OF: That One Week I Sought Enlightenment

So, guess what kids? I did some new things this past week (yay for spontaneity)! And how does the universe repay my noble effort to be less hermit-like and more experimental? With vomit, that's how.

Some back story:

My best friend Ronnie is in a World Religion course that requires him to visit two non-Christian religious sites. Being the good friend that I am, of course I was happy to oblige his request to accompany him to the Shambhala Meditation Center in Decatur. Not only did I go, but I invited my Mom, brother, and his girlfriend Raven to go for the ride. So we rolled-up-deep-in-da-place on Sunday, ready to get our enlightenment on.

What we got was a lesson in how NOT to meditate. After arriving and trying our best to respectfully mimic the behavior in the room, we were tapped on the shoulder and asked to move into a separate room for a bit of private meditation training before heading over to the main meditation room. That's cool, I thought. How attentive and welcoming these hippie folk are! A stern-looking older man wearing some kind of farmer get-up instructed us in the fine art of Shambhala meditation. We were taught the proper sitting posture, breathing techniques, thought-cancellation techniques ("Imagine that you are popping each thought as it arises, as though it were a bubble"), and then he walked around correcting our sloping postures and chiding us for closing our eyes as opposed to maintaining a "low, inward-gaze."

DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW UNCOMFORTABLE, LET ALONE HOW UNNATURAL, IT IS TO MAINTAIN A LOW, INWARD GAZE? But I digress.

After a few more minutes of practice, we were herded back into the adjoining room for more meditation before heading over to the main hall for walking meditation and additional seated meditation. At this point we'd already been at it an hour. I was exhausted, and trying not to look at the rad decor, which for me was the highlight of the whole experience. At the center of the room was an altar of sorts with seven bowls of water, two purple potted Chrysanthemums, a crystal ball, two pictures of smiling monks(?)/elders(?) flanking a tapestry of an angry-looking deity with his tongue hanging out, incense, two oil candles, and gongs. Everywhere symmetry. Everywhere plumes of incense. Everywhere cross-legged Atlantans of all races seated on blue and red cushions shaped like macaroons. I wondered what circumstances brought them all here. Were they getting anything out of this practice?

All I seemed to be getting out of it was a lesson in my own erratic mind which refused to pop and dispel individual thoughts as though they were harmless rainbow-colored soap bubbles. Instead my thoughts were like Hydra in hyperdrive: cut the head off of one and three grew back in its place. All I could think of was how annoying the floor creak was, or how hideous someone's corns were during the walking meditation; the wormy, internal sound of someone's digestive tract churning; opaque cobwebs growing unchecked in the high corners of the ceiling. The smell of incense placed my mind firmly back in the basement bedroom of my high school boyfriend who played Tool songs on his electric guitar and smoked bowls of marijuana. The song "I am the Walrus" by the Beatles played on an incessant loop in my brain: "I am the eggman. They are the eggmen. I am the walrus. CucooCACHOO!"

I gave up after hour number two, when the woman in front of me broke the silence, quite literally, by cranking out a whistly fart. I could not contain the tide of my laughter. I got up. Bowed. Left.

Life lesson number 5,325: I am not the meditating kind.

The other thing I did was try Bikram yoga. Hot yoga. Yoga in a room set to 107 degrees at 40% humidity on purpose. I met up with my lovely friend and colleague, Kate, who invited me to participate. I planned my entire morning around this class. I didn't eat at least 3 hours prior, I hydrated myself...etc..etc...I was so excited, guys. I really was!

BUT. Fifty-five minutes into class, even something as basic as a warrior pose was making me die. The heat was starting to make me nutty, woozy, aware of my hulkiness as the toxicity of my decadent lifestyle came spewing from my pores, literally.

Our instructor--a cute brunette with a high, chirpy voice, and the most perfectly-sculpted yoga tush I have ever seen--decided to celebrate the autumnal equinox symbolically by having the class form a large circle, and support the weight of the person on both sides while doing a pose. "Look class: BALANCE. ISN'T IT BEAUTIFUL?!" I managed to do it once, suppressing murderous thoughts. When is this $%^&* woman going to end this class? When do I get to lay down and have a cold lavender towel for my face?

When she instructed us to do the equinox-balance-pose-thingy a second time, I sat down, breaking our lovely harmony circle--leaving the broads on either side of me in an awkward spot. I literally sat down and crossed my arms like my four year daughter does when she's miffed. Then it hit me. Waves of chunkage climbing up my throat. I covered my face with my towel, ran to the locker room, and barely made it through the door when I puked down the front of my t-shirt. Nice. Any normal human being would leave the studio immediately, right?

BUT.

There was the issue of my friend Kate, still waiting in the studio. I didn't want to be lame and not finish the class. I stripped off my shirt, mopped up the small pile of vomit that I couldn't contain, threw on a jacket that I'd stashed in my locker, and went back in. I finished the class: like a (smelly) boss. The difference between this and the meditation, is, despite one very embarrassing moment I do feel like I got something out of it. My limbs felt taut and sore for a week following; sore in that good sense of having accomplished something. My skin glowed. Jury's out on whether I'll try it again, though.

Namaste.

OF: Entitlement



Since secret video footage was released via the website/magazine Mother Jones--a lot has been said about Mitt Romney's recent comments about the 47% of supposedly non-income-tax-paying Americans who will never be convinced to take care of themselves. If you've been living under a rock: according to Mitt Romney (and by extension, those like him), 47% of Americans "Believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it."

I don't pretend to think that I can (or want to) add to the already brilliant, nuanced criticisms of the presidential candidate. But I can't help but feel motivated to say something about this pernicious little word: entitlement. Entitlement. Here's what that word means to me.

Entitlement means that you believe you are qualified to run the United States of America because you successfully managed to pad your off-shore account by legally circumventing IRS tax code.

Entitlement means that you believe it's completely okay--not only okay, but a point of pride--that you only paid 14.1% in taxes on dividends earnings in 2011 as a multi-millionnaire, when the average American household (earning roughly $50,000-75,000) paid an effective income tax rate of 12.8%. Yes, I understand that the latter rate is lower. But I also understand how it is overall a much HIGHER cost when one considers the proportion of income swallowed by this sort of tax system. What did Clinton say at the DNC? Oh yes: arithmetic.

Entitlement is running one's campaign on a Christian platform and hating the poor.

Entitlement is being a Christian politician who conveniently forgets Matthew 19:21: "If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me."

OR

Matthew 19:24: "And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God."

OR

Matthew 25:35-40: "For I was hungry, and you gave Me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me something to drink; I was a stranger, and you invited Me in; naked, and you clothed Me; I was sick, and you visited Me; I was in prison, and you came to Me.’ “Then the righteous will answer Him, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry, and feed You, or thirsty, and give You something to drink?‘And when did we see You a stranger, and invite You in, or naked, and clothe You? When did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?' The King will answer and say to them, ‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me."

That Jesus guy sure does sound like a socialist. An entitlement socialist, no?

Entitlement means telling 47% of America--nearly half of the population--that it's "not [your] responsibility to worry about them" while concurrently asking for their votes, to be their ruler, to be given the highest privilege and responsibility in the nation as President.

It doesn't just stop at politics, kids. There's a lot that's upsetting me.

If I haven't pissed you off/alienated you already, I may do so now. I apologize in advance.

I have a friend who told me once that I sounded ridiculous when I went off on tangents about race/the effects of race/class/what-have-you. He told me that I was like his short-sighted relatives in thinking there were certain things that "only brown people are allowed to talk about." For the record, I don't feel that way--but I do get a bit sick of people (particularly writers, particularly liberal, college-educated writers) thinking they have somehow been liberated from the yolk of any underlying prejudice simply because they grew up in a post-Civil Rights America, in an integrated society. Simply because they have perhaps dated outside of their race or have a black friend or because they like Bob Marley or because they are well-versed in and sympathetic to diasporas of all sorts.

Entitlement is thinking it's totally okay that women, and particularly women writers of color, are drastically underrepresented in publishing today. As though it were just a matter of unfortunate happenstance, and not institutional gatekeeping. As a woman writer of color, as a female Hawaiian poet (which represents less than 1% of published writers in America) I am disheartened by the blase attitude of some of my peers in publishing about this issue. It's largely shrugged off as unimportant, or glazed over with some sort of meaningless platitude. It is the literary version of a Romney-ism.

I am no victim. I am not entitled because I desire a fair opportunity in life or in art. Any path I carve out, I carve of and from myself. That applies to politics and poetry. Frankly, they have more in common than you'd imagine. Nearly every day, in working; in paying my fair of taxes; in going about my small life, the life of a unnamed Hawaiian woman cranking out a modest existence in the American South; in sitting on the bus in between jobs; in reading this or that; in waking at dawn to write a poem, I think of the Lucille Clifton poem, "won't you celebrate with me?"

won't you celebrate with me

what i have shaped into

a kind of life? i had no model.

born in babylon

both nonwhite and woman

what did I see except to be myself?

i made it up

here on this bridge

between starshine and clay,

my one hand holding tight

my other hand; come celebrate

with me that every day

something has tried to kill me

and has failed.

Why I Became a Librarian: Notes from the Rose Main Reading Room

During a recent presentation given by one of my library school colleagues, I was shocked to learned that something like 0.5% of the population determine that they want to enter the library profession before or during college. Most graduate students entering library school do so after having explored or worked in another industry or profession. I mean, I was one of those people. And while I knew that the numbers would be scarce (after all how many kids say 'I wanna be a librarian when I grow up?'), I never imagined they would be *that* scarce.

When I tell people that I'm getting my Master's degree to be a librarian, two questions generally arise: 1) why, and 2) you need a Master's degree to do that? This used to make me wince because I knew that behind those responses was a perplexed person who assumed I was somehow wasting my talent in becoming an information professional because they had absolutely no clue what a librarian actually does. It was like they were basically saying to me: "You want to get a Master's degree so you can check out books for people?!"

Yes, checking out books is sometimes a part of librarianship (and there's nothing wrong with that, you snobs), but that's not the whole story. The childhood stereotype of some four-eyed curmudgeon with an aversion to noise is not the face of modern librarianship. I think part of the problem stems from poor national campaigning and image-shaping by professional organizations within the LIS community. Let me clarify a point: I think organizations such as the ALA have done a fabulous job in national campaigns to discuss the societal impact and value of libraries as institutions. But by comparison they've done a lackluster job of illustrating what information professionals do within that context, especially when compared with the national image-shaping & recruitment campaigns for other professional organizations such as a the American Nursing Association.

My colleague's presentation made me think about why I'd entered this profession, particularly as a minority. Why did I choose to become a librarian in the wide world of options before me? To answer this question, I'd like to share a portion of a reflective essay I completed for my capstone course which discusses what initially drew me to the profession:

"In the fall of 2002 I was a freshman college student renting a room in a squalid apartment in the Southside Bronx while attending SUNY Purchase. I’d left my native Georgia and sojourned to New York carrying dreams of big city life and a career in medicine. And in the spirit of nearly every New York City story, I learned quickly that my fantasies of that great and terrible place were merely preconceived notions derived from the movies, pop culture, and impressionistic observations from previous trips. What I encountered was far beyond my means and capabilities as an inexperienced eighteen year old girl, and by the end of my freshman year of college—I was on the Dean’s list, and essentially homeless. It was during this time of personal and financial turmoil that I took comfort in the New York Public Library, one of the few places in the city that was free and open to the public; and under the frescoed ceiling of the Rose Main Reading room, the seeds of my future profession were planted deep inside of my subconscious.

The New York Public Library represented a kind of refuge for me. When I wasn’t in class, I spent whole days studying or writing poems at one of the long tables in the main reading room, fingering the spines of gilded books in the stacks, or examining the portraits of long-dead aristocrats from New England in the adjoining gallery. On one of these extended visits to the NYPL, I wandered down a hallway of glass-walled rooms where the special collections were housed. From the corridor I watched as white-gloved researchers handled delicate pieces of paper with the same attention and tender care of a mother bathing her infant. At the time I had no concept at all of special collections, the research role of primary records, or the qualifications needed to access such things. But that day made a lasting impression on my young mind: I wanted to be one of those people on the other side of the glass. I didn’t know immediately that I wanted to be a librarian necessarily, but I did know that I wanted to work somewhere like the NYPL—a place where beauty, history, and knowledge was accessible to anyone irrespective of education or socioeconomic status. A place that took seriously its explicit role in the creation and continuum of knowledge and service to a greater societal good."

I share that excerpt only to demonstrate a point. I don't think that one testimony is enough to shift the perception of librarianship, but perhaps several thousand testimonies could? Perhaps if library professionals--and their subsequent organizations--made a concerted effort to share their stories, and spur a national dialogue on how they are touching the lives of individuals in ways that are comparably value-added and intimate as other professions, we will see greater library school enrollment, a better societal understanding of the profession, and political shifts in the understanding of libraries and librarianship as fundamental to the cultural and intellectual growth and sustainability of our nation.

Impressions from a Book Fest

Recently I was asked by Emory University to be one of their featured authors signing/selling books for their "Authors Spotlight" at the Decatur Book Festival. I'm not really sure why. When I saw the caliber of writers also appearing on that featured author's list (Pulitzer Prize winning author Natasha Tretheway, National Book Award finalist Kevin Young, Emory University Vice President Gary Hauk) I felt sort of like the scraggly chicken patay passed around before the main entree.

These people are accomplished, well-known, hold copious degrees and important university titles, and I'm...well, I'm just Christeene. Christeene of 'Hey, go file this for me' notoriety.

The night before the festival, my husband and I stayed up until nearly 4am stapling and folding these beautiful little chapbooks stuffed with 32 pages of poems that I've lovingly tended to over the last month. As the books grew in number on our dining room table, and we laughed over the intimidating length of our Freudian inspired booklet stapler, I felt proud. I felt like a Writer (capital 'W').

The next day, alone, with my homemade volumes packed neatly in my book-bag I felt something very akin to the sinking dread I had on the first day of middle school. The prom scene from the cult movie Carrie replayed in my head ('They're all gonna laugh at you!') until I imagined that my hair was clumped in thick pig blood.

Luckily it turned out to be far less traumatic than all that.

Some Impressions:

1. When selling a chapbook, be sure that your 'FOR SALE' sign is large enough for little old ladies to see from at least 100 feet away. This will save you both from the ensuing embarrassment when a little old lady assumes that you're handing out pamphlets and takes one while you wave your hands and screech sheepishly, "Ma'am, those cost five dollars!"

2. Have no shame whatsoever when two friends show up unexpectedly and start snapping photos like you're Billy Collins or Stephen King descending from The New York Times bestseller's list to greet the plebeians. Embrace the free PR. Just pretend like you don't know who they are, and ask for their names as you sign their books with panache.

3. Don't be insulted when someone comes up to you and assumes you're the information person even though you are clearly sitting under a HUGE sign that says 'Author Spotlight.' Just smile and say, "Yes sir, Joseph Skibbell IS scheduled to sign at this booth later this afternoon!"

4. Have some enthusiasm when you're pimping your own wares. Apart from a tap-dance, people need to be convinced to pay ANY thing for poetry these days unless you've been thoroughly swabbed and vetted by The New Yorker or The Atlantic Monthly.

5. Never underestimate the little details. One woman bought my chapbook because she liked the Anais Nin quote on the back of my business cards; it spurred a whole conversation about writing, which ended in her perusing my first chapter and parting with two copies at $5 a piece (Hey, ten bucks is a big deal when a gallon of gas is nearly $3).

6. That lurky couple that talks to you for fifteen minutes and then stands awkwardly in the distance whispering and staring at you for another 20 mins after the husband has already asked 'So, what are you doing after this is over?' may be A) swingers looking for a friend, or B) just weird. Either way, exit from the back of the tent unseen.

7. Remember that every step, no matter how small or awkward, is still a step forward in your writing career. No one that ever wrote anything worth reading did so for money or recognition (even if they fantasized about both); it may be to your advantage as a living writer if you have neither. To be a real Writer, you need only a great big soul made of "empathy and intuition" (to quote a friend of mine).

I sold more books than I anticipated during my hour-that-felt-like-two-days. Surprisingly more books. I remembered that I was invited to sit at the same table as lauded authors even though no one knows my name. No one knows my name...yet.