"Worried About Your ___?" (or, The Full Retreat)

A snippet of Lynda Barry's inspiring book What It Is.

If you're curious what the best way is to announce your already-obvious absence, I would recommend writing a journal-style blog post. Here's my take on it.

Working two jobs came to a head for me this month; when my body was in one place, my attention and energy were moving away from it at high speeds. I didn't stop going until I hit desert.

Every book and instructor on creative expression has encouraged me towards discipline in my craft. I've had the discipline, but I still didn't have the right conditions. If I wrote during this month, I wrote single sentences or piled up the same words on different sheets of paper. If I drew, I drew jagged lines on the margins of sticky notes at work. I made my non-work life very small. I got back into watching television. The search for water was on.

Desert animals conserve energy during the heat of the day and spend their nights in great activity. I spent Sundays in front of the stove or the oven, writing in my head, focusing. When you haven't got a lot to work with, sometimes you have to play tricks on yourself to make it through.

At 1am on Friday of last week, when it was all over, I crawled into bed and shut off the lights. If there's one thing that desert animals are good at, it's surviving. But with the work that I do for my day jobs, It's hard to give myself permission to rest and recuperate. There's a huge guilt in not giving your all for other people, and a selfish desire to be wanted. Then on Saturday I re-opened Lynda Barry's book What It Is.

The book has a bit of a history with me - I bought it in pre-college more than 6 years ago as part of a creative writing class that also had me making my first zine (gasp!), and it's one of those staples that I can no longer go without. The book isn't instructional. It doesn't give you exercises for writing or drawing or dancing or singing. Instead, it just asks some very good questions.

When I got to the page photographed above - a comic book panel of an older Lynda Barry (presumably) reflecting on her worries - I knew I had to have it with me everywhere. If I worked at the same desk every day, I would have photocopied and posted it on the wall. Instead I took a picture of it with my cell phone camera and wrote a version of my own:

"Worried about your work?"

"Oh, there's my work, the magazine, healthcare in the U.S., things I did in past relationships, unanswered emails, lost contacts, what a jerk I am, the suitcases cluttering up my house -- and I can't stop worrying about stepping in dog mess."

It made me laugh! Listing out my worries made them seem funny, and manageable. I kept turning the pages of the book and finding new things to smile about. I felt like I'd struck oasis.

It's a process, we all know, to build and re-build your creativity - you try different things, you fail, you rattle around with your worries until you find another set of things to try. Me, I'm looking for stillness. As we move out of my birthday month and into National Novel Writing Month, I'm carefully cultivating my energy, and looking for moments to laugh at myself. Join me, why don't you?

Writing in Transit

Mural on the side of Marcus Books in Oakland, CA

"Hi there, miss, what are you reading?"

I rarely just sit on the subway. More often, my face is buried in a book or I am scribbling away in an oversized notebook, causing passengers around me to squirm as they try to read my loopy handwriting (yes, I see you!). Where others use Ipod headphones to block out strangers, I just pretend to be absorbed. I returned the man's gaze with a less-than-amused look.

"It's about Arkansas in the 1950s," I replied.

The book was really about a murder in Arkansas in 1955, but the funny smirk on his face told me that that wasn't what he was interested in. He launched into a disconnected monologue about how it was important to learn about the past, anything to keep on talking to me. I turned back to the book. Yet another awkward catcall in NYC, yet another moment when I disappear into the rabbit hole of good writing.

I recently finished Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, most of which was read in transit. It was such a necessary read for me -- I was sucked into the main character's world, the parts I could relate to and the ones I didn't. For a very brief overview, the book is about a Nigerian immigrant to the United States who becomes a blogger about race and being non-American black in the US. It's also kind of a love story. But, as several people expressed at a dinner party last Tuesday, that's not really the point. The point, we reasoned, was to tell a political narrative using some good word choice and a set of relatable characters.

I'm writing a short story to gear up for National Novel Writing Month and these are the sorts of thoughts that preoccupy me. If I could reduce the story into a single sentence, it would be: "two childhood friends are forced to say a painful goodbye." But the "message" is more like understanding how we deal with intimacy and estrangement in our everyday lives. It's obvious more in the feeling of the story than the text. And yet I'm still crossing out sections and drawing arrows every third word, nervous that I am not striking the right balance. It's a luxury to be confident, there is no doubt.

When the man gets up at the next station, I exhale heavily through my nose. I had been reading the same sentence over and over again, wondering whether he would try to talk to me again. It crosses my mind that I worry a lot about things that I can't control. I put the book away and dig into my bag for a pen. Sometimes, you just have to react.

Mr. Saleq on Destiny and Fear

"'What else can I do? I am sitting under the sword of Damocles. So I have to be cautious. I don't sleep at home at night. But I believe in destiny. I can never die before my death.'"

- pg. 120, Of Blood and Fire, Jahanara Imam quoting Mr. Saleq

Summer Reading: 5 Things to Read Before Summer Ends

Photo credit: Heather Hoppe

This summer, I've listed my five favorite Poe pieces, but you didn't think that was the only thing I was reading, did you? Here is, in no particular order, a smattering of my favorites from reading this summer.

Summer Reading: My Five Favorite Poe Pieces

This summer, I decided that I would read the entire collection of a writer that I consider great. I thought about going after so many different people - everyone from Octavia Butler to Shakespeare - but finally settled on someone (creepily) close to my heart: Edgar Allan Poe!

There's my little Poe button. Whoo!

Caught My Eye: "Old" Books

At the beginning of every new semester, my shelves are graced with the delicate smells of the paper factory and the used bookstore. Thick textbooks and reprints of novels I haven't read come in waves through our mail system, and even two weeks in I am still receiving packages loaded down with titles like And Introduction to Behavioral Endocrinology and Songs in Praise of Lord Krishna. I'll hoist my bag on home and dump them all on my bed, in awe that by the end of three months, all (or at least most) of these books will have been read and may possibly have to be shipped off to another destination.

As you might imagine, it can get kind of overwhelming.

So, today I will indulge my instinct to run away from all that is new to the comfort and safety of my favorite "old" books, which in themselves are not aged, but I came across them much earlier in my life and am eager to reread them. Remember that little girl version of me that wanted to read all the books in the world? She read these books and deemed them so important that she bought them for keeps and now carts most of them around whenever she moves to any new destination like, oh say, to New York City. Here's the short list:

The Selected Odes of Pablo Neruda - Pablo Neruda
Bird by Bird - Anne Lamott
The Pocket Muse - Monica Wood
Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston
The Abhorsen Trilogy - Garth Nix
The Namesake - Jhumpa Lahiri

What are your old favorites? Tell them to me in the comments!

Also, if you are clamoring for something new to read, I'm always posting up interesting articles and books over at my Tumblr page.

Finding My South Asian Identity in Literature

I want to explore a little bit more about South Asian identity and where it comes from for young South Asian Americans. I grew in a multi-racial (but still primarily white) neighborhood with few Indians and no Bangladeshis my age, so I may only speak for myself in this post, but where I found a lot of my role models was in books. After the jump, I give some examples.

Des Bouquins, Des Magazines, Des Feuilles... Mais Pas De Temps!

I wrote too much yesterday. So today I am just going to say exactly what I want.
I want TIME TO READ!

Check out some more posts featuring my photography.