Category Archives: blog

Getting Lost

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I loved my recent trip to Japan, despite how many times I got lost.

The worst instance was when my husband and I were dragging heavy suitcases searching for our AirBnb. In the heat (95 feels like 106) we walked in circles for an hour, trying to follow directions that said: get out of the subway station (which exit?), walk under an underpass (there were at least three), turn left at the brown building (which one–nearly all the buildings were brown), then walk “a little while” and turn right at the big tree (of course, more than one tree). To the host’s credit, there were thumbnail photos of each step, but the views looked like everywhere else in the neighborhood.

Why didn’t I try Google Maps? I did, but the app didn’t recognize the transliterated address. It was only after we stopped a kind woman walking on the street that she was able to paste the Japanese address into her phone and locate the place instantly–right around the corner from where we were and only four minutes from the subway station. Apparently Google maps in Japan often doesn’t recognize transliterated addresses. And even when it does, the streets you’re supposed to turn on are written in Japanese characters, with vague instructions like “head Northeast.” If I were a Millennial, I might be better at holding the phone up and following the blue dot, as the younger members on our trip seemed to do effortlessly, but for every time I was able to navigate to a subway, restaurant, or sight-seeing venue, there were three more times I found myself suddenly going in the wrong direction (not to mention all the times I did, eventually, make it successfully to a targeted restaurant, only to find it closed when I got there).

But travel can be like that. As can writing. While it may not seem so at the time–especially in the heat with suitcases–there can be joy in the quest if you can recognize and accept that you may not get to your destination as easily as you might wish to.

All my novels have taken years to write because I kept veering off course. Even though I kept a consistent schedule, I didn’t know what wasn’t working until I’d spent several drafts on the wrong path–which was ultimately a lot more of a time sink than the day we took the bullet train in the wrong direction. It was only after I gave a few characters personality transplants, switched the points of view and totally revamped plot points several times that I felt confident that I was finally following the blue dot of the true story. Or was I? Even now, the back of my mind churns as the Google Maps arrow wobbles: What if I changed all the first person points of view to third person? Would that be stronger and more consistent? Do I have the energy and interest right now to take the plunge? 

Some books on novel-writing advise people to spend time plotting out the story’s trajectory and developing the characters through extensive bios before writing a word. If you can do that, more power to you. I know I need to feel the thrust of the book by immersing myself in a situation before doing that kind of development work, so I usually wait until I have a draft or two done before tackling any of that. And I also know that even if I did try to plan everything in advance, I’d still find myself veering off my set map. This is a good thing. As Robert Frost said, No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader.

It’s a lesson I wish I’d taken to heart at the time, taking cues from my husband, who oohed and aahed as he snapped photos of temples and pagodas that suddenly appeared among all the brown buildings, instead of fuming in frustration at that elusive blue dot.

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The Making of a Book Cover

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There’s an old adage… you can’t judge a book by its cover, meaning (according to the Brittanica Dictionary) “that you shouldn’t judge someone or something based only on what you see on the outside or only on what you perceive without knowing the full situation.” It’s a good reminder to try not to make snap judgments about people and situations.

However, when it comes to actual reading materials, I think many of us fall into the trap of judging books by their covers.

Let’s face it: So many books, so little time. If I’m in a bookstore with the goal of choosing just one book (even if I might want to buy 20) the cover–as well as the title–WILL play a huge role in my decision, especially if the author is unknown to me, or the book hasn’t been specifically recommended. And I don’t even consider myself a visual person, so I think this may be even more true for others.

That’s why the cover of a book is so important.

My first two books were published by major houses, which meant I had very little say over their covers–or titles, both of which were changed from my originals. I could suggest tweaks but I had no say over the whole concept. I was lucky to love the cover for my first book, Escaping Into the Night, but I never liked the cover for my second book, Playing Dad’s Song. It wasn’t much consolation that the book with the cover I liked did way better than the book with the cover I didn’t like.  I couldn’t help but wonder and wish that a stronger cover would have made a difference with this book’s  performance in the market.

My third book, Wolf in the Suitcase, was a poetry chapbook published by a small press, and I had a lot of say in the cover design. I chose a painting by my late father-in-law, Michihiro Yoshida, in part to honor him post-mortem. Since poetry is tough to sell to people who don’t know you, I didn’t really think too much about market impacts, though I hoped the bright and engaging colors would evoke interest.

And this brings me to my current short-story collection,  Immigrants, coming soon! When the publisher, Creators Press, first asked me for my ideas, I sent a couple of photos I’d taken on my trip to the U.S./Mexico border, but they thought these images were too blatant, especially since most of the stories weren’t about the border. After their team generated a list of different ideas, we followed up on two possibilities: a person at a crossroads, and a half-hidden face. When the designer worked up both images, it was clear to me that the face was the winner.

Still, there were several more iterations. The first face looked too white, the second too young and romantic. In a subsequent draft, the tear in the curtain looked too ill-defined, so the designer came up with the idea of adding barbed wire. This certainly raised the clarity and emotional temperature; however, I was worried about the implied violence in the image, since the emphasis of the book is more about human connections than about politics. So I asked the designer for one draft with the barbed wire and one without, and then asked around 15 people–writers, artists, and activists–to comment on which one they liked better.

While the majority of those I asked seemed to think the barbed wire image was more powerful, those who didn’t like it, felt strongly (as I did) that the implied violence was a turn-off. But one of the people I asked, got her artistic juices flowing. After printing and cutting up different pieces of the image, she came up with a hybrid of the two that had pleats and just a hint of barbed wire, which the designer took as a model for the final draft. While I was a bit worried about being so picky and taking so long, I was happy that the designer (instead of thinking I was a pain in the butt) thanked me and said, “I feel like this has been a very rewarding process so far, and I’m really excited about the final product we can achieve!”

 

So, there we have it. Who knows what impact the cover will have on the book’s success, but I hope that if Immigrants is judged by its cover, it will be judged favorably.

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Hiroshima Commemoration: August 6, 2023

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Thousands of people filled Peace Memorial Park on August 6. It felt, in some ways, like many of the large demonstrations I’ve attended over the years, with people displaying colorful posters and handing out flyers. A small group of girl scouts looked quite serious as they handed out programs, but also proud that they were doing such an important job. And the security people who searched bags in the extremely orderly array of lines were efficient and respectful as they handed people shrink-wrapped cooling towels, which seem to be a staple in the “wicked hot” Japanese summer–consistent temperatures in the 90s that feel even hotter due to the high humidity.

 

 

 

 

My husband and I got there too late to get seats under the tent, but with our NYC superpowers of threading our way through crowds, we found a small shaded spot on the ground at the tent’s periphery where we could hear well and see the speakers on the Jumbotron if we stood up. The ceremony was short, centering on the ringing of a bell at exactly 8:15 AM, followed by a moment of silence. Then, a whoosh of doves made spectacular shadows against the white tent canopy before they soared off, staying in our view-scape for barely a moment.

And yet, a moment was all it took for the bomb to drop and change everything.

The day before, we had gone to the city gardens and seen a large ginkgo, one of only three trees that survived the bombing. We also went to the Peace Museum and barely made it through picture after picture of burnt bodies, story after story of people wracked with despair as they stumbled through rubbled streets, trying to find their loved ones. This was made even worse by the short political exhibit that followed, which emphasized how the U.S. felt it was “worth it” to drop this new weapon on already nearly defeated Japan if it would keep the Soviet Union from entering the war and sharing the spoils.

How could anyone do this? The question, like a heavy bell clapper, pounded against my head. And especially, after learning about the unspeakable devastation and suffering in Hiroshima, how could they drop another bomb three days later in Nagasaki?

And what is it in humans that give us the capacity to torture and kill others when ordered, from instances of all-out-war, to the countless genocides of one group against another, to the shocking Milgram experiments?

But on the flip-side of such evil, one story that emerged was a story of goodness and hope. In 1945, medical people came from all over, risking their own health to help the victims. In each continuing generation since then, the city has continued to take it upon itself to educate people about the bombing, not in order to sink into the horror, but to come through it to a better place. As the mayor declared at this year’s ceremony, (referring to the city’s recent hosting of G-7 leaders this past spring) “Enduring past grief, overcoming hatred, we yearn for genuine world peace with all humanity living in harmony and prosperity. I believe our spirit is now engaged in their hearts.”

Later that night we went to see the lanterns in the river: hundreds upon hundreds of lights along the blank, each light symbolizing a dead body that was found in the river after the bomb exploded. While the mood was mixed, the thousands on the river’s banks were more hopeful than sunk. And, I too, was struck more by the beauty of the image than by its symbolism, a sentiment echoed by the two children who read a poem in the morning ceremony that gives hope for the future. I’m grateful for these children and their authentic, hopeful words. Here’s a piece of the poem:

Today Hiroshima is a city full of greenery and smiling faces.
Thank you for surviving
It’s because you survived that we were given our lives.

And there is something that we can do for others, too.
Thinking about how others feel before saying how we feel.
Finding the good in our friends.
Doing what we can to make others smile.

 

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Confronting Perfectionism–at the Literal Grassroots

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T minus 48 hours until I leave for a three-week trip to Japan, and what am I doing? Pulling grass clumps out of the gravel driveway.

During the past several years, I let the driveway and the connecting brick walkway to the side entrance of my house go to pot–or more literally go to grass. Because keeping it weed-free was like the Mickey Mouse scene in the Sorcerer’s Apprentice. There was simply no way to keep up.

So last fall I paid a landscaper a lot of money to re-gravel the driveway and literally unearth the brick walkway, which had become completely covered with sod. And I thought that would be it. But, silly me–the grass and assorted plants underneath the gravel and between the squares of brick had other ideas.

Since I’m opposed to Round-Up and any other earth-toxic remedies, Google gave me two choices: weed by hand or treat the area with a solution of white vinegar and dish soap. This means I have spent many hours this summer in the hot sun pulling clumps of grass out of the driveway, since that method was listed as more effective, saving the vinegar/soap solution only for the stubborn pieces that refused to budge. I’ve discovered that while vinegar kills some of the grass, it doesn’t necessarily penetrate down to the root system, or kill all of it, so I have to keep respraying. And for every tuft of grass I pull out, I can be assured that the next week–or maybe even the next day–there’ll be more green blades sprouting nearby. Aargh! Mickey, I feel you!

Usually I just focus on the most offending area for ten or fifteen minutes, which makes the task manageable, figuring I can keep things under control in piecemeal fashion without letting the obsession take over my life. But today, knowing that the grass was going to get a free pass for three weeks, I spent two hours at the call of my perfectionist demons. Am I really a bad person if the grass takes over? I tried to talk back to them as I heaved out another recalcitrant hump of crabgrass and shook out the large pieces of gravel that stuck to its needy roots.

Of course, I’m not a bad person, even if I return to find my walkway a snarling mess.  Nevertheless, I felt deluged with shame last year when I had to admit defeat with the driveway and call for professional help–the same kind of shame I felt when I first returned to playing the piano and couldn’t get through any of the pieces I wanted to play without a million mistakes. But somewhere in the past three years with piano, in addition to acquiring more dexterity through frequent practicing, I’ve learned to laugh when I mess up, then patiently go over the tricky passages. And then, even if I still can’t play the hard parts perfectly, I tell myself I’ve done well enough for today. And that playing the piece still brought me joy. Like my flower garden, which is NEVER weed-free, but still a pleasing, cultivated chaos.

(Especially now that my walkway is clear!!)

And like all that practicing, which HAS made the hard parts easier, I’m also celebrating all the weeding I HAVE done since the beginning of the year. And I’ve got this YUGE weed pile to prove it! LOL!

And I got a blog post out of this morning’s ordeal. Considering that Substack is adding to my perfectionist anxiety by sending me nudges to blog once a week, I’m happy to have one more item crossed off my checklist. Now, on to packing. I’m looking forward to blogging next time from Japan–where I’m sure the flowers will be perfect!

 

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The Down Side of Being Published

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As the publication date for my new book, Immigrants, draws closer, I’ve had a few more insomnia-driven nights than usual. And the question that keeps me up more than any others is: What if people don’t like my book? 

The word “publish” derives from the Latin word publicare, which means to “make public.” So, yes, when you publish your work it’s no longer you and your writing curled up in a cozy room. Your creative baby is out there for public scrutiny–your heart, stripped down to be as raw and vulnerable as you can stand. It’s not for everyone.

I like to think of myself as being relatively thick-skinned. Yet, even when I post published poems on social media I absolutely count the number of likes. Why did one recent poem get 46 likes and the other only 10? Was there something wrong with the second poem? Was it a bad poem?  And was that quick  “wonderful,” in the comments meant as a heartfelt response to the work, or a simple message of support from someone who might like me, even if they’re tepid, or confused, or maybe even turned off by my words.

I could get all huffy and say, My writing and I are one and the same! Love me, love my words! Understand and resonate with every single one of them! If you don’t, there’s something wrong with you. 

Or, more likely, something wrong with me! 

Because, ultimately, the writer is the chef serving up the tasty nuggets. So if the eater doesn’t like them, then the chef must not being doing their job.

Unless the chef is making an array of rhubarb pies, muffins, and turnovers and serving them to a crowd of people who can’t stand the taste of rhubarb.

Veganbaking.net from USA, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

One of my writing mentors (Pat Schneider, founder of Amherst Writers & Artists) said we should think of our writing as a type of music. Some people just don’t like jazz. Others can’t stand classical music, or country music. So if someone doesn’t respond to your writing in the way you might like them to, that doesn’t always mean that you’re the problem. They just may not jive with your progression of harmonies.

Still, it was hard when one of my novels got a mediocre review. And despite the book winning awards and getting a lot of other very good reviews, this was the review I remembered. Negativity bias, (taking negative information more seriously and intensely than positive information) is a real thing. And it’s not a flaw in our personality. It’s connected to our innate “fight-or-flight” response.

I think it’s fine to choose not to publish, to share your work only with people whose reactions will be uplifting and encouraging, or choose not to share your work at all. But if you do choose to set out on the thorny  publication path, try not to get swept up in any negative comments that might get flung your way. Instead, thank all those people on social media who took the time to write “wonderful,” because they cared about you–whether they genuinely liked your writing or not.

 

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Learning From My Dog

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Last night I finished Christian McEwen’s excellent book, World Enough and Time: On Creativity and Slowing Down. McEwen explores several ways to nurture creativity, a difficult task in a culture that revolves around overactivity and excessive screen-time. One of my favorite suggestions (and a practice I already regularly engage in) is walking in nature. I learned this from my husky-shepherd, Lefty, who quickly made it clear that the key to keeping him calm was a long off-leash walk in the woods every day. I found this break so nourishing, I’ve continued the practice. Even though he’s been gone for 12 years, I make a point of walking daily in all kinds of weather. And when I need an extra nudge to get my tired or tense torso out the door, I channel the ghost of my four-legged personal trainer, remembering that even at the very end of his life, he’d battle his own demons of arthritis, fatigue and lethargy for the joy of being in the woods.

Many cultures have recognized the benefits of nature walking. The Japanese even have a word for this: shinrin-yoku, which translates as forest-bathing. Devotees of shinrin-yoku recommend that you go into the forest without your phone or your camera, and with as little of an agenda as possible. It’s not even necessary to go anywhere. Simply follow your eyes, ears, nose, and feet, and immerse yourself in all the sensations the woods have to offer. This advice melds nicely with some of McEwen’s other suggestions around cultivating creativity: resisting “hurry sickness” (the idea that you have to complete a task to get to the next one), taking the time to observe your surroundings closely (with all your senses, not just your eyes), and paying more attention to the silence and the pauses between actions.

Having now read McEwen’s book, along with articles on shinrin-yoku, I can see that while I’m glad to have a nature-walking practice, I’m not yet skilled in engaging in it with this kind of quality. I’m often thinking about how long (or how little time) I can spend, and I’m often rushing up the trails I’ve chosen, setting an agenda that will give me good physical exercise, but not necessarily the best workout for my mental and creative health.

So again, I’m going to channel Lefty’s ghost, remembering that he had no agenda when he walked, and often wandered off on his own, following his nose for potentially tasty morsels, finding muddy puddles to roll in, and once making friends with a wandering coyote. I’m not about to squat at every tree or chase squirrels, but other than that, I’m wondering what it would it be like to walk in the woods with the mindset of a dog. To saunter along and sniff at whatever touches my fancy, and occasionally run my heart out for the thrill of the rush of the wind on my face?

How to truly take in the lesson that I don’t always have to have an agenda, a checklist, a time limit? Dogs don’t care about time. Why should I?

Time keeps on slipping… slipping… slipping… into the future. So says the well-known song by the Steve Miller Band. We can’t change that, but we can cultivate a sense of expanded time, by reining in our busy-ness and paying attention to what’s around us, especially the silence and pauses between actions, as McEwen says. Yes, I know that stopping to smell the flowers is a well-worn cliché, but when was the last time we actually did that?

 

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Navigating the Unexpected

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On the day after Hurricane Irene, I woke up and looked out my window and saw that the river had completely covered the fields across the street from my house. As the water lapped at the edge of the road, I wondered if I’d be trapped. We are on high ground, but our only way out is Route 47 North or South unless we want to walk across the Mt. Holyoke Range, or get hold of a canoe. Many of our neighbors have showed us pictures of their families escaping on boats during the historical floods of 1936 and 1938, which are commemorated by the flood marker I pass every day, about a mile north of my house.

The flooding from Irene never got to the road, thanks to the Hadley DPW trucks and their well placed distribution of sandbags, but I did lose my entire garden, which had been in one of the fields by the river. A truly sad day, even though the tomatoes were pretty much done and we’d already enjoyed several months of the harvest.

My garden is now on higher ground

closer to the house, and the flooding on the river plain in my neighborhood has been far less than we anticipated this time. When I look across the street I see deep pools, similar to what’s common in the spring, where people sometimes stand on the road and fish, though some of the corn is clearly lost.

However many farms in the area including two that I feel personally connected to: Grow Food Northampton,  Mountain View Farm and Stone Soup Farm lost nearly all of their crops.  And north of us in Vermont, the situation is much worse, with many homes and businesses devastated.

I often find myself pondering what I would do in face of tragedy, especially the sudden, unexpected kind that threatens the foundations on which I live my life: family, home, sustenance, livelihood. And the thought brings me right back to the week I spent in Matamoros on the Mexican border, walking past wet and sagging tents perched in the hot, muddy field, talking to people who lost everything when tragedy forced them to leave their home countries, people whose only remaining possession is hope.

My husband (who’s always been more attached to food than I am) still occasionally grumbles about the burgeoning crop of sesame seeds we lost in the Irene flood, which we’ve never been able to successfully reproduce. But in reality it was no big deal to lose my garden that summer. I’ve led an exceptionally privileged life whose tragedies, while still difficult, are expected outcomes in the cycle of life and death that all of us on the planet endure. And while sometimes acknowledging that privilege makes me edgy, it also reminds me of my responsibility to participate in tikkun olam, the healing of the world, and to feel gratitude for all that I have.

The farmers at Mountain View write, “We are going to take things one step at a time as we plan for how to proceed. We will continue to distribute farm shares with our heads held high for as long as we can with what we have left.” This seems in line with the mindset of many of the people I spoke with on the border. Despite how bleak their situation appeared, they kept pressing on, determined to get through each day and take one step closer to their dreams, no matter how unachievable they might seem.

Good advice–for all of us, no matter what our state of privilege/challenge might be and no matter how essential our goal(s) might be to our ability to survive. That, along with my meditation app’s suggestion of 10 deep breaths, a reset, and a step forward.

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Setting Intentions

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For the past few months I’ve been experimenting with The Artist’s Way technique of writing three long-hand pages before getting out of bed in the morning as way to clear out detritus, set a tone for the day, and hopefully get to some inspirational creative nugget. Though the nuggets have been few and far between for me, I’ve found the process useful in breaking the habit of going right to my phone with its tasky emails and social media rants about disturbing items in the morning’s news cycle.

It’s also been useful to write down intentions of what I’d like to accomplish for the day, remembering that I don’t need to beat myself up for not completing everything I’ve set out to do; I just need to remind myself of the direction I’ve set, and gently pivot back if I’m veering off-course (or re-assess if the new course I’m on seems more right for the moment). Since I’m still in the throes over-achiever recovery, my intentions can sometimes feel like a laundry list of everything I might like to get done, as impossible to pull off as finding a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. But seeing, day after day, how ridiculously long my lists can be, and taking time to express gratitude for what I have achieved at the end of each day has been helpful in setting my sights a tad more realistically.

I was discussing this a few days ago with Alice, my chevrutah, which loosely translates from Hebrew as a “learning partner.” Instead of studying Jewish texts, we’ve chosen to expand the Jewish practice of self-reflection and forgiveness during Elul (the month before New Year’s) into an ongoing practice of checking-in on personal growth, taking inspiration from Jewish and non-Jewish spiritual teachings, as well as in the countless gifts we get every day from immersing in the creative process and engaging with the natural world. Alice told me that the Hebrew word for intention, kavanah, is not so much about the tasks you aim to get done, but the quality with which you approach them.

So, for the last few days as I’ve written my list, I’ve expressed the kavanah to pay more attention and be more connected to whatever it is I’m doing, rather than thinking of it as an item to be quickly ticked off so I can get to the next thing as soon as possible.

Surprisingly, this has made me more relaxed in my writing practice. I’m not so worried about what the next big project might be, or if I’m doing the most important thing right now on my writing “to-dos.” I’m setting one writing intention a day of something to focus on and trying my best not to second-guess myself (which includes actively choosing not to write on days that are exceptionally busy, rather than feeling distracted and harried as I try to squeeze it in). And when a new path opens up (i.e. in the middle of doing submissions, a poem begs for a rewrite or a few lines pop into my head, or I get a brilliant idea for a new story) I let myself wander off the path, the way my husband and I often follow unmarked trails in the woods, confident that we know the local forests (just as I know my own internal map) well enough to find our way back home.

 

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