Along Bold Street

I thought I might find her on Bold Street. I’d hear the click of her heels and turn and there she’d be, smiling at me, the way she did on the U-Bahn platform years and years ago. I skulked along searching the half-hidden faces of the scousers in their hoodies and mufflers, fogged breath or fag smoke curling from their shouldered chimneys. She’s not here of course. Why would she be? Only the fog, the cold, gray mist clings to me. I think of a stanza from a McGough poem.

Without love
I'm justa has
been away
too long in the tooth.

Dream Me

In your dreams
    dream of me
Bring my passion
    to your fantasy
Dream my lips upon your lips
    my hands upon your breasts
    my thighs upon your thighs
Close your eyes and
    dream me
Hear my sighs
Bind yourself to me
    bones of my bones
    flesh of my flesh
    heart of my heart
    soul of my soul
Dream me
    and make me be

Thinking of You

Working hard
at working hard
Keeping busy
Seeking solace
In a sort of
Ceaseless circumnavigation
of a circumstance
Never thinking twice
When thinking not at all will do
Wandering without wondering
Where or why
I wander to
Doing whatever I can do
to keep from

Thinking of you

Beginnings and Endings

“There are no beginnings and endings,” Jacob said.
“Well, things, you know, planets, stars… stuff, didn’t just appear out of nowhere.” Devon was clearly exasperated with Wande’s husband.
“Where is nowhere?” Jacob said. He was leaning forward in his armchair, elbows on knees, resting his chin on his fists, gazing at Devon with feigned interest. Wande knew the look all too well.
“Oh, for God’s sakes,” Devon said.
Jacob said nothing. Just kept looking at Devon, waiting for him to answer his unanswerable question.
“Look, I’m not a cosmetologist, or whatever, but the Big Bang Theory, you know…everybody believes it’s correct. The universe started billions of years ago when this tiny… this thing, uh, ball of material exploded. That’s the beginning.”
“You’re not a cosmologist,” said Jacob, in his maddeningly reasonable voice.
“That’s what I said,” Devon shot back.
Wande knew she had to step in. “How about another piece of pie, Devon?”

#

Jacob and Wande stood at their front door and watched as her sister Sylvia and her husband, Devon drove off. Sylvia and Devon appeared to be having a rather heated conversation.
“You can be such a pompous ass sometimes,” Wande said, continuing to look at the car’s fading headlights.
“I’m not a cosmetologist,” Jacob said.
Wande punched him in the shoulder.
“Ouch!”
“Come on. You need to help with clean up.”
Wande took Jacob’s arm and led him back into the house.

#

“The universe has always existed in an endless cycle of expansion and rebirth,” Jacob was saying as he placed a platter in the dishwasher.
Wande took the spoon from the bowl of mashed potatoes and licked it. “Um hmm,” she said, preoccupied with thoughts about her sister. She knew that Sylvia and the rest of her family had disapproved of her marrying a white man -- ‘that Viking,’ Sylvia had called him. And she had to admit she sometimes felt self-conscious when they went out together. She once overheard women at a party saying that Wande was haughty. What they failed to realize was that her behavior was meant more as a defense than an offense.
The truth was, that despite her PhD, her professional standing and excellent job, and her upper class life style, Wande felt something lacking in her life. It was if she were floating in a tank of warm water – everything was fine, but her life lacked sharp sensation.

#

Jacob looked at his wife. He thought that she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Her skin was so dark, at once empty and foreboding, like a panther, and at the same time drawing you to her irresistibly, like deep space. He moved behind her, put his long arms around her, and cupped her generous breasts in his hands. Her scent was spicy-sharp, almost louche.
Pheromones, he thought.
Wande stopped what she was doing, put her hands on the edge of the sink, and pressed her buttocks back against his hardness. “You want to fuck me,” she said in a low growl.
“Yes,” he said, his voice hoarse.
“Then finish loading the dishwasher,” she said, pulling his hands away.

#

Wande slid her legs over the side of the bed and sat on the edge watching Jacob. He was snoring softly, something he tended to do after having too much wine. She wasn’t complaining, though. His lovemaking had been energetic and adventurous. He’d used his tongue in a gentle and ultimately very satisfying way instead of the pedantic way he sometimes used to explain his views of the universe.
Wande was wide-awake. It often happened that she’d practically pass out after sex, only to wake up an hour or two later ready to sit down with a snack and a good book.

#

Wande used the hall bathroom, then went to the kitchen and got a container of yogurt from the fridge. She walked into the family room, picked up the travel brochures on Africa from the coffee table, sat on the couch, tucked her feet up under her and began thumbing through descriptions of 7, 10, and 14-day tours of Egypt, accompanied by carefully composed photographs of pyramids, gently rolling sand dunes, date palms, and graceful sail boats plying the Nile River. In just five days she’d be visiting the continent of her ancestors.

#

Wande’s parents had emigrated from Africa to Brazil, and then to the United States. They were Yoruba, from southwestern Nigeria. Her father had named her Yewande, which meant ‘mother has returned.’ He was not pleased to learn that while in college, she’d allowed her name to be transformed to Wande. He was even less pleased, to put it mildly, when she brought Jacob home and introduced him as her husband. It was as if she’d thrown live power lines in the house and everyone was dancing and dodging the snapping cables. And Jacob, chameleon-like, had turned himself into a patient, sensitive, culturally aware son-in-law, who spent all his time carefully doing his active listening routine, ‘I know how you must feel.’ Hardly. If she were honest with herself, Wande would have to admit that she wasn’t sure how she felt.

#

Wande fell asleep on the couch and dreamt of giraffes loping gracefully across the GSC parking lot as she watched from her office window, standing there in the nude. She saw her reflection in the glass. She was white.

Interview with Author Sarah Conover

Sarah Conover is the founder and editor of the This Little Light of Mine series, a series published by Eastern Washington University Press. The inaugural volume, Kindness: A Treasury of Buddhist Wisdom for Children and Parents, a collection of Buddhist tales, was recommended by Booklist as one of the five best spiritual books for children of 2001, while the second, Ayat Jamilah: Beautiful Signs: A Treasury of Islamic Wisdom for Children and Parents, was cited by Newsweek as one of the best multicultural books of 2004, and was also the winner of the 2004 Aesop Prize, presented by the American Folklore Society. Ms. Conover was a contributing co-editor of the third book in the series, At Work in Life’s Garden: Writers on the Spiritual Adventure of Parenting, a collection of literary essays on that subject by a wide range of well-known and not-so-well-known writers. Harmony: A Treasury of Chinese Wisdom for Children and Parents is the fourth book in the series. It has just been released.
Ms. Conover is also the coauthor of Daughters of the Desert: Remarkable Women from the Christian, Jewish and Muslim Traditions, published by SkylightPaths Press in 2003. Her poetry has appeared in Rock and Sling, the Santa Clara Review, Pontoon 10, Floating Bridge Review, and the book, Family Pictures, published by Capital BookFest.
Ms. Conover holds a Bachelor of Arts in religious studies from the University of Colorado, a degree in education from Gonzaga University, and a Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Eastern Washington University. She lives in Spokane, Washington, where she teaches English and radio production.

Sarah Conover’s recently released Harmony: A Treasury of Chinese Wisdom for Children and Parents, is a handsome well-designed (by Rich Hendel) book that has its place on the shelf, or better yet, on the lap, of anyone set on gaining and/or conveying a better understanding of Chinese culture and philosophy. Part of the This Little Light of Mine series founded and edited by Ms. Conover, Harmony is a collection of 24 brief stories adapted by Ms. Conover and her co-author Chen Hui. The stories are based on Chinese idioms, or chengyu, and provide a glimpse (there are some 5000 chengyu) of Chinese wisdom and spirituality. Each story is written in original classical Chinese characters placed side-by-side with its English translation, then retold in an expanded form to clarify its meaning. The book also provides a map of China and an historical timeline, a remarkably concise review of China’s philosophical and religious influences, and even a pronunciation guide for some of the Chinese phrases that occur in the stories. Beautifully illustrated by the award winning Chinese artist, Ji Ruoxioa, Harmony appeals to the eye, as well as the intellect and the heart.
I recently had the opportunity to talk with Sarah about her latest book.
R: Your recently released book, Harmony: A Treasury of Chinese Wisdom for Children and Parents, is part of a series that you founded and edit called This Little Light of Mine. What’s the series all about – what’s its unifying theme?

S: The series seeks to broaden our knowledge of and perspective on world traditions of wisdom and spirituality. By gathering and adapting material from primary texts, poetry, proverbs and stories, many of them quite ancient, we aim to open windows onto wisdom as it was, and continues to be, conceived and lived in cultures around the globe.

R: And where does Harmony fit in?

S: The first two books in the series, Ayat Jimilah, and Kindness, dealt with Islamic and Buddhist wisdom, respectively. Harmony continues the journey, by exploring Chinese wisdom.

R: What do you hope to achieve in writing these books?

S:: My goal from the start has been to help make non-Christian religions seem less foreign to Western audiences. It has struck me that, especially in books aimed at children, often the point-of-view places a chasm between reader and subject. We hear that “Muslims believe this or that, Buddhists practice this or that ritual,” I feel those kinds of presentations don’t give a human face to a lived tradition. So I’ve always sought the stories, poems, proverbs that convey the values that animate a lived wisdom tradition.

R: You chose to base the stories in Harmony on something the Chinese call chengyu. Explain what that means, and how you selected the particular chengyu associated with the stories in your book.

S: Harmony presented its special challenge in its attempt to convey a sense of Chinese “wisdom.” Considering that it may be the world’s oldest continuous civilization, China humbles all attempts at generalities. I spent a few years debating with my co-author [Chen Hui] on how to approach “Chinese wisdom.” We didn’t want to divide the book up into sections on Legalism, Taoism, Buddhism, Confucianism, myths and fables. We chose to use chengyu, fused literary idioms, because…

R: Fused…?

S: In classical Chinese the idioms are represented by four characters that always appear together in a fixed order.

R: Interesting.

S: Most have been in use for over 2,000 years. They are known by all Chinese—rich or poor, educated or not. And they can usually be traced back to a school of religious or philosophical thought and therefore are representative of it. Finally, as chengyu have been in use for so very long they seem like a fair representation of community values. The idioms we chose had to pass all the above criteria, and, last but not least, they had to be intriguing and entertaining to both Chinese and Westerners.

R: What are some of our common English sayings that actually derive from chengyu?

S: I can’t say that any English sayings derive, originally from chengyu. They might, but I have my doubts. Some of the stories in my Buddhist book [Kindness] ended up as Aesop’s’ Fables, but I don’t know any stories similar to the chengyu stories. That’s one of the things that make them interesting. Westerners have some similar sayings nonetheless, which probably come from collective human wisdom. In Harmony, the most notable is “practice makes perfect.” But there are at least 5,000 chengyu, and I’m sure we’d find some others.

R: Tell us something about your co-author, Chen Hui.

S: I met Chen while researching this book early on. She was teaching Chinese at a private school, St. George’s, in Spokane. The Chinese government began an initiative several years ago making available a number of Chinese teachers to teach Chinese at private schools. They saw the need for much more Chinese language instruction in the US, and have been proactive about it. It turns out Chen’s life’s work has been building bridges between English and Chinese speakers, and she was thrilled to consult with me about aspects of Chinese culture she thought Americans should know and understand.

R: How did she come to be a co-author on Harmony?

S: Once we landed upon the idea of using chengyu, it became obvious to me that she should be my co-author. Among other things, she has been a middle school teacher, got her masters in education in the US, and is an ancient Chinese literature buff. She seemed perfect for the job.

R: You were lucky to find her.

S: It’s actually difficult to find people in the PRC [People’s Republic of China] who have taken the time to study their ancient roots and literature. Ironically, the Taiwanese have been much more rigorous about it in their schools. People in the PRC have had such a difficult last century that, for survival, they needed to focus on their present and future. I felt very fortunate to be able to work with Chen who has a sense of the idioms people use daily, as well as the importance of the ancient literature from which the idioms sprang.

R: Harmony is beautifully illustrated, as are all the books in the series. Tell us something about the illustrator, Ji Ruoxiao.

S: Ji is something of a national treasure in China, and perhaps someday here, too. Her grandfather was quite a famous calligrapher; she was one of two women to represent Chinese artists from the PRC for the UN’s Year of the Women. She is quite well known as a traditional master brush painter in China—she’s had one-woman shows at the Beijing museum, and goes back to China and teaches at a university for half the year. The other half of her time is spent in the US with her American husband in Seattle.

R: How did you find her?

S: I found her through the magic of social networking on the web. I sent an e-letter out to friends saying that I was looking for a traditional Chinese illustrator. Friends forwarded that letter on, and pretty soon I found Chen through a teacher at Washington State University who had taught with her. What’s really fun about working with Ji is that she is so versatile. You can ask her to make something a little more traditional, or a little more modern and abstract, and she has complete versatility in both realms.

R: Why do you feel so passionately about educating children in world wisdom traditions? Has this been an important part of your own children's upbringing?

S: Like many good things, my journey began in personal suffering. Having lost both parents and grandparents in one fell swoop at an early age, I saw the multitude of ripples tragedy can have upon family systems. Our family religion at the time was not up to the task. It just wasn’t lived as a source of true solace or refuge for anyone in my family. So, early on I became a seeker, looking to make sense of the world—both the agony and the ecstasy. I traveled to Asia, and I studied comparative religions at a good program at the University of Colorado. Call me a slow learner, but I am still astounded by the fact that people negotiate their worlds in so many varied ways.

R: And you find that children are interested in questions about the meaning of life early in their development?

S: I believe that children ask huge, deep ontological questions as soon as they can speak. I talk about that a lot in the essay I wrote in my book, At Work in Life’s Garden: Writers on the Spiritual Adventure of Parenting. It was a central issue for my husband -- a philosophy major -- and me in parenting. I’ve also found as a teacher that the depth and passion of the questioning does not diminish as children age, but grows more acute. Teens want to talk about what’s meaningful, but are given little opportunity for it. They are very hungry to talk about sweeping philosophical ideas, and to learn how other cultures address the biggest of topics—God, and love, and justice, and suffering. And with the media’s spotlight on fundamentalist terrorism, our youth suffer from a terrible dearth of curiosity about other religions and wisdom traditions. We are all global citizens now, and we must help our children understand the motivating values of other cultures. I’ve always thought “tolerance” was not a strong enough term in diversity education.

R: Why is that?

S: To tolerate someone doesn’t mean you understand someone. We need our children to have the background knowledge in multicultural religious education to truly understand each other, not just tolerate each other. In the UK, multicultural religious education is mandatory. I think our education system is lagging in one of its primary functions—that of creating global citizens.

R: Do you have another book planned for the series?

S: Of course! Two more planned, but bringing them to fruition depends somewhat on the future of our university’s budget and, in turn the press budget. Next book is on India—soon to overtake China as the world’s most populous country.

R: Will the book draw from the Hindu religion?

S: Whether the book will be on Hinduism specifically, or on a broader look at Indian wisdom traditions—including Jainism and Sikhism—is yet to be determined. In certain ways, India has been host to more wisdom traditions and religions than any other geographical area -- the first Jewish and Christian pilgrims went to India before Western Europe-- and the way it has incorporated heterogeneity into its culture is fascinating. Amartya Sen [Bengali Indian economist and philosopher] has written very cogently about this in his book, The Argumentative Indian. On the other hand, Hinduism is so vastly different from the Abrahamic traditions that I think solely focusing on it would be useful to the series. It’s a great dilemma to be working my way through as I research it!

Thanks again to Sarah Conover for appearing, courtesy of Provato Marketing. For other stops on the tour please check provatoevents.com

Praise Song for the Day

Each day we go about our business, walking past each other, catching each others' eyes or not, about to speak or speaking. All about us is noise. All about us is noise and bramble, thorn and din, each one of our ancestors on our tongues. Someone is stitching up a hem, darning a hole in a uniform, patching a tire, repairing the things in need of repair.

Someone is trying to make music somewhere with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.

A farmer considers the changing sky; A teacher says, "Take out your pencils. Begin."

We encounter each other in words, words spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed; words to consider, reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark the will of someone and then others who said, "I need to see what's on the other side; I know there's something better down the road."

We need to find a place where we are safe; We walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Say it plain, that many have died for this day. Sing the names of the dead who brought us here, who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges, picked the cotton and the lettuce, built brick by brick the glittering edifices they would then keep clean and work inside of.

Praise song for struggle; praise song for the day. Praise song for every hand-lettered sign; The figuring it out at kitchen tables.

Some live by "Love thy neighbor as thy self."

Others by first do no harm, or take no more than you need.

What if the mightiest word is love, love beyond marital, filial, national. Love that casts a widening pool of light. Love with no need to preempt grievance.

In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun.

On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp -- praise song for walking forward in that light.

Inaugural Poem, Elizabeth Alexander, January 20, 2009

Music of the Spheres

A multitude of mermaids
There on the rings of Saturn
Basking in the solar winds
Do you see them?
No?
Then surely you must hear their song
The music of the spheres