Stanford Powwow 2012

Anything is Possible! And Other Lies from my Elementary School Days

When I was a kid, there was a poster in the classroom that said something like "You can do anything if you put your mind to it."  There were several of these kinds of posters, I remember, and several variations on it.  "Reach for the stars," said one.  "Everything is within your grasp if you work toward it," said another.  It seemed like nearly every elementary school classroom I had been in had one of these colorful posters, and they might have pictures of astronauts or scientists or musicians or some other cartoon figure, just to show how great and awesome your life could be if only you just aim for it.  These are so common that chances are you had one in your classroom too.

And here's another variation.  Never mind that most of the kids in my school looked nothing like this waif in the photo.

What is the converse of these messages, though?  If you can achieve anything by just putting your mind to it and working hard, then if you fail, you must not have put forth enough effort.  You just didn't work hard enough.  Part of me would like to go back in time and have a chat with the elementary teachers who put up these ridiculous posters.  I'd buy them a cup a coffee, except that I'm broke, so we'll just sit on a bench outside and talk.  I'd tell them I thought these posters and the messages they sent were bullshit.

You see, today I looked at the yellow light on my dashboard telling me that I was about to run out of gas, and seriously wondered whether I had enough money to fill it.  To my luck, I made it to my destination without breaking down.  The same car also has shocks badly in need of repair, but you see, I have to buy food.  This week, I got several letters informing me that my student loans for graduate school would be entering their repayment period in several months, and that I ought to come up with some cash by then.  I also no longer have health insurance, so I'm not so keen to ride my bike any more, just in case I get hit by a car that doesn't stop.  The thing is, that was good way to save money on gas and do a good turn for the environment.  

I'm not telling you these things to get you to feel sorry for me, because that isn't what I want.  I'm illustrating why these messages that get pounded into our heads when we were kids are crap.  I have a bachelor's degree from one of the top universities in the nation.  I have a master's degree from another good school, and I got both of them before I turned 26.  I've been in the workforce since I was 15.  We're pretty used to rejection in the fine arts field, because rejection is high even in the best of times.  Except that these aren't the best of times, because it seems that the whole country has declared war on its arts institutions, and no one is getting funding for anything.  I teach music and play professionally, but obviously this is not enough to get me healthcare or keep gas in my Focus or pay my student loans (for that degree I put my mind to and worked so hard for!).  So why not work in another field?  I've sent out more resumes than I can count for everything from bike sales to magazine editing to working as a barista.  I've "networked."  

I even applied to become an officer in the Coast Guard, which was something I had been thinking of doing for some time.  As an environmental writer, the coasts are hugely important to me, and I really wanted to take a more active role in their protection.  This week they informed me that because I once saw a counselor, I'm barred from applying to any branch of military service, including reserve duty, for three years.  The thing is, I saw a counselor because I my current job and the economy had gotten me down, and I wanted to feel more energetic so I could get back in the game.  And yet, instead of helping me, it put up a barrier.  They might as well have said, "No, you can't serve your country!  You're a psychotic axe murderer who talks to broccoli!"  Because clearly anyone who sees a counselor is nuts.

Whose fault this is, I can't rightly say.  I suspect the blame for this situation, which is certainly not unique to me, lies in a lot of places, not just in one or two like the far right would have us believe.  I think we as nation should be ashamed of ourselves, of this huge income gap between the bottom and the top that we have allowed to grow, of the fact that someone with two prestigious degrees cannot even get a job serving coffee to the one percent.  And so I still find myself on this economic reservation, unable to leave.  It clearly must be because I just didn't put my mind to it.    

You know what?  My elementary-school-self didn't sign on for this shit.

Myths about Bisexuals

I was first going to write a post about how pleased I am that Proposition 8 in California was rejected by the 9^th Circuit District Court.  As a musician-for-hire who plays at weddings, more weddings means more money for my wallet, not to mention that there is this little thing called basic human rights and we still have a long way to go.  Then somehow my post about how right it is to be able to marry anyone who would have me turned into a discussion of bisexuality (writers’ minds work in some weird tangents).  If you were hoping to read something on Prop. 8, there are some far more eloquent blog posts out there than the one I was going to write, so go check those out.  I also think this is a funny post coming right after one on how great it is to be single.  But I think I’ve seen these things one too many times in pop culture in its various forms, so I just want to clear some things up.

1. We’re promiscuous.

Really?  I must not have gotten the memo on this one.  I think if someone looked at my sex life and took it as the example of all bisexuals, they’d think we’re all one step above monks and nuns.  I mean, I’m sure there are some bi people out there saying that they’re having lots of sex, but so are a lot of straight people.  We get insecure about ourselves and tell fish stories just like anyone else.  I sure wish I was having lots of sex, but oftentimes reality gets in the way of that.

When I first saw the British sci-fi show Torchwood, I was delighted that we finally had a positive bisexual protagonist in Captain Harkness, especially since his sexuality wasn’t central to the show (just like heterosexual protagonist’s sexualities aren’t central to their shows either.  Okay, unless were talking about Commander Riker).  However, I realized that this guy wasn’t just bisexual.  He’d screw anybody, or anything.  Not a really good reflection of most bisexuals’ proclivities.

Bisexual people are totally capable of monogamy, whether it’s with someone of the opposite or same sex.  In fact, I’m willing to bet that you know a few people in monogamous opposite- or same-sex relationships who are bisexual, but just haven’t said so.

2. We might cheat on you with/leave you for someone of the same sex.

I think this is similar to the previous myth, but I’ve heard it said a couple of times.  Cheaters come in all different stripes.  We might cheat on you with someone of the opposite sex.  Straight people might cheat on you too.  Bi people aren’t any more likely to cheat just because we have more options.  And this leads me to my next myth…

3. Bisexual people have more options.

Maybe if you’re Captain Jack Harkness you do.  I think though that having more options somehow makes us more picky.  We see what’s out there, and we think we don’t have to settle for just any old male (or female), so our standards are pretty high.  At least mine are.  Also, the flip side of the coin is that we get rejected by both men and women.  I mean, I’m thrilled that I can now marry a woman or a man without leaving the state, but the most likely scenario is still that I’ll end up with twenty cats and a sad-looking mutt.

4. We only do it to get the attention of the opposite sex.

I’ve heard this one directed mainly at women, but I suppose there might be some bi guys out there who have heard it too.  I also have no doubt that there are plenty of straight sorority girls who go to bars or parties and make out with their roommates just to turn guys on.  These women are incredibly annoying.  This is where the term LUG comes from (Lesbian Until Graduation).  If I’m kissing a woman, it’s not to get attention or to turn guys on; it’s to turn myself on.   

5. Bisexuals just can’t make up their minds.

I’ve heard this one from both gay and straight people.  If there’s no choice involved in being straight, and no choice involved in being gay, what makes you think that bisexuality involves a choice?

6. We all want threesomes!

No, just no.  I’m sure some bi people like threesomes, just as some straight people like threesomes, and some gay people like threesomes.  Hey, whatever floats your boat.  I suspect that this is more of a straight guy’s fantasy than anything else (and pretty soon I’ll probably see a blog in response to this entitled “Myths about Straight Guys”).  But I think most of us find this idea either gross or just plain tiring.

7.  We’re really kinky.

Just like the last myth, there are people of every flavor of sexuality who are this way.  But most of us have a line drawn somewhere in regards to what we will and will not do, and you’d be surprised at how vanilla most of us are.

8. Bisexuals are really gay and just can’t admit it.

And being bisexual is somehow better?  Considering the prejudice from both gays and straights toward bisexuals (otherwise I wouldn’t have these hilarious myths to write about!) most bisexuals wouldn’t choose to identify this way, assuming they had a choice.

I’m sure there are some more, but this is my weekend and I need to go get dressed up so I can make out with random chicks downtown to get the attention of some sweaty college guys.  We might even have a threesome later.  

Why I Love Being Single

The end of this year was one of the very few times in my life I've had to buy a calendar.  As a Sierra Club member, I usually get one from them or from some other environmental charity (this year's was from the Nature Conservancy).  I don't know if I was too late with my membership fee or if they raised the amount you had to give to get a calendar this year, but all I know is that it's the end of December and no one has sent me a 2012 calendar.  This story does have I point, I promise.  Anyway, knowing that I would need a wall calendar for my "office" (actually just the desk area where I keep my computer and beer), I decided to get something that I would really like.  Now I like puppies and lighthouses as much as the next writer, but this year I decided to buy my very first shirtless model calendar.

Not that this is big deal in itself. I did it partially as a joke, partially because I actually like the calendar, and partially because it helped support an AIDS charity.  The photos are actually very tasteful, I think.  I wish some of the models had slightly less clothing, but it's cool.  But the reason I can get away with putting this thing up on my wall is that I am quite single, and no one is around to complain about what a deviant I am.

Hello, Mr. February.

I swear I'm not whistling in the dark here.  One of my friends broke up with his girlfriend a few months ago and then proceeded to tell me how much he "liked living the single life."  He was just a little too emphatic about it, and I knew that after talking to me about how great the single life was, he was going home and crying in his beer every night (okay, not really, but I suspect it was something like this).  But I've been thinking about this for a couple of weeks, and I have realized that I actually do have many reasons to be grateful I'm single.

1. Shirtless model calendars.

2. No one drinks my beer.

3. I eat what I want, when I want.  Tacos at midnight?  Salad for breakfast?  All good.

4. No one complains about my keeping bikes in the living room.

5. I come home whenever I please.  With whomever I please.

6. Two words: shaveless winters.

7. I am a huge fan of pungent foods.  Smelly Belgian cheeses, smoked mackerel, salmon roe, natto (fermented tofu), Indian curries that make you breathe fire, are all on my menu, anytime.  Alaskan singles can enjoy stink flipper (walrus flipper fermented in a hole in the ground) without upsetting a mate.

Single people food.

8. I enjoy long coversations with myself.  Sometimes I even do different accents.  When you're with another person long enough, you eventually end up talking about nothing.  With myself, I'm infinitely interesting.

9. The lid STAYS down!

10. I am a very clean person.  My stuff stays organized.

11. No arguing about what movie to watch.

12. No buying overly expensive gifts.

13. If there's a problem in the house, I don't have to go very far for the source.

14. I can eat foods that aren't necessarily pungent themselves, but due to their chemistry, lend themselves to pungency: e.g. beans, broccoli, cabbage, etc.  Seriously, I love beans more than a '49er loves gold.

15. No one bothers me about leaving my wetsuit to dry in the bathroom after a day of bodyboarding.
16. Law & Order marathons.  I love you, ADA Rubirosa.

17. Did I mention the shirtless model calendar?

Cons to being single:

1. Can't drive in the carpool lane during rush hour.  

Now I'm not saying that it'll be this way forever or that I envision myself dying alone in my house while my twenty cats eat my remains (I've sworn to not have more than three cats.  Maybe four). Perhaps I'll meet that special someone who will persuade me to abandon my hedonistic lifestyle. Just not anytime soon.

Of Ravel and Sea Ice

Back when I was in Alaska, I mentioned once that I listened to the Passacaglia from Ravel's A minor Piano Trio while flying over Kotzebue Sound.  The almost unbearable loneliness of the piece and crushing beauty of the sea ice in the sidelong winter sun was such that it gave one the urge to commit harakiri right then and there.

This summer I'm helping to conduct a seminar in writing about music, and I see how hard it is to put words to an essentially wordless phenomenon.  How is it that scattered sounds come together to tell their own stories, elicit unspeakable joys, draw out the loneliness of sea ice?  As a classical musician by both training and trade, I've had to write piles of academic papers on the subject, and it seemed like nothing I ever said was of any justice to the matter.  It was like throwing pebbles at a river and expecting to create a dam to contain all its fury.  But I've revisited a favorite author recently for another project, and here is what she had to say on the matter:

"Here is where I come to some trouble with words.  The inside became the outside when Shamengwa played music.  Yet inside to outside does not half sum it up.  The music was more than music - at least what we are used to hearing.  The music was feeling itself.  The sound connected instantly with something deep and joyous.  Those powerful moments of true knowledge that we have to paper over with daily life.  The music tapped the back of our terrors, too.  Things we'd lived through and didn't want to ever repeat.  Shredded imaginings, unadmitted longings, fear and also surprising pleasures.  No, we can't live at that pitch.  But every so often something shatters like ice and we are in the river of our existence.  We are aware.  And this realization was in the music, somehow, or in the way Shamengwa played it.

"Thus, Shamengwa wasn't wanted at every party.  The wild joy his jigs and reels brought forth might just as soon send people crashing on the rocks of their roughest memories and they'd end up stunned and addled or crying in their beer."

-Louise Erdrich, from The Plague of Doves, describing Ojibwe violinist Shamengwa

Last week I went to see a jazz band downtown.  The gorgeous tenor sax player played a solo that the word "haunting" doesn't even begin to describe.  I stared at the face of my own loneliness, stood on the edge of the blue-gray sea ice as it spread before me, aware of all I had and had not done.  I was thrust into "the river of my existance," as Erdrich put it.  I saw Arctic winter again, and I sat paralyzed staring into my gin.  I could barely applaud when he was done.  Much more upbeat pieces filled the rest of the program, probably to cheer everyone up after that.

Later in the evening I asked that tenor player out, and when he refused, I found myself staring at the sea ice of sunless winter once more.  

The 7-Eleven Man

I used to think San Jose was the capital of 7-Eleven, until I found out today that Tokyo has the most stores at 1,713.  I'm pretty sure we even beat out Norway, though, which has one 7-Eleven for every 47,000 Norwegians.  There are so many 7-Elevens in San Jose that at the corner of Winchester and Payne Avenues, there's one 7-Eleven store on the northwest corner, facing Payne, and another at the southeast corner, facing Winchester (it's not quite on the corner, maybe down the road a little bit, but still less than a block away).  All in all, there are four 7-Elevens within two miles of my house that I can easily bike to, should the mood strike me for cigarettes, chocolate bars, or Playgirl magazines (though I assure you I don't smoke, and everyone knows that Playboy is the one that publishes short stories.  Jeez.).

For those of you that are unfortunate enough to lack 7-Elevens in your home state, I will inform you of the awesomeness you are missing out on.  7-Eleven is a convenience store, similar to what you'd find at a gas station, but usually with more stuff.  Need cat food?  Milk?  Don't forget to pick up condoms for your date tomorrow night, or a pint of Ben & Jerry's Cookie Dough for when your date stands you up.  You can even get your weekly lottery ticket or bet on your favorites at Santa Anita or Golden Gate Fields.  They're even writer-friendly by stocking pens, notebooks, and beer (or Red Bull if you're pulling an all-nighter to meet your deadline).  They're called 7-Eleven because the original ones were open from 7:00 am to 11:00 pm, but now many of them are open 24 hours.

The one closest to my house is run by a Pakistani gentleman who always asks me how work is going, usually prefaced by "Long time no see!" or, "How have you been doing?"  At first, I was kind of flattered that he remembered me.  Isn't that what neighborhood shops used to be about, before we had all these big box stores that made everything impersonal?

But then I realized this: the 7-Eleven man knows you by your vices.  Pretty much the only time he sees anyone come into his store is to get their fix for their various habits or addictions.  I wonder if he catalogs this to himself.  "Ah, here comes Cheez-its-and-Marlboros!" he might say to himself.  Or perhaps, "Hey, Snickers-and-24 oz.-Asahi is back!" (that would be me).  Think about it.  Whether it's alcohol, chocolate, tobacco, dirty magazines, caffeine, or gambling, the 7-Eleven man has you nailed.  Perhaps, then, it's not such a good thing to be recognized by the 7-Eleven man.

And I wonder too, what it's like to be the guy who knows everyone's vices.  Does he secretly look down on us, with all our silly, self-destructive habits?  Or is he more of a laissez-faire guy?  Surely he must have some himself.  Maybe it's all relative.  Maybe I need to cut down on the chocolate so he doesn't recognize me anymore.  Nah.  It's not like I'm Woman-Who-Buys-Two-Packs-A-Day or Maxim-Dude.

Paper Sandpipers: Birds in Writing

     Recently I noticed that I use birds a lot in my writing.  A lot.  I went back into some old stuff and saw that nearly every piece work had a least one bird reference in it, and all this time I never realized that I was doing it.

     Sometimes, I'm just using a bird (or birds) as part of the scenery.  For example, one of my characters happens to look out a window and sees a robin on a redwood tree.  Pretty basic; the robin means nothing, other than as a visual cue to the setting.  Other times, I'm using the birds as a reflection of a character's state of mind.  In the same story with our friend on the redwood tree, there's a scene when the protagonist is looking at a bunch of sandpipers scurrying to and fro on a beach.  Their movements feel very unsettled, as are the character's thoughts at that point.   Most frequently, the birds are part of a simile or metaphor.  Raptors seem to be a favorite for this, as are various seabirds (and if they've got extensive migrations, then they seem to be even more desirable).  For example, if someone looks at you like a falcon looks at a squirrel, that's some scary shit.

Turkey vultures at Pinnacles National Monument

     All this has me thinking about why I use birds so frequently.  I'm no ornithologist and don't consider myself a bird fancier.  I even find some wild birds incredibly annoying (baby scrub jays screaming at 5 am drives me absolutely bonkers).  My theory is that birds are naturally fascinating to human beings.  Sometimes, it almost seems as if they are more extreme versions of ourselves.  How many myths and legends contain a bird character?  Ravens and other corvids are some of the smartest animals around; they use tools, solve complex problems, and can imitate human speech.

     Bird sounds fascinate us too.  Psittacines imitate; some can even carry on simple conversations.  Lyre birds and mockingbirds have some of the most complex repertoires in the animal kingdom.  People in temperate and subarctic climes look forward to spring, when the songs of thousands of warblers, thrushes, sparrows, and finches return after a silent winter.  Loons have driven some people to tears with their long and lonely calls (and "Pacific Loon" is the handle of this blog, incidentally).  Though seasonally monogamous (not for life, as many believe), loons will continue to call for their mate if one of the pair does not return, the same repeated howl over and over.  I remember being troubled for no reason I could see by the cries of mourning doves as a child.

     Consider migration.  The memory involved to be able to travel that distance and return to the same place year after year is astounding.  We haven't even begun to understand the complexities of avian navigation.  The lark you see at your southern feeder in March will likely be in Alaska or Nunavut by June.  The arctic tern, whom we're enjoying here on the coast right now, is the master of this feat.  Racing from pole to pole in its pursuit of eternal summer, an arctic tern will likely see more of the world in a year than you will in a lifetime.

     I wonder if any other writers out there find themselves with similar habits.  Maybe you use trees a lot.  Or celestial bodies.  What commonalities have you found in your own writing?