Ghi on phu nu...?

Minh biet den Ngay 08 thang 03 tu khi buoc chan tro ve Viet Nam vao nam 2004. Truoc do, toi khong nghi gi ca ve viec ton vinh va tuong nho den nhung nguoi dan ba, nhung nguoi phu nu xuat sac trong doi song cua toi. That ra, HAT khong phai la nguoi hay tho o hoac lo ra, nhung vi song o tren dat My, it khi duoc nghe den ngay International Woman Day. Day la mot dieu thieu xot lon trong nhung nam dau cua cuoc doi toi. Lon len trong xa hoi My, toi khong duoc day do de nho den va ghi on nhung nguoi phu nu -- Me, Ba Ngoai, Ba Noi, Chi, Co, Di, v.v. -- da nuoi duong toi tu luc con nho, va da giup toi truong thanh den hom nay. Va lai, toi cung khong nghi den nhung nguoi nu lanh dao da lam guong sang lang cho toi va cac chi em khac.

Toi rat tiec da lon len mot xa hoi it khi ghi on nguoi phu nu... Chan dung cua nguoi phu nu da duong nhu bien mat. Nam nay, ngay Phu Nu da den va di, troi qua mot cach lang le. Khong mot ai trong nhom ban be cua toi nhac den -- toi cung khong biet ho co biet den ngay nay hay khong nua. Ngay hom do, toi da cau nguyen cho nhung quy ba ma toi biet -- o xa haoc o gan, tre tuoi hoac lon tuoi, manh hoac yeu. Toi nghi den nhung nguoi phu nu hien gio dang song mot minh, co don, le loi. Toi nghi den nhung nguoi phu nu dang co ca dan con chau chat chit xum vay. Toi uoc gi van hoa va xa hoi My Chau se mot ngay nao do phan tinh va nho den nhung nguoi phu nu dang duoc ton vinh -- va khong chi trong nhung ngay Le Tinh Yeu hoac ngay Giang Sinh hoac ngay sinh nhat, nhung moi ngay, hang ngay.

Khong biet vi sao hom nay minh lai nghi den viec nay. Cung khong biet dieu gi da thuc minh viet len nhung loi le nhu vay.

Co bao gio minh nghi rang minh cung den lam guong tot cho cac em gai nho be? Va neu minh may man duoc mot nguoi em ngai nao do "idolize", cha, kinh thiet! Minh co du kha nang khong? Minh ganh noi trach nhiem lam nguoi phu nu dang duoc ton trong?

Five Random Points on a Friday Afternoon

(1) I don't always pick up my cell phone. I am so very sorry. But, I can help it. I dislike being interrupted, just as I imagine most folks dislike being interrupted by my phone calls. I don't pick up the phone while in the bathroom, restroom, or in the basement when I'm doing laundry. I talk while I'm sitting in the BART station, bus, or subway, but I try to keep my voice down. However, there are times when the occasion doesn't allow for private phone calls in public spaces, so I don't answer. I also don't answer the phone when I'm driving the car. (There are exceptions, of course, but I usually hold fast to this one rule.)

(2) My right thumb and wrist are in a Futuro brace b/c of -- carpal tunnel syndrome? I dunno. But, I noticed that my wrists are often angled an improper angles, and when I work for long hours on the laptop w/o a mouse but only a touchpad, it hurts more and more. Strange?

(3) I played and lost my first game of Settlers of Catan. Ha ha! I thought I've outgrown board games (other than Scrabble - b/c who can outgrow Scrabble?!) only to realize that I am super addicted to this silly game of strategy, which only serves to emphasize all to strongly my stupidity and inability to strategize and analyze. Need I point out the contradiction? I'm obsessed over a game that capitalizes on the American individual's (usually) egocentric, self-centered, aggressive, domineering, imperialistic greed and competitiveness. I also can't help but think about the early colonial days when we were trying to colonize and dominate everything that didn't belong to us.

(4) I bought my first pair of shoes, for $200+. Because my feet deserve it and I need to dress up for work? Ha! No matter how I "dress it up," this confession still reeks. It's ridiculous that I succumbed to such moments of insanity. Instead of saving up to buy a condo or to lease a new apartment (before this summer begins), I went out and purchased a pair of shoes costing as much as a certain government employee's two months' salary in Vietnam. I wear them with guilty pleasure. (P.S. I can only say this here b/c I know my siblings don't read this blog; if you know them, are in contact with them, or will be seeing them soon, please, please, please don't say anything. Gracias. Merci. Danke.)

(5) I haven't done my taxes. Sigh.

boxing it up, fencing it off

The snow was pristine, white, silent. Everything was beautiful and quiet and lovely. It was my very first time to snowshoe. I was a novice, and completely naive about maneuvering my way around land completely covered in snow. You could not see what was on the ground because of layers of whiteness that covered everything -- clean or dirty, broken or whole. Everything was more beautiful, cleaner, brighter, purer. Trampling around in the snow, winding our way through the trees, it seemed like the everything was right with the world. Nothing could be fresher, more natural, or cleaner.

It made me think that so much of the world was like this contradiction: beautiful white snow covering the ground, just like so many other beautiful things covering up our minor errors, our great insecurities, our gross imperfections. We trample around above them all, believing that everything was pristine and whole, hoping that what we cover it up with will eventually help us to forget. We rely on the vagaries of memory, and the imperfections of history to lull us into believing we have managed to make the world right. We have effectively wrapped up every social injustice, every war, every experience of violence and covered it in white snow.

We forgot who we were and where we were as we trekked around the beautiful landscape. It wasn't long though, because we soon heard someone emerging from his log cabin to yell at us. Apparently we had been trespassing on his property. Underneath the wintry beauty, he had fenced off his own bit of nature, partitioned it as his own and refused to share it with his fellow humans. It was private property. Privatized nature.

The attitude of "mine/yours" doesn't surprise me; we put virtual and physical borders around everything. We mark our territories, and we stake our claims. From the beginning of time, from Adam and Eve, we've wanted to label what is "ours." But it irritates me to see such proprietariness. Who are we in the scheme of things to demand exclusive rights to nature? It's been ingrained in us to take and hoard; it's still a shame. Shame on us for doing so.

Deciphering Diane di Prima

Thursday's Lunch Poems reading series featured the beatnik poet Diane di Prima. While I've had the fortune to read her work in anthologies and journals and various and sundry places, hearing her stories in person was a wonderfully refreshing and enlightening experience.

I've always had difficulty unlocking the codes to her poetry as seen on the page; never could understand all those unpunctuated caesuras and empty spaces, and especially those wild, grand questions populating her poems. In fact, her poems WERE wild questions for which I had no answer. Often, the spaciousness of her poems confounded me, making me wonder why she could say such things and be taken seriously, while my statements and questions fell flat like deflated balloons. What quality did di Prima's poetic voice possess that allowed and invited people to define her poetry as pushing against the edges? What made her writing move beyond the margins and into the lives of people? What makes the line "the vortex of creation is the vortex of destruction" acceptable because she said it, whereas if I wrote that same idea 4 years ago in grad school, it would be scoffed at by the likes of Timothy Liu?

Listening to her stories, I grow to understand that the poems carry the weight of the social contexts in which these poems were written, are being written. In the days of civil rights movements, in the days of defining and redefining what was "normative", in the days of questioning -- shaking up, inverting, challenging -- the status quo, she was willing to drive around on flatbed trucks, yelling out these words:

You are political prisoner locked in tense body
You are political prisoner locked in stiff mind
You are political prisoner locked to your parents
You are political prisoner locked to your past
Free yourself
Free yourself

(-from Revolutionary Letter #49)

Seeing her poetry on the page wasn't enough to understand that what she was channeling was poetry of political protest, and so much more. Without the socio-economic contexts of these poems, I couldn't appreciate them.

Admittedly, if my poetry students were to write these lines now, I'd have serious doubts about whether I could fully explain to them that they are writing in a vacuum, a void, because how could they be immersed so fully as di Prima was during those times? And perhaps I would be wrong, because look at where our government has taken us now... and here I begin to think that I'm treading on dangerous ground... nevertheless, I have to say that I can't digest this type of blanket rally cries.

She writes: "the only war that matters is the war against / the imagination"

And, "There is no way you can avoid taking sides / There is no way you can not have a poetics"

How are these lines poetry? They sound more like instructions from Richard Hugo or Louis Gluck. I don't have difficulty believing in the efficacy of these words to inspire others to take a stand on a social justice or civil rights issue. In fact, we could easily be persuaded to take up the cross of our civic duties, demand our rights as free Americans, and expect our voices to be heard while driving through town blaring our words through megaphones. That was the beauty of poetry, and is the beauty of poetry -- to affect change. But, I can't imagine myself writing with that voice and believing in it myself. It's hard for me to see these as lines of poetry if I pull them out of the contexts and out of the larger whole. Alone, they are not really poetry. That is why I appreciate hearing di Prima in person. Her reading added cadence and rhythm and rhyme and meaning -- and passion -- to what was lacking on the page.

Revolutionary Letter #90 goes like this:

ANCIENT HISTORY

The women are lying down
in front of the bulldozers
sent to destroy
the last of the olive groves.

The words carry much more weight because of the actions that inspired them, called them, to come forth. The physicality of lying down on the hard ground in the face of the bulldozers' great claws necessitates these simple four lines. The simplicity of these words -- very matter of fact as if it was reported on the telly by some reporter -- is offset by the action itself, not just imagined acts. The simplicity of the lines is balanced, too, by the motivation of these women who are lying down -- not in resignation but with determination to prolong the life of trees, to fight against something immovable and impenetrable and destructive. The simplicity is also balanced by the motivation of the poet who wishes to record these things as ancient history -- but not really -- so that future generations will witness these acts and then act accordingly.

I get it now, but not at the time that I glanced at four simple lines with nary an explanation.

I buy a copy of Revolutionary Letters (published and distributed by Last Gasp of San Francisco, www.lastgasp.com) and see the quote from Michelle Tea:

"Diane di Prima is the original outlaw poet; she wrote herself a wild, authentic life without regard for the rules during an era when being such a female creature was truly transgressive. Her writing is crucial as history; as literature it is enduring and bewitching."

It is no doubt, for me, a challenge. It is a challenge to understand and appreciate how during her time (and many di Prima followers will argue with me whether or not that time has passed -- perhaps it is most relevant now considering our current socio-political-economic contexts) her writings were "transgressive" and wild. It is also a challenge to bring forth for myself my own definitive, groundbreaking, heartwrenching, wildly aching, madly thrashing, imaginatively explosive, in your face kind of poetry that stops people from breathing and forces them to feel the essence of life. A challenge to be my own kind of "outlaw poet."

I may not love it, but I am certainly called by it. I may not enjoy it, but I am inspired by it. I may not perform these poems or similar ones on the steps of City Hall, but I just might one day find my own flatbed truck from which I will spiel out "outlaw" poetry...

"Sao"

Một ngôi sao vừa rơi
vụt tắt trên bầu trời
hay là tên người ấy
vụt tắt ở trong tôi ?

Vẫn thấy trên bầu trời
có muôn vàn sao sáng
mà ở trong lòng tôi
như một hành lang vắng

Một ngôi sao vừa tắt
bầu trời vẫn không buồn
sao tên người ấy tắt
trong lòng tôi cô đơn

- translated tu Puskin

Mot ngoi sao vua roi
vut tat tren bau troi
hay la ten nguoi ay
vut tat o trong toi?

Van thay tren bau troi
co muon van sao sang
ma o trong long toi
nu mot hanh lang vang

Mot ngoi sao vua tat
bau troi van khong buon
sao ten nguoi ay tat
trong long toi co don

How do I get back to this????

Trekking Through Snow Country

Saturday morning, we took up snowshoes and trekked around the cabin. Snow was high, and the trees were beautiful, and everything was quiet. We had a grand time.

Saturday afternoon, we went out to Rainbow drive and trekked around in snowshoes. The amazing landscape belonged to us, no sound but the whisper of air rustling, no other color but pristine white snow.

Arriving in snow country

Last Saturday, we drove through clear weather and beautiful skies toward Soda Springs. We came to snow and quickly took Exit 174 to the cabin...

We stayed in a cabin not unlike this neighboring one. Saturday morning, I noticed the couple next door busily shoveling snow off their balcony...


Luckily, we did not get a lot of snow over night and our balcony was relatively clear. By mid-morning, the light dusting was melted by the bright sun.

Back from Snowshoe-ing!!

For the first time in my life, I realized what it meant to wear tennis rackets on my feet to trekk through at least a foot of snow. Yeah!

Will write more later as I am now recovering, still, from the trip...