reader, you may or may not be aware of my abiding love for fantasy and science fiction. it’s true that i’m not as up on either genre as i’d like to be; i’ve got some major gaps. but i grew up on this stuff and frequently turn to it when my brain just cannot handle any more academia – or because i just love to be immersed in it. i want to talk absolute gut reactions to a couple of high profile projects. these are not researched thoughts, but they do have the weight of decades of genre reading behind them, so while they are off-the-cuff, they are not ignorant opinions.

ender’s game: the first trailer launched yesterday for the film adaptation of orson scott card’s award-winning novel. (side note: card is very public about opinions that i find offensive and distasteful, if not downright inhuman at times. there’s a lot of controversy swirling around about boycotting. i have lots of thoughts about the separation of art from the artist that i won’t delve into here. suffice to say that although there’s obvious conservative thinking going on in ender’s game, the book does not incorporate any of card’s controversial perspectives. focus!) ok. so there’s an award-winning cast – which the trailer absolutely beats you over the head with. (side note 2: ben kingsley is fabulous, but my disappointment in the failure to case a Maori actor as mazer rackham is major. what about that guy from blow? or anybody else. plus, the face tattoo seems like a bad case of racial othering to me, but i’m willing to reserve judgement for the moment.)

focus! yes. so this trailer gives very little in terms of the broader storyline and psychological drama that underpin the novel and lift it above the mass of space shoot-em-ups. i suppose that it’s aimed at people  unfamiliar with the book. but who is really supposed to be excited about this film based on these two minutes of footage? i mean, everything looks gorgeous (this may turn out to be one of the best visual adaptations of a novel to date). but everything about is so vaguely, generically sci-fi. aside from the title, this could be the trailer for just about any old sf story. the music, the font, the editing choices – bland, bland, bland, bland. if i knew nothing about the book, what i would take away from this is: oh a bunch of famous actors got paid a lot of money to be in a slick but probably substance-less aliens vs. humans war film. yawn. as someone who knows the book decently well (i’ve probably read it 5 times or so over the last 20 years), i’m not convinced by this trailer that the film is going to live up to the hype. maybe the next trailer will be the one that convinces me one way or the other. based solely on what i see here, meh. there’s not enough there there to push me to want to see a big screen adaptation of something that lives so vividly in my head.

game of thrones: hbo can seemingly do no wrong and their fantasy series is an undoubted cultural hit. i don’t watch a lot of tv – full time work plus grad school will do that to a person – and for quite a while i was debating whether to try the show or the books first, so i was in no hurry to get to this. in february, i  finally decided that i’d give the tv series a go. oh man. this is surprisingly difficult for me to write about. i’ve talked about it with several sff-minded friends who are fans of martin and of hbo. i desperately want to like this. but. well, frankly, i’m rather ashamed that this is many people’s only significant reference point for fantasy, aside from tolkien.

i watched the first episode. i can’t decide now whether i’m willing to spend any more of my time on this or not. let me start out by saying that the production values and cast are great overall. and although i can’t compare to the books, my impression is that hbo does a pretty good job of creating the world. what falls apart for me is martin’s story. it strikes me as outdated, bigoted, and just plain lazy.

i desperately want to like this. but sex and gore appear to be used mainly pruriently. i’m not opposed to sex and gore, but i’m uninterested in it as window-dressing.

i desperately want to like this. but that dothraki wedding scene is some straight up 19th century imperialist colonialist racist atrocity. i am so powerfully disgusted that this is probably a real deal-breaker for me with the series. i’ve asked if there is something that will happen down the line that would complicate this set up, that would make me say that martin is exploring tropes and doing something interesting with them. not a single person has been able to reassure me on this point. the most common response is “maybe this series isn’t for you…”

this episode gives me the sexist heebie-jeebies, too. i’ve been told that daenerys’s character evolves in interesting ways. i’ve not been told that there’s a strong female character who doesn’t have to go through sexual abuse to be part of the “strong female character” contingent. (no, i’m actually not referring to the post-wedding sex scene per se – her brother’s sexual abuse and commodification is extremely problematic for me.) a bullshit, lazy way to write a strong female character. (side note 3: so people want to boycott ender’s game because card vocally gay-bashes – although this is not at all part of the work – but apparently no one wants to boycott game of thrones, which incorporates problematic racial and gender depictions as part of the storyline? i don’t get it.)

these are some pretty damning criticisms right out of the gate. i could comprehend if not excuse a bit of this in older works. but the thing is, martin is writing this series right now. this isn’t throwback 70s fantasy (although even then, it’s pretty lame). it’s 2013 and this is what we’re being fed as fantasy worthy of adaptation by hbo.

the saddest thing is, there is a wealth of thoughtful, exciting fantasy out there. great fantasy and sci fi have the ability to push the boundaries of the possible, to help us to question the reality we live with everyday, to encourage us to imagine a different and better future for ourselves.

after watching just the one episode of game of thrones, i have a hard time seeing martin’s story surprising me. it looks like a lazy writer taking advantage of character and setting as cloaking devices to hide a lack of real intellectual engagement. are there even any real plot twists that i can’t see coming? i keep begging people to tell me i’m wrong. this is one of a handful of cultural doors that is open to the people who otherwise don’t consider fantasy as something they are interested in. i want it to be all of the amazing things that i see in the works of luminaries like butler, gaiman, bradley, pratchett, mccaffrey, kay, mieville, lackey, le guin, asimov… i’m mostly pulling names out of the way-back machine, which just underscores for me how martin is not moving the genre or culture forward. no one has really tried to convince me i’m wrong.

i hate to say it, but i’m not wallowing in that fresh and so clean clean feeling post-spring cleanse. maybe it’s the being sick (i still have a lot of congestion to deal with. ugh). maybe it’s the fact that this april is The Worst. maybe when i look back on this in a month i’ll feel totally awesome about it.

in any case, i’m still glad that i went through the process, modified though it was. i reintegrated faster than i’d like, but at least this time around took a little longer. and it does feel a little easier to make smarter food choices – let’s see how long that lasts in the face of my french fry addiction. and making any small amount of mental and emotional space is a good thing. it doesn’t feel like enough, but something is better than nothing as i attempt to juggle two master’s programs at two separate universities and fulltime work. 

as of now, i intend to revisit the fall cleanse. depending on timing of the group and my own life, i may end up skipping out. but if i do, i know that i have some of the ayurvedic principles of this process in my toolbox now. i can make my own mini-version up if need be. no holy-wow feeling, but piece by piece, i am doing the work.

today is day 3 (of 4) for the main phase of my ayurvedic spring cleanse. i’ve let most of my intentions for how to spend my time on this cleanse go. initially i wanted this to be a deeply reflective period. one of the reasons i decided to shift my cleanse to this week is that i have very little by way of obligations or plans (red sox tickets tonight, but otherwise nothing). so i intended to read and journal and think and all that good stuff.

instead i’ve let the bout of whatever nasty chest cold i picked up last week take over. this has meant mostly sleeping. tuesday i went to bed before the sun was even down, which is kind of freaky for someone who is far more likely to be still up at sunrise. but it justified skipping my weekly ashtanga class (i’m still hoping to make it up via a home practice over the weekend, energy levels pending).

mostly what i can say at this point is that cravings are pretty easy to manage with a cold – i can’t smell anything anyway and my throat has felt like it was lined with broken glass until this morning. i feel like i’m missing out on a level of awareness because i’m just not feeling well. i know my body is pouring all of its reserves into healing, there’s not much left in the tank for anything else. yesterday i had some serious mood swings, which have continued somewhat less violently into today. i’ve been pretty energetic in the mornings, a little droopy in the afternoons, and wiped in the evenings. i’ve had to dial the protocol back to adjust for being sick. it feels good to be sticking with this anyway, but i’m also weirdly ashamed to take it down a notch. not sure what the post-cleanse phase will be like this time – i’m going to ease more gently through the reintegration phase than i did the first time.

once again, i’m not necessarily thinking that major diet changes will come out of this cleanse (although i can see how in the future that may happen). for now, i’m treating it as a respite and a rare time to carve out space for myself. i think this is true for most of the women i know, but it’s certainly true in my life, that i was never given a good template for how to make myself a priority in a positive sense. it’s wrecked some havoc to not have this skill. all i can do is work to do my best.

one more day of kitchari and then a really low key kanjee saturday, followed by a 4-6 day reintegration. good times.

it’s been… a week. i’ve had a lot going on emotionally – this has been an april of extremes. at some point, after much more reflection, i may have more to say about Boston and the events surrounding this year’s Marathon. for now, i am pulling away from the circus and turning inward.

last year, i undertook my first ayurvedic cleanse. (if you’re curious, you can check the Ayurveda Boston website for info.) i’m still processing many of the lessons i gained from that experience. last week was the group, led cleanse. i made the decision to delay my own cleanse and to begin today. although it’s tough to fall out of step with the posse, i know that i made the right decision for my own well-being.

what i notice right away is that it’s easy to fall into a more contemplative place right now. i feel happy to be creating this bubble for myself. i also feel frustrated by the congestion i have, frustrated to be scaling back the protocol. but i will honor my illness and not push myself. it’s helping to give me a sense of having control again. for many reasons outside of my control, this month has been one in which i’ve had to grapple with the fear that comes from the inability to anticipate the negative and invasive actions that others can sometimes send into my life. i can only control so much. and the best i can do outside of that is to set myself up to be as safe as possible while remaining true to my beliefs. fortunately, i have had some very tangible proof that i am succeeding for the most part. this relationship between control and fear is a lot to think about. a lot to embody.

when i participated in this cleanse last year, i also spent a significant amount of time meditating and considering the fear in my life. i can’t help but do so again now. in some ways, i see that i’m able to assess myself better, to be more honest. it doesn’t necessarily translate into action in the ways i wish it would. today i am feeling how far i have to go, how much i hold myself back.

i’m getting ready now to make dinner, practice some self-care, and attend to some of the mundane tasks that felt too hard last week.

just a couple of weeks ago i wrote: “place matters. i want to give my heart to the place i am. for now, i will go back home and return home and feel none the wiser but more the inspired for it.”

and yesterday i returned home, home to boston. i had a beautiful boston spring day – my first trip this season to fenway park, a long walk through kenmore square and around boylston and newbury streets, dinner at trident cafe. spring is starting here, trees finally beginning to bloom effusively. the inspiring, lovely bigness of spring in new england.

marathon monday, patriots day, is the most boston of all holidays. the only day when the strictest of puritan cities tolerates some public tomfoolery. a day when people get up before dawn and don various gear, preparing to recreate the beginnings of the american revolution or to pound the pavement and challenge heartbreak hill. a day that always always always includes an afternoon red sox game. a day when the world turns its attention to this walkable gem of a city, when copley square becomes the center of everything. a holiday that is only celebrated within a small confine. the cozy confine of boston. even if you cross the river into cambridge, you don’t get patriots day as a holiday.

what does it mean to see violence done to your city? it means you love as hard as you can. love your friends and love your families and love all the tiny acts and unknown people who make up your life. love the street you walked down a million times that is changed forever. love the memories of every time you stood before, beside, behind the finish line. love the men and women who will be awake all night to make sure we can all be as safe as possible. love paying taxachusetts and knowing that you have some of the finest first responders anywhere on earth. love the people walking down the street offering everything they can.

the thing that i love most about boston is the deep sense of communities here. people are passionate and proud and united here. i first felt it well over a decade ago in the tingling roar wafted on late april breezes of tens of thousands of people cheering their heads off in fenway park; a beautiful roar rivaled only by the sea, audible for blocks and blocks and blocks and blocks. when i saw my first boston marathon in 2000, i couldn’t believe the way the city glowed with joy. i’d never encountered such a thing. my then-boyfriend and i volunteered for the 107th marathon, helping direct families to meet their loved ones who had crossed the finish line and passing out bags of snacks to victorious runners. that passion and pride are part of every patriots day. i’ve seen it countless times since then, manifested in countless ways. boston sports fans are notorious for their loyalty and dedication. it’s an outlet for our love of this city and everyone in it. and it’s here tonight. it will be here tomorrow. because we love our city and our neighbors and our history and our heartaches. because the answer to violence is love.

On a Duck Tour, Copley Sq, May 2011

did you think this blog was just a clever title? oh no no. pretty much anytime i travel back to florida (and much of the time in between) i spend gnawing upon the question of home. the hesitation i feel in wholly committing myself probably grows out of the divide in my heart.

if you know me even a little,  you probably know that i am proud as hell to be from miami. proud even of things that should horrify me, like reggaeton. when i left 14 years ago, i just wanted away, out, anywhere else. i took the undergrad-train to elsewhere and have been in metro-boston ever since. i could tell you all sorts of things that would justify my inability to let go of sofla, but the one that matters the most to me is this: my poetry is the poetry of miami. of too much light reflecting off asphalt, of reptiles in the backyard, of calle ocho and cuban bakeries, of shore birds unconcernedly slinking alongside the turnpike.

old time coral gables

but i’ve lived most of my adult life in boston. i mourn and celebrate all the little changes. i root for these sports teams (well, except my fins). my art community is here. my coffee shops. my bars. my music venues. my sidewalks: concrete and cobblestone and brick. when i think of leaving, i ache for the daily tides of my life here.

in some kind of fantasy universe, i could divide my years in three: one for miami, one for boston, one for travel. i don’t live in that world, and at this moment in my life, i’m not sure what would make that a reality. or if i would want to pursue that path if i could see it. but i know that i’m getting older. that even if it’s not a permanent decision, it’s nearly time to start pondering real estate. the future is no clearer to me in my 30s than it ever has been. if my grandmother’s house was still in our family, this would be an easy decision. but it’s not.

place matters. i want to give my heart to the place i am. for now, i will go back home and return home and feel none the wiser but more the inspired for it.

let’s get a few things straight right off: i have loved goodreads from the moment i set eyes on it in june of 2007; there is no love lost between me and amazon; this is not a black-and-white buyout.

as everyone acknowledges, this is a smart move for both businesses. is it good for the goodreads community? that’s a very different and much more open-ended question. for many goodreads users, life after amazon will be either qualitatively better or much the same. i doubt that amazon will meddle much with the look or functionality of the site.

however, i will be mournfully exporting my data and deleting my account tonight. i have no interest in convincing anyone else to do so as well. but i feel the need to lay out my reasoning. i’ve seen a lot of folks bashing people as paranoid reactionaries for deleting their accounts.

what it boils down to for me is the same reason i don’t like amazon. as a corporation, i feel that amazon is great for consumers, but not supportive of readers. yes, i own more than 1200 books according to my librarything catalog. i certainly purchase books. but avid readers aren’t consumers, except in the sense that we consume words and skip dinner and forget about the world outside the page on a regular basis. there’s more to books and book-buying than bargain hunting.

goodreads has been good for readers, which is why it boasts 16 million members. it’s a home-grown community that didn’t have any direct ties to commerce or problems with paid reviewers , willy-nilly deleting of reviews, and reviews that have nothing to do with the actual book – to name just a few of the highly-publicized problems with amazon book reviews (google for more, throughout the years). in other words, goodreads has become a neutral and trustworthy space for a multiplicity of opinions on what people actually read.

i’m not deluded into thinking my data on goodreads hasn’t already been mined at all for corporate purposes. i voluntarily linked my goodreads account to facebook. but there is a difference in kind when a corporation that is notorious for its ruthlessness in dealing with the book industry buys direct, unmitigated access to and control over my reading data. unfortunately for me, i am put in the position of handing this data over to a corporation that i actively choose not to financially support or to leave a community and a website that i love.

for people who own kindles, this will be amazing. (i own a nook that i bought in a real-live bookstore and am happy with it.) for casual readers and folks who are into amazon, this is a non-issue. for those of us who take not only reading but the entirety of the book industry seriously… we face this choice. do we want a single corporation controlling so much of the book industry, from content to consumption and everything between and now beyond? there are problems with publishing in general and there were/are problems with big-chain bookstores. but does that mean that amazon deserves almost the entire pie? i’m skeptical about who would own my reviews, censorship, and the cropping up of many of the same types of problems that have plagued amazon’s own book review pages.

convenience is very rarely a top concern in my life. i prefer to go a little bit out of my way, and sometimes to pay a little bit more, to support what i believe is important. there are practical limits to this, but if 2% of my choices fall outside my ideal, that doesn’t negate my ideals or make me a hypocrite. it makes me a human being in an imperfect world doing the best i can do with what i’ve got to work with.

amazon is convenient. but just as i choose to spend the vast majority of my book purchasing budget at independent and used bookstores (find one near you through indiebound – and yes, many, like powell’s books in portland offer shipping and cheap used titles), i choose not to give my reviews to amazon. this is a good round up of alternative sites for those looking to jump the good ship goodreads.

i will miss the functionality of goodreads. i will miss my enormous to-read shelf. i will miss tracking my books readily by my own eccentric categories and by year read. i will miss the group pages and the reliable ratings. most of all, i will miss the connection to friends scattered around the globe, will miss knowing what book is on top of the pile next to their beds or accompanying them on their commutes. so long, goodreads, and thanks for all the fish.

but if you’re stubborn like me, i know what you’re trying to be”

sometimes, something hits you at just the perfect moment. love, books, music. someone i love gave me this song that did that. it pounced on my chest and bowled me ass over teakettle. i downloaded every goddamn track i could find after that. i needed more of this. i needed all of this. this guy had albums with portuguese names. he had an album named after ships that explored the arctic. he had lots of brush on the percussion and a thrush voice and a justso jangle. there was something that this jason molina guy was doing that bit deep into my guts. i bought axxess and ace and the lioness and forgot to ever come up for air.

“i’m getting weaker i’m getting thin i hate how obvious i have been”

for a variety of reasons, i basically stopped listening to music for a little over two years.  i organize my memories around music. looking back, it was the biggest indication that i didn’t want to or felt i couldn’t participate in the world. numb, numbed, number. i never stopped listening to jason molina’s work, though. perhaps because it kept me connected to creating.

“put no limit on the words simply to live that was my plan”

for over a decade, i’ve listened to songs: ohia when i write. i digested an immense amount about writing from putting an album like ghost tropic on repeat. risk. honesty. tension. modulation. simplicity. there are tricks a poet can’t learn from a songwriter, but even that is in itself a gift, to figure out how to capture a little of that emotional truth with a different toolbox. i learned that i could play with a palette and stay true to my voice without being boring from jason molina. that my sparseness could be strength. that i could be inventive if i tried hard enough. i think i heard something that helped me feel brave enough to push myself. some echo. because he was doing it and making it beautiful.

“i’m still guided by the voices i memorized… the world is an unsteady world”

it’s sad to know that even if music is released posthumously, autumn bird songs was the last chance jason molina had to share what he did. what he made in the time he had and what he gave is tremendous.

“then it’s lights out after this kiss then time can’t torment us this will have to serve“

thank you, jason molina, for making music. thank you and all your bandmates and your label and all the support staff and your friends and family that put this out into the world and brought it on the road. there was a magical while when i got to see magnolia electric co perform a whole mess of times in sweet small metro-boston venues. the middle east (where i got a sort-of too-big shirt that i love because it’s dark brown lettering on black fabric. so sneaky). tt the bear’s (where i got rather skeevily checked out, but the tradeoff was a short but nice little conversation). great scott’s (where i snagged the show poster from the bathroom, it’s been the only band poster on my wall for the last few years). if you haven’t heard any of jason molina’s music yet, go find it now. get hold of magnolia electric co and let it charm you. “farewell transmission” is about as perfect as a song gets.

“here it is wide and full like a pale ghost across the sky here it is crescent like a dagger from your heart into mine here it is just a spark to shine”

this is the part where i will not be afraid. where i sit at dinner with people who make beautiful words and pretend like i belong there. where i stand under the ugly lights in the broad claustrophobic greetingpit and stop putting on an unhungover smile. where my feet don’t even hurt from the two hour too late walk. where everyone says why and means it. where my friend says i did something wonderful and i can believe it. where i do not shake hands with a famous man because i am impatient and timid. this is the part where i know that i can’t be anything else.

and so study and write and say something lengthy about chilean and mapuche poets.
and so think and write and speak and spin poems.
and so say yes.
and so finally yes i can’t be anything else.

once upon a time at a writers’ seminar far, far away, a man – who is incidentally probably the most famous living american to make a living off poetry – said that the inspiration for writing arises out of jealousy and competitiveness. this successful man said essentially that the drive to write, to make art, directly ties to experiencing art and thinking not only ‘i can do that,’ but ‘i can do that better.’

as you, dear reader, may have already predicted, this haunts me. why would he say such a terrible thing? and i do judge this statement and find it terrible. this is a view of art that had never occurred to me (and perhaps for the better, because i have neither the self-confidence nor the ego to believe that i can stand above the writers i admire). and i think that the comment persists in my skull because it was not qualified. he did not say ‘this is why i write.’ he said ‘this is why writers write,’ implicitly if not explicitly by failing to qualify. cue my violent negation and judginess.

so why do i write? why poetry? why make art? everyone who takes art seriously struggles with their own versions of these questions. i have known as long as i have been writing that i can’t feed myself on poetry (i am reminded of lines from a great translation by magnus krynski and robert maguire of tadeusz rozewicz’s beautiful “draft of a modern love poem:” the most tangible / description of bread / is a description of hunger). why devote so much time and energy to this thing that will not make me a living and that is not valued even as a leisure pursuit by the society i live in?

inspiring street art in valparaiso, chile.

jealousy and competitiveness would, quite simply, not get me to create. and when i read a beautiful poem – or novel, or watch a meaningful play, or see a moving painting or photograph, or hear  stirring music, etc, etc, etc – i am often inspired. my contact and consequence project with alicia is all about that very thing (ps, her latest image is just wow). i am inspired to make because of the joy i find in someone’s perspective of the world – even something stark and challenging, or ugly and menacing, or a thousand other things. it brings me great joy that someone could communicate that slice of existence. and i want to be part of that conversation, even if i only end up talking to myself in the corner.

the stakes to me seem much higher than mr. poet appears to indicate. much bigger than one little me in one small instant of everything. when i read, say, “beowulf” or the sound and the fury, there is no doubt in my mind that i could not do that better. but i am swept into the rhythm of the alliterative epic or immersed in the textured plot and i think: i want to be part of that tradition. and maybe if i work hard enough, i may write something that will inspire someone else to make art.