The Wheel and the Hook

Passionate about ordinary things, like how ingredients become food – that detail was included in the winning story told at the Moth event I attended last week. The detail was in reference to the storyteller’s friend (the subject of their piece), and I felt a kinship because of that choice; I too am passionate about ordinary things.

The storyteller was actually a Barnard grad. It was some coincidence to walk into a bar in Portland and be identified immediately by this piece of my New York life. On top of that, the story they told was powerful and hit close to home. It seemed closer to fate than coincidence when this person who shared several of my identities got up and told a story about their days on campus that played on the theme of the night: ‘Save’. I wish that I could have snagged them afterward to thank them for telling it, but by then they had disappeared into the night.

Me trying to feed a carrot to a b&w fuzzy llama; I'm trying so hard to get them to like me.

I have been doing a bit of travel lately. Apart from moving back to Seattle from NYC, I have also been visiting friends in common and uncommon places. Several weeks ago, I went to visit my high school friend in Arkansas where he is now teaching. I feel like I’m still processing that brief trip; it was my first time to the South and to a town like Pine Bluff, where the urban decay is so visible. I felt in many ways that I was in the Land of Contradictions, so I’ve been thinking about how to write in a way that really honors that. I’m working on a (more polished) piece about it, so stay tuned.

Last week I was in Portland where my best friend from elementary school lives. We did our usual gallivanting – thrifted for butter dishes and books, saw that amazing Moth Storyslam, adopted a cat. We also went to #realOregon for a sheep to shawl festival that I got very excited about. I’m an avid knitter and also am interested in the political implications of knowing about how we get our clothes (knit and otherwise). I’d never been to a shearing, so watching a llama get its hair taken off was actually super interesting.

But perhaps the best part was seeing people spin yarn out of fiber using nothing more than drop spindle. For some reason I thought that you needed the big machinery of a loom in order to spin yarn, but it appears that for a more traditional practice you only need a funny looking little wheel on a hook. As my friend remarked, it really does make you think about all the effort that goes into making a garment by hand. Sure, we do have factories now and different processes are more automated, but there are still so many hands that go into making the things that we buy (much too cheaply for the labor, I might add).

I’ve been thinking a lot about things that we take for granted: clothes, food, safety. Coming back from the trip, I found myself reading Vandana Shiva’s Staying Alive and Googling restorative justice programs. I don’t yet have a clear picture of what I’ll do with all this information – for instance, even though I now possess a drop spindle, I doubt I’ll start making all my clothes by hand. But at the event, I felt humbled and encouraged by the storyteller’s rendering of their friend’s life. Through their use of language, they elevated the ordinary and left me chewing on ideas of how to do the same.

Caught My Eye: The Thing that Gets You Through

This week, rather than focusing on a specific book, article, movie, or art piece that touched me, I want to give a list of all the things that have gotten me through this week and continue to make me feel strong in a time of great weakness. In different ways, for different reasons, these pieces of media have made me think and brought me some entertainment, laughter, and peace. Hopefully they can give you just as much strength as they have given me.

The Moth podcast, particularly the stories by Charlene Strong and Elif Shafak.

Mindy Kaling's book Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me (and Other Concerns) in audiobook form, which she herself reads and is hilarious because of it.

The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes - a book given to me by my father as a New Year's gift.

Corinne Bailey Rae's music.

Writing Live: Nuyorican Poet's Cafe and The Moth

Last week, I had the fabulous opportunity to attend not one, but two literary events in NYC: The Nuyorican Poet's Cafe Friday night slam and The Moth's StorySlam at the Brooklyn Museum. After getting a healthy dose of Snoop Dogg, I took a 180 degree turn in my live entertainment consumption. And, to put it mildly, it was amazing.

As writers everywhere know, most of the time our work will not be read aloud. We will not be asked to come on television or the radio and act out our pieces - nor would most of us want to. The boundary between spoken and written word is not often crossed: we are writers or speakers, but there is an inherent challenge in being both. In these two spaces, however, so many people proved that they could bridge the divide with fantastic results. And - equally amazing - they attracted major crowds! Although it is often said that literature is dying and the printed word is on its way out, you wouldn't know it from the audience at both slams. And that's essentially what I wanted to get before I left for summer - an energizing reminder that writers were and still are appreciated for their work, which is not just for themselves, but for all those listeners and readers out there that appreciate them too. Here is a brief recap of both events and their impact on me.