foot in front of the other, plodding, waiting to die to be with her mother again. Two damaged women. Women with secrets. Alice had two husbands; Carol Lee had two fathers. Hush, I was told when I asked, we don't talk about them.

Carol Lee died yesterday morning. She was a genuine character. Odd speech mannerisms, an astute observer of the people around her. She had inherited her mother's gift of playing with language. What kept them from being poets?

Woods walk

2007-10-15T13:37:00.001-05:00

Trail
Originally uploaded by kaycalkins

It's the best of times. It's the worst of times. No, not really. Of course not. What it is, is a time of year I always find very difficult.

The pendulum won't quite swing back. The season is stuck on late summer; fall can't seem to arrive. Like waiting for a much anticapted birth, or a sadly delayed death, this transition is creeping, creeping, taking its own sweet time.

I went to the Keystone Ancient Forest on Saturday. They were having an open house, although "open house" in a forest might be an oxymoron. It was the first time the general public had been allowed in, and it was a nice excuse for a walk in the country.

A little too warm for mid-October, leaves not turning yet. Butterflies and grass hoppers and a snake who definitely did not like the looks of me.

The name, Keystone Ancient Forest, sounds like a fantasy setting. It's not. It's Oklahoma. 300 year old post and black jack oaks, defunct (and one working) oil wells, a rough road leading to some ole boy's oil leases. And solitude. Shaking up and resettling. A breath of fresh air.

Unspooling

2007-10-04T11:42:00.001-05:00

cups-queen
Originally uploaded by kaycalkins

I sit at a desk on the lowest floor of the library, facing a glass wall. On the other side of the glass are rows of stacks. What I see, though, is a farmhouse, similar to the ones I remember in Taiwan. I see a low building with a tile roof; the building is gray, as is the day. A heavy wooden door, with ornate carving and traces of red paint and gilding. A middle-aged man sands in the door with a young woman behind him.

The hares in the world are balanced out by the tortoises. Writing is a long slow process, at least the way I practice it. I've been working on this story for a long time, off and on for 3 years. I'm working on the last scene; my stomach twists and burns with the anxiety I often feel when writing. The feeling of stuckness. I know from experience that if I push a little, if I get some words onto screen or paper, I'll pass over the threshold into story.

Part of my process is to see, to visualize, what's happening. I've brought 3 characters together in an isolated farmouse near a goddess-guarded shrine. I see them: A little white dog stands beside Annie, looking up at her, trying to read her face for clues about what to do next. Maybe her face, the expression in her eyes will provide me with clues, too.

In a workshop last summer with Tony Doerr in Taos: I said that I write to learn how to write. That every story I've written has been an exercise in learning some aspect of craft. Tony made a sugggestion to our group: a story built around a character who isn't physically present. One of the characters in my story is dead; she was a seer, a woman well-versed in the art of scrying. Grief and memory drive the action of the protagonist.

I presented myself with another challenge. Watching the movie The 3:10 to Yuma, I kept thinking that my story cried out for gun play. So I've written my first-ever fight scene. The draft is almost ready for sharing. My first question of my readers will be, "Does this make sense?"

Writing different stories feels different, ya know? Sometimes I feel like I'm giving birth, pushing the story out. Sometimes I feel like I'm mining, digging deep. I feel as though this story is unspooling; all I need to do is to keep following the thread.

The beautiful picture was created by Cathleen Perkins. I found it at www.psymon.com.

Did you say Kate?

2007-09-28T14:10:00.000-05:00

I've thought about changing my name for a long time. Not officially, as in going down to the court house and making my name change legal, but as my day-to-day name. Half the time, when I introduce myself as Kay, it's heard as Kate. "Kate. Did you say Kate?" And lately, instead of saying "No, my name is Kay," I've been saying, "Yes, my name is Kate."

I feel sheepish about taking this step. I'm not sure it's okay to choose your own name.

Someone said, "Oh, you're changing your name because you're trying to find yourself." Not so, I think who and what I am is pretty well established by now. Perhaps this name change has acquired too much gravitas, perhaps I just like the name, Kate. Whether Kay or Kate, I'm a writer, mom, grandma, librarian, traveller, reader. Lover of big weather and the change of seasons. Grateful acceptor of serendipitous events.

Such as the gift of an afternoon off, which I'm spending by starting this blog. Another thing I've been thinking about doing for quite a while: making a committment to writing, to my writing, to showing up most days and writing. And if I do it in public, I'll be motivated to polish my writing, to develop some writing muscles.