Little Girl Lost

Today I am working a piece entitled "Little Girl Lost," which is focusing on a female archetype that illuminates our own life struggles through a journey from innocence to maturity amongst harsh or repressive institutions. After studying Alice in Wonderland extensively for my English thesis, I have seen this archetype show up most recently in the film Pan’s Labyrinth; the first book in the His Dark Materials trilogy, The Golden Compass; and in the recent Michael L. Printz Honor award winner, The Book Thief. In their creations, Guillermo Del Toro, Philip Pullman and Mark Zusak have provided readers with intelligent and rebellious young girls as reflections of ourselves. Have you enjoyed any of these incredible works of art? If so, what have you learned from Ofelia, Lyra or Liesel that you could share?

Blogging: Writing about Writing?

As a writer with a new blog, I have been visiting other writer's blogs to help refine and focus what I want the world to see about me. It seems like writer's blogs fall into 2 camps: those that write about writing (and their original works appear in other published formats) and those who post their work for free on their blog site, poems, short stories, even novels. My own blog started off as a place to post some of my poems and short stories and is now evolving into a place to write about my writing. I am seeing the value of being paid for my literary work as well as the benefit of having an editor's contribution to the final product. But I also don't want to lose out in receiving immediate feedback from creative inspiration.
Other writers, what are the pros/cons of these approaches? Feel free to share your own experiences with me.

Living in the Void

The spiritual leader at a community I belong to likes to use the phrase, “living in the void.” This notion resonates with me so much lately as I continue to move deeper into a life as a writer. After 17 years of full time work with the same company, I changed to a part time schedule in September. Let me tell you, the first couple of weeks, I was struck by an unexpected insecurity that made it feel like I was walking on water but that at any moment, I would sink below the surface. Who did I think I was that I could walk on water? In the current economy, I was opening myself up to greater risk in being laid off by going part-time, wasn’t I? And considering my history of cancer and the need for healthcare, which keeps me tied to a corporate employer, wasn’t I being foolish, losing the benefits of short term and long term disability? And the reason that I was doing all of this…to concentrate more on my writing and to make up the loss in my hours at the company through income I would make in my writing. What the hell? Was I crazy? I had not had anything published since college and even then, it was 3 or 4 poems in various university literary magazines that paid me nothing.
Months into this experiment, I don’t feel any more confident about my job security or the scary possibility of a cancer recurrence, and I have come to the hard realization that I won’t be immediately paid for my writing. In fact, these couple of months have felt unstructured, unfocused and without much “work” to prove the loss of self-worth that my previous corporate identity allowed me. But I am more comfortable sitting in this place, sitting in the void, to use my spiritual leader’s words. I lived in the void going through my treatments for brain cancer, trusting that I was making the right decisions based on the information from my doctors and other experts. Perhaps, the experience of a health crisis prepared me to be able to take on the risks that I am living in now. And ironically, it was the health crisis that spurred me to make such a radical change (at least it was radical for me), as I was forced to realize that I am not going to live forever, and maybe not even as long as you.
It was in college, when I was studying for my Creative Writing degree, before I took the path of safety and security in the corporate world, that I first picked up the Tao Te Ching. It taught me how to let go of the religious structure that I grew up with, with all of its neat answers and to live in the complexity and contradictions of life. I remember hearing a friend’s interpretation of his own reading of the Tao: that it was the space between life’s moments that provide the real meaning, those times of waiting for the next great thing to happen. It is the moment between breaths. It is the time between moments. I started to notice these gaps, to allow in the undefined, unknowable mystery of them, to sink into the nothingness of them; I was surprised to find myself comforted.
It is these open spaces that have taught me the most and have allowed me to move forward in my life. As I sit in the void of my current situation, of no longer being the “corporate man” and not yet having the credentials of the writers I admire, I trust that although I will sink below the surface at times and not be able to see where I am or where I am going, that it will be the lessons of the void that guide me.
What lessons have you learned from living in the void? Please drop me a line. I would love to hear.

The Holy Spirit of MILK

I was trying to write a poem for my father, who has been on my mind a lot lately, to reflect my admiration for him…why? Well, just recently, I went to see the movie MILK, and as with most other gay men who grew up not really knowing who Harvey Milk was, until recently, I was very moved by the story. When Harvey admits to himself, to paraphrase, “I am forty years old, and I haven’t done anything with my life,” it had a specific resonance with me in regards to turning forty myself this year and sometimes feeling, what have I done for gay rights? It seems like this is the time to be counted and recognized as an upstanding, moral, contributing member of society, who happens to be gay, just like Harvey Milk was. I wonder, sometimes, what can I do? (Even when I know that there is more that I can do.) Has my coming out made any difference, even to my own family, for example, when I send my dad a copy of a reading I did at church this past year for Gay Pride and the only response I get back is “thanks for sharing?” Thanks for sharing!? After all the emails I receive from my dad about his political views and religious perspectives, that’s the only thing he can say. I felt insulted. Cheated. I wanted more.

But I had already gotten more: at the family reunion, about 4 years ago, in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. Let me paint the picture for you. My boyfriend and I drive up to the community center where it is being held and my dad’s brother is being lifted out of the back of a run down pickup truck in a recliner, carried into the meeting hall by a band of my cousins. (I found out later that my uncle had just had surgery on both of his knees, but it didn’t take away from the absurd opening scene to the redneck family reunion). We enter the meeting hall to see it decorated with red, white and blue for Memorial Day and several of my first cousins singing old time religious hymns. We settle uncomfortably in the meeting hall into some open seats and anxiously await when it will all be over. After we all eat, it comes the time for each of my dad’s siblings and himself to introduce their respective families. Knot in my stomach. My dad’s most religious brother (who, as a preacher years ago, called me out during the middle of a church service as needing prayer for my underage drinking) introduces his three sons, their beloved wives, and each of the kids. Next, the most redneck, beer-drinking heathen brother introduces his kids. The sisters introduce their children.

And then it’s my dad’s turn. Oh my god, I can’t breathe, he is just going to say my name and nothing else. Nothing about my partner. Or “This is Richard’s friend.” He introduces my older brother, his wife, kids. My brother Clark.

“And this is my son Richard, in from Chicago, with his life partner, Dan.”

What? What? Did I just hear that? I was stunned. Shocked. Embarrased. Proud. My dad, a lifelong Republican, a career military man, a hunter of wild game, a sports enthusiast, a stern disciplinarian, had just stood up in front of his entire mostly fundamental, religious, Southern family and introduced me and my gay partner. Me, his middle son, a lover of literature, a sensitive writer, a lifelong liberal, a peace-loving soul, a man lover! I felt chills running down my back and gave a quick sideways glance of pleased shock to my lover as my first cousins, the Allison Family Singers, started singing one of those religious songs that I grew up with, that I cut out of my consciousness for years, but this time, as they sang, “There’s Power in the Blood,” I felt a little something, a familial connection because of what my father had just done and I felt that the shivering sensation of redemption and validation that I was experiencing was not unlike the Holy Spirit that my father often refers to.

I felt the same type of shivering sensation, of validation, of redemption, of wanting and needing to do more, when I heard Sean Penn recite Harvey Milk’s haunting premonition: “If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door.” Hearing that, seeing the horrible fate that befell Harvey Milk and yet all the good that has come from his legacy, sent shivers through my body at the movie theater.

Again, I felt moved by the Holy Spirit. I think even my dad could relate to that.