Announcing The Collaboration Hub

Check out my latest project, inspired by AROHO's summer 2011 retreat. I've posted the text of the Mind Stretch Presentation I gave at the retreat here at my She Writes blog, as well as taken up the challenge of hosting a new group called The Collaboration Hub (for AROHO retreat attendees, She Writes members and anyone brave enough to find us) where collaborataive pairs or those looking to pair and collaborate over the course of the coming year can expect to share support, conversation, questions, resources, and more. Wish us luck, or better yet, join us.

AROHO Retreat 2011: Home Away From Home at Ghost Ranch

I am reveling in the harvest of this year's work that has brought me to Ghost Ranch in New Mexico this week, my heart overflowing with the simple, transcendent power of the weave of synchronicities. Having just newly returned to teaching English at the Santa Rosa Junior College Fall semester 2010, I have been struggling with getting my public personnae up to speed, and I couldn't have had a more welcoming and inspiring experience than the one I've had so far with A Room of Her Own Foundation.

I specifically sought out AROHO's summer retreat because of the way it was framed and offered: as a give and take experience, every woman writer participating, sharing, presenting, receiving. I sensed that the venue resonated with exactly where I find myself on my "writer's trajectory": open, willing to learn, willing to challenge myself, and willing to give back what I have learned as well.

All of my expectations have been exceeded. I knew that in offering to present at one of the Mind-Stretch sessions, I'd have to pull myself together and do my least favorite thing one must do as a writer (for me anyway): speak into a microphone with composure, grace, and with luck, a sense of humor. I managed to get through my talk (Female Power in the Face of Adversity: Collaboration as Excavation) and presented the photo-poem montage Robyn Beattie and I made for Lady Diana.

But more importantly, my notebook is full of ideas from the other 16 Mind Stretch presentations; I have seed ideas for the next five years. What a gift. Can I just say thank you, thank you--to the web of family at home caring for my three children, the Siberian Husky, the new kitten. And thank you to AROHO for its existence, to every single member of the staff, to every single woman who came this summer (and to those participants who came before). I'm so very honored to part of this bloodline.

Marriage Alone: A Modern Odyssey

A two city dilemma continues to dominate our family life for now. My husband is a weekend father, and I’m adapting, after nearly two years of this lifestyle, to parenting our three children alone, and to solitary marriage, becoming a weekend wife. A visit this week from a Danish childhood friend, who was an exchange student my senior year in high school (so many years ago), prompts me to run a non-sentimental scan of our lives from his point of view. Gentleman that he is, my Danish friend failed to judge us (at least verbally), though when he asked, Now why aren’t you living under one roof? I was at a loss to explain.

Surely we join a large number of other American families, due to these times (economy-desperation-driven) when extended commutes, even between states, might be the new norm. This week, solace comes in the form of a graphic novel adaptation of The Odyssey by Gareth Hinds (Candle Wick Press, 2010). I know it sounds extreme—how could I be bolstered by the story of a couple separated for several decades? But, by comparison, it makes light of two years apart. One has to cultivate gratitudes. Else sink.

As a poet reader of graphic novels, I hone right in on the author/illustrator word choice, for he/she must trim the text back to near poetry since the pictures convey so much so rapidly. Picture becomes wordless poem. I love the parallel postures, for example, of the grieving Penelope, hunched over on the floor of her island bedroom just after she receives the news Telemachus has fled in search of her husband, and the muscle-riddled back of Odysseus as he sheds his daily tears on a narrow promontory of his island where’s he’s been tethered by Circe. The panels appear on facing pages (46-47), a three D metaphor for the couple’s simultaneous grieving. Penelope’s body is inset against the larger backdrop of the sea and her island, a further nested metaphor for her solitude and the many miles between Penelope and Odysseus.

I also got hooked by a second parallel dilemma Odysseus and Penelope face as lovers in their prime. Hinds puts these words in Penelope’s mouth when Odysseus finally reveals himself to her, suitors murdered, she doubting his identity: “Odysseus, forgive me! You know the reason for my caution. The gods gave us so much pain—they kept us apart through the summer of our lives (p. 234).” I would argue that although apart, unable to consummate their love, both Penelope and Odysseus maintain a vital sensuality, but in strikingly different ways according to their gender.

Since Circe, Goddess, seduces Odysseus and we are told Odysseus sheds tears daily over his desire to return to Penelope, we forgive him—he has no choice but to give over his body. Clearly he remains emotionally faithful to Penelope. Circe validates his masculinity by forcing him to be her lover. Say a God forced himself on Penelope: we would likely judge it rape, given the power dynamic (Leda and the Swan, etc.).

Penelope’s beauty and female sensual power find validation in the many suitors and the sheer number of years they spend pursuing her. Were she to give in to their adulation, take a lover, her honor would be destroyed. In Penelope’s equation, she holds the power and maintains it. Were I twenty years younger, I might be grumpy about this gender difference; I must be mellowing with age. I wasn’t even ticked when Hinds paints a doleful Circe taking Odysseus to bed in her three arched stone bower at sundown, one last time, even after she’s been ordered to let him go. At that point, why not, who could resist such seduction, and by then I felt sorry for Circe having her lover stripped from her so.

In magnificent red panels, Hinds portrays the loathsome Cyclops, a powerful contrast to the dreamy blues of the panels depicting Odysseus’s sea trials. Another masterful panel is the page of consequence, in which Hinds frames the text of his dialogue within two halves of the head of a cow of Helion: one half, furred, alive, contains the admonition to the crew not to eat the cattle, the other half, a weathered skull, dead, frames the deadly consequences should they in fact kill any of the cattle.

Of working with The Odyssey, Hinds writes, “This is probably the greatest story ever told, and the challenge of retelling it in graphic form irresistible. It was incredibly exciting to work with this material—gods, monsters, flawed heroes, battles and all the best and worst of human nature, set against an ancient Mediterranean backdrop. It’s really a dream project.”

Seems every marriage contains the material on that list as well—or at least, that’s the possible range of personalities we sign up to encounter in our vows: “gods [the ones we assume the other to be at first], monsters [the ones we occasionally become while parenting, etc.,], flawed heroes [who you become when you realize you truly can’t rescue your spouse], battles, and all the worst and best of human nature.” I count my husband and I pretty spoiled--inserting photos of the kids daily into text boxes and speaking on the phone makes a two city life pretty easy, as do the weekend trysts (sweetened by absence, almost like young love, except for hum of washer and dryer, dog pawing at bedroom door snuffling to be let in, lasagna burning in oven, children damaging one another in background).

Nope, no texting or continual popping off of photos to one another for Penelope and Odysseus. All they had was some kind of supernatural faith in themselves, one another, and fate, fed by the occasional astral meeting, via dream—a kind of faith I could likely stand to cultivate.

AROHO Reading Diary #3: Wrecker, by Summer Wood

Here it is, summer....and all three children home, the new pup still to train (give up a month of Saturdays?! I know, Jeannette, I'll give in and traipse us to town for an obedience class here shortly, or pay the price for life). So I admit, we've been out at the beach, eating fruit, boogie boarding, watching the pelicans draft off one another, ogling the real surfers.

I've dedicated summer to a submission blitz and to reading the work of the women writers I'll soon get to meet on retreat in August. This latest reading diary looks at Summer Wood's novel about the raising of an abandoned little boy, Wrecker. Check it out over at my She Writes blog:

http://www.shewrites.com/profiles/blogs/aroho-reading-diary-3-wrecker

And if you missed it, a mini reading review of Storm of Terror, A Hebron Mother's Diary by June Leavitt: http://www.shewrites.com/profiles/blogs/aroho-reading-diary-2-storm-of

Guest Post by Alexis Bonari: Graphic Novels Matter, Too

Lured by the title of this blog (Feral Mom, Feral Writer), Alexis Bonari contacted me about writing a guest post. Enjoy her glance at the often underestimated role graphic novels can play in fostering a love for the written word.

My school library didn’t have graphic novels. To my knowledge, they still don’t, which is a shame.

I’ve never had difficulty getting into a written story with the exception of The Catcher in the Rye, which after finishing I threw across the room, screaming, “I wasted an afternoon for that?” After spending my grade school years in advanced learning courses, I had it in my bloated head that anyone who wasn’t a good reader or a writer just wasn’t a good student. Truth be told, as far upturned as my nose was back then I’m surprised I had friends.

Fail

Then, I met Robert. Robert is my significant other’s little brother. At the time of our meeting, he was 16 years old and diagnosed from an early age with a learning disability. He’s a talented artist (and Xbox aficionado) but he hated reading and his school grades repeatedly showed it.

The idea of reading being repulsive to someone was unfathomable for me. So, for the next several years I attempted to push him into a shape he wasn’t made for by presenting him with the latest publications in fast fiction (fail), speculative fiction (fail), fantasy (fail), and gritty nonfiction (super fail). He never got back to me about any of them and I found the books stuffed—spines unwrinkled and pages unturned—beneath his bed when I recently helped the family move to another house.

Revelation

My first foray into illustrated literature was with DC Comic’s Vertigo Fables, Bill Willingham’s adaptation of fairy tale characters like Snow White and Pinocchio trying to survive in modern day New York. It wasn’t until I was several trades into the series that I threw one of them across the room (bad habit, I know), realizing I had the perfect birthday present for Robert and infuriated it had taken me so long to figure it out.

Lesson Learned

Several weeks later, Robert confessed to me that Volume 1 of The Sandman (by legendary Neil Gaiman) was the first of my gifts he had finished reading. In fact, he had already bought the next several volumes and was newly engrossed in other graphic novels. Some of his more recent favorites include Fist Stick Knife Gun: A Personal History of Violence in America by Geoffrey Canada and The Odyssey by Gareth Hinds, which are actually on the American Library Association’s 2011 Great Graphic Novels for Teens list.

It would be a shame to let children and teens become victims of book snobs (yours truly) and miss out stories, no matter the medium. Reading overstuffed paragraphs and chapters by the likes of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Charles Dickens admittedly isn’t for everyone, but stories are.

Alexis Bonari is a freelance writer and researcher for College Scholarships, where recently she’s been researching softball scholarship programs as well as Mercedes Benz scholarships. In her spare time, she enjoys square-foot gardening, swimming, and avoiding her laptop.

The Seamstress: Reading Diary#1

As mentioned in an earlier post, I’m looking forward to attending A Room of Her Own Foundation’s August Women’s Writing Retreat (still accepting applications here). A Room of Her Own Foundation (AROHO) offers hands on networking support to women writers--from serious grant support (check out their Gift of Freedom Award)—to sponsoring a number of writing contests and retreat offerings throughout the year.

In addition to rubbing elbows with a diverse score of writers, I will be presenting some photo poem montage work (the most recent--Nefertiti on the Astral--currently up at Prairie Wolf Press) and facilitating a small writing group titled, “The Exquisite Now with Feral Mom, Feral Writer” during which we’ll generate writing based on daily photographs, keeping the blog schedule on track, no doubt posting on the oddity of the week’s extreme quiet (shifting from our three child, one puppy, four feral cat, chainsaw wielding husband household to a room and bed of my own).

I’ve challenged myself (August bearing down) to read as many books as possible by fellow retreat attendees and have posted the first of these bite-sized reading diaries over at my She Writes blog, starting with a look at a holocaust account by Sara Tuvel Bernstein titled, The Seamstress: A Memoir of Survival (read in full here).

Hopeless Carnage: Sisu the Siberian Husky and The Song of Sedna

Nothing nostalgic about this week’s incoming chaos: the ten month old pure-bred Siberian Husky my husband showed up with last Saturday with near-to-no warning or crate or fenced in yard to contain our ice-eyed bundle of pull.

Four days later, I’m tailing one of those Model T cars like my husband’s grandmother used to drive (her first car—which she bought for $5 with her first paycheck as a nurse). In my state of dog-deranged anxiety—I glance at the license plate and read, “Hopeless Carnage.” I’m thinking, “Isn’t that right!!” But as we near the red light and slow, I realize it actually reads, “Horseless Carriage.” I laugh, but just a little, still struggling to weigh the advantages and disadvantages of keeping the new family member.

It all started with a casual phone conversation. “I’m going to look at this puppy…” my husband said from his San Diego apartment, which, as any wife worth her salt knows, means, “I’m coming home with this puppy…” Honestly, who ever goes to “look at a puppy” and passes on keeping it…

Three days later he’s driving the ten hours towards us with our new charge despite my 80/20 vote for waiting to bring a dog into our already stressed household. And the craziness begins, for when you cross a cat-loving poet (me) with a fitness Instructor/ Sonoma Sate University Sea Wolf Women’s Cross Country Coach husband (him), the layers of trouble start cycloning towards the marriage.

First of all, my husband informs me he’s already bought the dog a nametag. Since he named the first two of our three children and I had essentially voted against bringing this pup into our home, I wanted a shot at naming her. I’d landed on Sedna—I know, I know---it sounds like Edna—but listen to the reason behind it. I’m hopelessly image driven, so I immediately had thought of The Song of Sedna (Doubleday), a beautifully written and illustrated children’s book by the talented San Souci brothers.

Eskimo girl Sedna falls in love with a handsome stranger (Mattak) who takes Sedna (and her faithful wolf companion Setka) away from her father to start life anew on the Island of Birds. It isn’t long before Sedna discovers she’s married a non-human—a bird spirit. When Sedna’s father comes to rescue her, Mattak pursues their boat in bird form, finally transforming his boat into a fire-breathing serpent, terrorizing Sedna and her father until her father sacrifices her to the sea out of fear. With the help of seal spirit guides, she’s able to overcome obstacles and harness her power for good to earn her position as goddess of the sea. Sedna sits on her underwater throne flanked by Setka and her father (who she has forgiven).

The kids aren’t buying the name Sedna, so I try for Setka. No go.

Frankly, I’m kind of ok with their refusal—I’m not sure I want to carry the metaphor too far…I’ve never caught my husband in non-human form, though when we were first engaged to be married and I slept in the museum air of his grandparent’s living room, where the Greek urns, Polish dolls, sculpted busts of some of the family and the relics of 20 years of diplomatic travel reside, I woke from sleep to the image of Neptune, brandishing his Trident, the dark sunrays of his hair writhing like Medusa directly over my face. Though startled, I wasn’t afraid and even felt a certain calm, accepting the visit and its message: You may marry and have this man for your husband for now, but someday he will return to me, for he is of the sea.

Back to the dog’s nametag, which reads Sisu. As is so often the infuriating but charming case, my husband’s got a rock solid alibi for getting his way: the name Sisu honors his late great grandfather, a Finnish running diplomat. Sisu in Finnish means “fortitude, tenacity, stick-to-it-iveness.” Sensing a divided front, the kids gang up on me and take a perverse delight in calling the dog Sisu as many times as possible in front of me while I counter with, "Her name is Sedna!" though she answers to neither Sisu nor Sedna as her former name was Dakota.

And Alibi number two: Sisu, Siberian Husky, family dog by day, will moonlight as the Sonoma State Cross Country team mascot, bolstering the team’s morale.

We survive the first night crateless, though I’m not liking the sight of this dog sprawled across our bed. She rotates between beds, resurfaces from our downstairs with a toothbrush, a bouncy ball she’s pocked, a foam pad she nips apart. The kids think I’m cruel the next night when we put her in the crate, but after so many years of rotating beds with children in a sort of sloppy free-for-all, I’m not willing to carry that dysfunctional pattern any further, especially not on behalf of a dog.

When we first come home from Petco with a lovely cream and black canvas crate, our five year old son clambers in with the remains of his father’s childhood tiny plastic green soldiers and leggos in tow; I hear my husband cajoling him out of the crate: “That belongs to Sisu, not you.” I overhear our two older children remarking they know how it feels to be displaced….and shortly my husband’s out on the deck telling them he’s the king of displacement... “I lost all Momma’s love and attention to you three for years…”


And I flash on a drawing my father’s wife shared with me (drawn by her father, Paul Beattie, of her mother. There were five children in her family). When I look at the drawing, I slip straight out of “mother self” and into her father’s point of view: there sits his wife, her eyes averted, gaze perpetually trained a little past his face and over to the kids. See how just over her third eye, he’s penciled in a tiny sketch of her face and upper torso. To see her, he first has to see through the body of swaddled infant.

So maybe Sisu has a third function aside from 1) family dog and 2) SSU mascot: lover of my husband.

Sisu should more aptly be named Houdini after the test of the first Monday of the week when I was faced with a full day of errands. Overriding my husband’s suggestion of putting Sisu out on our back deck (where I envisioned her using the picnic tables as a springboard to chase the deer, random rabbit or feral cat sure to cross our hill at some point during the day), I lead her into one of those collapsible metal crates inside the house. Piece of cake, I say to myself, lock up the house, and take the kids to school.

Three hours later, when I return home, Sisu greets me at the door with a wagging tail, a circle of shredded cardboard at her feet, a ball of yarn twined around the stairs, a bag of Easter chocolate foils scattered in the upstairs bedroom, a little offering of dog poop on my daughter’s comforter and sweater. All sides of Sisu’s metal crate remain securely shut—I check it again and again. There’s a little tuft of Husky hair near the bottom where the plastic under-tray has about an inch of clearance to slide out. My only clue. That evening, she chews through one corner of her canvas crate as well, destroying the zipper and her chances of sleeping in my daughter’s room.

To the sound of her yips and howls protesting her return to the metal crate downstairs for bedtime, I try to focus on her potential strengths: guard dog extraordinaire for the days my husband’s out of town. But when I take her out at midnight under the stars to pee, the posse of critters snacking in our compost bin at the far end of the yard (just out of sight behind the fence) scatter. She hurls her body back towards the porch, tail tucked snugly between her legs.

Hands down, she loves us up. And she collapses on my feet in a furry swath, follows my every move with her pale-blue eyes. And she’s a sheer muscle and furred torpedo of joy at the ocean circling the kids and the waves…But…

…alas, Sisu is on probation with me.

Then again, maybe I’ll have to shoulder some of the responsibility for her sudden appearance in our lives, for as I’m drifting off to sleep, out of the corner of my eye, I see the “image map” (made in the spirit of play around the subject of furthering my goals as a writer at the beginning of the year). Up near the top of the map, right next to several gold rimmed butterflies and a Cicely Mary Barker Flower Fairy sit a pair of grinning wolf pups propped against one another, muzzles open to catch the falling snow.

Image Credits:

Image of Sedna is from The Song of Sedna, written by Robert D. San Souci and illustrated by Daniel San Souci.

Detail from larger drawing by Paul Beattie. For more information, contact Robyn Beattie at www.robynbeattie.com