Year of "Cerebral" Work

Holy hiatus, bloggers! It's been ages since I've posted.

And the reason for that is that lately, I've been working on an enormous revision. This is a post-apocalyptic, dystopian political story. And it's not YA -- it's adult!

Genius Agent Holly has given me lots to think about. Big things. Scope. Stakes. Character.

These things are so hard, I had to think about them for a few weeks before even pulling the draft back up. And after I thought and thought and talked to a lot of people about really weird stuff, I am now writing. Writing!

My goal is to finish mid-February.

Because I want to stay in this all-out flow. And at the end of February, I'm teaching Oregon's first-ever Firefighting Composition Class!

In 2011, I did a ton of writing. I revised a YA literary story, scribbled essays for the NEH Institute in Oahu, designed the firefighting class, penned the dystopian novel, was accepted for publication by the American Journal of Nursing, and took two notebooks of notes on Southeast Asia in Honolulu.

I've read, too. I figure that over the last year, I've graded 600,000 words of student work. That's 2,400 pages!

Also, I've got a new curriculum for my winter research writing class: "Beyond Super-Sized; What Food Does For--And To--Us."

Still to come, in 2012, is an article in a State University of New York anthology on Southeast Asia.

Whew! It was a big year for my brain.

But when I put a sponge in the microwave, or miss the exit to get home, when I check myself in the school parking lot for pants or a skirt, or something, on my bottom half, I know that not much has changed.

Yep. I'm still me.

Food on Oahu

While I was in Oahu this summer, I swam and snorkeled and studied and hiked. I walked, wrote, did yoga. I read, visited art museums, watched foreign films.

But, I did not eat.

The trouble was that food was hard to get. I know; it sounds crazy, I mean, Waikiki has tons of restaurants. But Waikiki was also an hour away--by foot--and who wants to show up to PF Chang's all sweaty, then walk back with a stomach full of Kung Pao chicken?

We all had little fridges in our rooms. And down in the basement, with the mosquitoes, there was a microwave. But getting food was tricky. Mostly, we would walk along the foot of the Manoa mountains, past avocado and orange trees, by a little stream, and after 20 minutes, we'd end up at Safeway.

But then, there was the carrying back of the groceries. They had to fit in a backpack, and hopefully not spoil in the humidity on the way back to our rooms.

There was an empty chair one day in class, because the otherwise resourceful professor of a respected university was trying to find food.

One night, I craved all these things, all together: corn bread, papaya, butternut squash. When it was all piled up on my plate, I thought how funny that everything was orange -- and high in potassium. Potassium is key, because you're sweating all the time on Oahu, even when the afternoon monsoons are pouring down.

Another night, my friend shared her green meal with me: spinach pasta with pesto, and green beans on the side. I found that friend a mango.

I stole a ladle of soup off a stove, but it was for someone else, and that is another story.

Everything we craved on the island grew right there. We wanted starchy root (taro), and whether or not we liked them, we ate a banana a day. Papaya and avocado were also biological staples. Water, water, water, water. We drank gallons and gallons and gallons. The coffee was not yummy. And in 35 nights, I had beef only two times.

Twice, I was poisoned from Vietnamese food, but I recovered from each in a day.

And once, we got these little fried cinnamon dough things from a famous place called Leonard's, and those dough things were divine.

The best meal I had was with Dave, on the west side: incredible plate lunch from a little hole-in-the-wall. And there was a good breakfast on the beach at Duke's, during a big canoe tournament. My favorite snack was a Bird Bar--full of seeds and nuts and honey--from Down-to-Earth, a vegan market.

In all, though, I didn't eat much.

When I got off the plane, I was tired and sunburned, and my hair had grown long and blonde and stringy. But the first thing my daughter noticed was that I was holding my pants up.

About Oahu

Four blocks up from the Hilton Village is an Oahu few tourists choose to see.

It's just past the canal that runs through Waikiki, a vessel for rainwater run-off and hotel sewage, that crew teams paddle their boats over. Just past this canal, barely out of range of the luau ukulele, are high rise apartment buildings strewn with strings of drying laundry, with strings of children running up and down the stairways. With skateboarders in the parking lots.

Between these skyscrapers are tiny, flat-roofed huts, upon which mango trees release their fruits that roll onto the dirt. The siding of the huts is plywood and aluminum, and lizards slip in and out of the chain-linked fences.

Piles of trash wait on street corners: stained, saggy mattresses; broken bookshelves. Diapers spilling from opened bags.

In the afternoons, tents sprawl around swings and slides: a city park for the homeless, whose scruffy shoes park outside the door flaps.

There are feral cats and enormous cockroaches and birds who sing above it all.

There are few big gas companies and no "mainland" banks.

Each street you cross has a disabled pedestrian with a tiny arm, a shortened leg, a hunched back. The result of lack of prenatal care? Of alcoholism? Of nuclear fallout?

For these kama aina ("Children of the Land"), Life Cereal is $9. A loaf of French bread is $7.29. It is cheaper to eat a McDonald's Big Mac than an apple. And a two-bedroom apartment costs
$1,200/month.

There are lots and lots of service jobs--hotels, restaurants, shops--but really, no other industry.

And the public schools are irreparable.

You'd think this poverty and collapsed infrastructure would get these natives down.

Not so much.

On Saturdays, they open their trunks and drag their Weber Grills over the sand, and they raise canvas roofs and play the guitar from their tattered Coleman camp chairs. They gather as brothers and sisters and cousins and grandmas, and they grin and flip their ono chicken, and shoot around the soccer ball at Ala Moana Beach.

The sun sets and the coffee-colored babies sleep on turtle-printed towels, and everyone listens to Auntie talk-story about the time before the Hilton Village and the skyscrapers, the time before the '60s. Before Life was so expensive. The brothers and sisters and cousins, they listen. And they eat the bread Auntie has made from the bananas in her yard.

What's Fascinating About SEA?

"How could you spend five weeks studying South East Asia," I've been asked since I've been home.

It's a good question, really.

Those ten (or eleven, depending on how you count them; different post) seemingly insignificant countries on the way other side of the earth wouldn't appear to affect us much here in the US.

In order for me to make sense of it all myself, I deconstructed everything I learned at the National Endowment of the Humanities' Institute (on Oahu). Oh, we had experts--speakers flown in from Indonesia, from Wake Forest and other east coast universities, from California, from the midwest. We were learning about things as they were happening. It was crazy.

Then, I reorganized all that information according to discipline, and analyzed it for a so...what? Where does it all lead?

Here's what you might find interesting:

The islands and mainlands are diverse in many more ways than they are unified: by geography, outside influence (including that of South and East Asia, Europe, and the US), religion, political authority, culture, and the 1,000 languages among them.

Japan bombed Pearl Harbor for access to SEA's rubber, oil, tin, iron; and to prevent US access to it.

The concepts of time (minutes, hours, days) and printing emerged with Buddhism in the region.

Indonesia is the world's fourth largest country. (And is the largest per-capita Facebook-using nation!)

While globally, the birthrate is declining, in Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines, it is spiking.

This region shares the same issues as the US: our relationships with China, terrorism, trade, the environment). Our citizens also strive for human, labor, and women's rights.

It comes down to the dollar; 6 of the 10 or 11 nations rank in the top half of world economies, some of which have catapulted themselves from the bottom within the last several years.

Is it clear--the economic power here?

That's one of the places all this goes.

I found the bottom line with SEA film scholar Wimal Dissanayake, a bright, lovely man, who said pointedly: "While SEA is a rapidly expanding region, it is severely understudied."

This area is sure to keep rising, in wealth, in population growth, with technology.

And???

Do you know how the US will be affected by that?

By trade, sure.

But also in our higher education systems. We'll be competing for the earth's top potential innovators. Within the next 20 to 40 years, our classrooms are likely to be filled with the greatest thinkers on the planet.

And, since 4 out of 5 foreign scholars end up staying in the US when they complete their programs, we'll be competing for jobs, too.

What do you think? Is that good or bad?

Will more and more university slots go to Jakartans, Manileños, taking up seats from Americans who "deserve" them?

Or will the ambition of these academics add to our melting pot, spawn our creativity, help us stay a super power?

Taking A Break

Aloha from Oahu!

While I'm studying here on a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, I'll be taking a little blog break. (I'm trying to learn, and write, and organize a presentation, oh, and figure out which bus gets to the beach).

Mahalo.

What They Won't See

I leave for the NEH Institute in Hawaii in just over two short months, and if the last three weeks of spring term is any indication, that is going to fly by.

After lots of thinking and looking up airfare and doing yoga, I've decided. The kids won't come out to see me, but if I miss them unbearably, I'll fly home for a quick weekend.

Dave works hard, and he is super supportive of my 5 week study, taking off a whole month from high fire season to shuttle the kids to swimming lessons, take them to the library. We're 19 years into this marriage, he and i, and we've not yet had a long, exotic vacation alone. This is the time.

Yes, I will crave my kids' arms around my neck. I will cry knowing that Dominic can't show me the fort he's built, that Daney can't crawl into my bed and talk about her day, that Rees won't brush my hair.

I will not see my favorite thing in the world: my cuties pulling their suitcases through the airport, that is one thing I'm sure I will miss.

But there are other things I won't see, too, because they are things my kids would have shown me. Like the assassin bug the boys spied in a bush in Cabo, or the morray eel Dominic spotted in the rocks in Hawaii, or the fried chicken place Daney found in Harlem.

With their sharp little eyes and their open hearts, my kids have always seen the things I don't, and I'm sad to know I will blindly pass plumeria and pufferfish and singing kingfishers. And while I'm nose-deep in Asian studies and the art of the Polynesian Cultural Center, I will promise myself to bring my babies back and show them the sunsets, the beaches, the carving in the palm tree. I will show them the best of the best.