Time To Write

I had coffee with some friends today, and one friend, a poet named Jenn,talked about going for her MFA. One aspect of our conversation has been eddying around my head all afternoon. She was telling us that the program expects its writers to put in about 20 hours a week on their writing. I'm not heading out to get an MFA any time soon. It was the time aspect that really has me thinking. I do want to finish my second novel by the end of next summer. Am I putting in enough time each week? I write on the weekends and a bit during the week, but is that enough? All said I may be putting in five to six hours a week writing and another one to two reading works from my two writing groups. How can I eek out more time? It is easy to say that I can write more when I'm sitting here on Sunday evening refreshed from the weekend, but at 9:00 on a Tuesday after I've been racing around since 6:00 am, it's harder to do. Isn't that, though, what separates the dabbler from the writer?

I can't give 20 hours a week to my writing. Not now. But, I can do 10. I'm sure of it. I am setting a 10 hour a week goal from now until winter break.

Vikram Seth

I rediscovered an old love this weekend.

Last month I went to Powell's and was poking around the stacks looking for Indian authors to read while also talking to my friend Sheila on the phone. Sheila just returned from Thailand so we were intermixing conversations about Thailand with books and I think I got all jumbled and chose a Vikram Seth book. I remembered his name, but I thought it was from his novel, A Suitable Boy. Sheila, who knows me so well, and probably read every Indian author I've read agreed that surely that was how I knew Vikram Seth. So, I bought An Equal Music without really reading much about it. Just to clarify - I'm sorry I'm so excited about my discovery that I'm gushing faster than I can write this story - I'm reading Indian author's to get my feel for the rhythm I want in my second novel. It is set in Nepal, and I want it to have a breathless, folklore like quality to it. I want the village to be a character, and all the characters to tie into the voice.

Yesterday, I felt tired after not sleeping Thursday night because I was excited about the half-marathon, and tired from running the half-marathon in, what I now realize where shitty shoes I bought off the sale rack, so I only went to one cookout and didn't go over Nadja's to watch the fireworks. Instead, I stayed home to read Vikram Seth's An Equal Music. At first, I was disappointed because it was set in London and there was nothing of the Indian lyrical quality about the book. I almost put it down, except the writing was so alive, so electrical, I couldn't stop. Then I realized that the main character lived in Bayswater, very near where I lived in London, and the central motif of the novel was music. As we know, I love music so I just kept reading. Maureen called, upset because she found a home for her little pit-bull puppy, and I had to stop reading to console her. Then today I had things to do, a cookout, shopping. But, I kept picking up this magnificent story, and something about the style, the soul of this book reminded me of a past love. I ran to it at each interval, and finally, just now, finished it.

As I do when I'm so in love with a story I want to soak more from it, I looked over Vikram Seth's other works. I was shocked to discover that he wrote Golden Gate. Have you read this book? I devoured it in the nineties while I was living with Sheila in Washington, DC. That's probably why Sheila recognized his name - I was in love with this book and have thought of it often through the years. It is a novel set in verse about people in San Francisco. But the author is so true to his characters, so shrewd about human nature, that I never forgot it. The book wasn't mine, probably borrowed from our other housemate, Monica. Otherwise, it would have been a book I held onto.

So,in reading An Equal Music, I rediscovered my love for Vikram Seth. Deep breath. There, now I've gushed. I'm content. But, I don't want to let this story go. As my fourteen-month-old nephew says, putting his little fingers together in sign "more, more."

1966--Year of the Fire Horse

 Years ago, while visiting a small Asian border town, I saw a peculiar advertisement. In English, it read, "Love your girl child." My hosts explained that infanticide of girls was still practiced by some uneducated villagers. The only explanation I was given was something about boys being valued more because girls leave the home when they marry. I couldn't then and can't now reconcile that answer with infanticide. Years later, when I learned about Fire Horse women in Chinese astrology, I understood the significance of the phrase "love your girl child."

When I first began writing my novel, Secret of The Plains, my central metaphor was the snow leopard. In fact my first working title was Search for the Snow Leopards. I knew that the snow leopards were the mysterious creatures of the Himalayas and it made sense. But as I wrote my first draft, I couldn’t find many ways to connect snow leopards with the characters and the image just felt empty. It bothered me, but I knew I needed this central image to drive the story.

Then in January of 2007 I attended a teachers' retreat. It was a day of journaling, poetry, walking, talking, and space. This was just over a month after I left my husband and I was scared and in search of some peace so the day resonated with me. I threw myself into the activities. At the end of the day one of the participants asked me if I was a Fire Horse. It seemed like a strange thing to say to someone and I asked her what she meant. She explained that women born in 1966 were Fire Horses. She was a Fire Horse sign and thought she recognized a fellow adventurous spirit. I was surprised that as broken as I felt someone recognized strength in me. I am not a Fire Horse sign, but I appreciated that the teacher saw these characteristics in me. Her words stirred something in me. I went home and researched Fire Horse Women.

After reading about this sign and the power these women had, their potential to change the world, I knew that Lili, the main character's sister, was a Fire Horse. I also knew that I had found my central metaphor. I immediately changed the images and rewrote the Lili character. The Fire Horses sought me out.  Below is just some of what I learned about this remarkable sign.

Unlike the astrology based on sun signs that my mother reads in her daily newspaper, Chinese astrology is closely linked with Chinese philosophy and astronomy. A person's destiny is determined by his or her birth, the season, and the hours of their birth. Most of us have found our birth year on the placemat in a Chinese restaurant-I'm the Ram. Yet the Chinese actually follow a 60 year cycle that is much more complicated than the animal of their birth year. Depending upon the year born, a person can also be one of the elements wood, fire, earth, metal, or water. For instance, born in December of 1967, I am a Fire Ram. If I had been born just ten months earlier, I would have been a Fire Horse. As a Fire Horse, I would have had a very different destiny.

In general, Horses are outgoing, people-loving, and successful. However, in the Fire element their freedom-loving traits turn to rebelliousness, hubris, and destruction. While this potential was tolerated in a male child, it was thought to be ominous in a woman. The common belief in most Asian countries was that a Fire Horse woman would devastate her nuclear family, drain them of resources, and bring about the early death of her father. If a husband could be found for a Fire Horse woman, he would be mistreated and meet an early death himself. Several stories have perpetuated this fallacy such as a popular Japanese tale dating as far back as 1682 about a Fire Horse woman who nearly burned down the city of Edo.

The power of cultural myth is strong as evidenced by the decline of births in the year of the Fire Horse. The birthrate in Japan during that year is down a half million as compared to the previous and succeeding years. In China, Tibet, and Korea there is also data of a plummet in birthrates. Stories of infanticide of girls from this period persist. You can be sure that women born in 1966 are not quick to reveal this in public.

Today these women are beginning to revise these beliefs, and their stories are capturing the imagination of the world. Fire Horse myths are being rewritten to honor the regenerative strength of women born under the sign of Fire Horse. In Japan the Hinoeuma Association, was formed by six Fire Horse women to raise awareness and better the perceptions of the roughly 1,300,000 fire horse women who were born in Japan.

Films such as the 2005 Canadian film, Eve and The Fire Horse, has raised awareness while also winning accolades such as the Sundance Special Jury Prize. The first woman owned Indian film company, FireHorse Films, was founded by two Fire Horse women, Venita Coelho and Deepti Datt. They told reporters that they chose this potentially controversial name to "encourage creative women in India and around the world, who are unafraid to question the status quo and push the envelope."

Many books, too, have been published. Most noteworthy is by the co-author of Farewell to Manzanar, Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston. Her book, The Legend of Fire Horse Woman, is about the survival of three generations of Japanese women and illuminates the purifying strength of women born into this destiny.

The next cycle for this rare sign will be 2026. Following the movement of these wonderful works by Fire Horse women around the world, will cultural perception be different in 2026? Will families receive these strong women with excitement, or will parents genetically engineer a year of boys. Either way, when I think of Fire Horse women, I cannot help but remember that shaky sign wavering on a screen in a dark movie theater: "Love your girl child."

Soul Mountain by Gao Xingjian

Lingshan, Soul Mountain. This is the first Chinese novel I read when I decided to begin researching China. I chose Soul Mountain because Gao Xingjian received the Nobel Prize for Literature the year after this book was published. On my first reading, I understood the existential exploration, but the subtext and cultural implications of the main character's journey went right past me. After a year of research, I returned to this novel and was elated at how much richer the novel's message was after I understood the Communist government better. This is a rich, complex, and enticing novel. It is like a favorite hike, each time I open this book I find something new. It has been so long since I read Soul Mountain, but I know it affected my work, especially in regard to the sense of self and community, and the complexity of this relationship in Chinese culture. In this country we look for ways to celebrate the individual, but that would not work in China. The closest I can come to understanding this complex relationship is when I still feel Catholic guilt even years after leaving the church.

Connection, connection, connection. Individual power comes only through connection to the power elements in society. That's why Soul Mountain is such a profound novel, because Goa Xingjian understood this yet tries to escape the power structure of his society, by a journey to the most distant mountain, by taking on a variety of points of view, and by exploding the self. Even in the most remote areas, he is unable to shake society. He remembers an old proverb: "Existence is returning, non-existence is returning, so don't stay by the river getting blown about by the cold wind." Yet he stands by the river, looking across at the Soul Mountain, afraid to cross.

As he avoids the dark road beyond the river, society knocks on his door in the form of a friend asking for help to get his daughter into a university. The writer tells the man that the girl's strong exam results should be enough, but the man tells him "you're really pedantic. Do you think all those children of high-ranking cadres have passed examinations?" The author responds, "I haven't researched such matters." The friend answers "You're a writer." The author refuses to see the connection, and answers "So what if I am a writer?" The friend answers, "you're the conscience of society, you must speak for the people!" The writer answers. "Stop joking, I say. Are you the people, or am I the people, or is it the so-called we who are the people? I speak only for myself." And with this disclaimer, Gao Xingjian makes a final attempt to disengage. By asserting that he is only an individual. The radicalness of the idea nearly brings him to the end. The next man knocking on the door wants the author to help him publish his manuscript. The author gives him back his novel and decides not to open the door again, not to let society enter. Only by ignoring society, by pretending it is not there, can he finally "reach the extremity of life." He crosses the river, "slowly transforming, gradually solidifying into a dark moon tinged with blue."