Extra(ordinary)

Prompt: what is (extra)ordinary about your grandmother? write a 3-stanza prose poem of max. 18 lines per stanza. writing in columns is encouraged. each of the 3 stanzas should tell a story about your (extra)ordinary grandmother.

1.
After a lifetime of service you remain completely
selfless. Perhaps selflessness became a habit for you,
like breathing, folding the summer clothes that I let fall
carelessly strewn about on the floor, or heating congee and
eggs on the stove before anyone else wakes. That morning when
you left for the market and returned, carrying a ripe watermelon in
thin papery arms and a proud smile, mother scolded you
gently, firmly. 都这么大年纪了, people will think we don’t take
care of you. The dangers outweigh your love for us.
And I said nothing, because I was supposed to rise
before dawn and go with you, but I failed you. It would have been
too heavy for me to carry anyway.

2.
You raised me, that much I know, but did you ever mention
those who came before me? My uncle and aunt you dragged to
adulthood in 河南, through the Cultural Revolution. Then came my mother,
the youngest daughter to be lumped with the next generation of
first grandchildren. Who had time for stories then, when the women
warriors fought with butcher knifes and sewing machines to
feed and clothe the extra children who they never expected to come
but took in anyway. Grown, they scatter to better things in the wide
expanse of the great world—America, 美国, beautiful country.
Back then, who had time to sit and rest,
or think of anything but survival?

3.
You were at peace with the idea of dying, or so I believed.
My answer to your rhetorical questions of 姥姥还能活几年？
was always 万岁, ten thousand years, a phrase I must have picked up from
TV dramas featuring imperial China, with emperors who demanded
eternal life and glory from their subjects and God, these warrior men who
could not face their mortality. And I (foolish imaginative child I was) believed
that you, with your wondrous stories and wise freckled skin that never grew
more ancient than it already was, would defy time’s passing.
and the world would stop here with me,
the youngest and last granddaughter of this generation.

************************

Some comments on form--

I love free verse poetry. When given no guidelines, it's the form that I default to, hence the form I feel the most comfortable with. Because there are no rules for rhyming or number of syllables, I have the freedom to craft my own sentences. Not that I don't pay attention to how the words are arranged or how the syllables sound--I tend to turn the sentences over in my head until they make sense and sound natural to me. But maybe what sounds natural to me isn't necessarily clear to others, or purposefully unclear. I know that there are still many elements of free verse that I need to refine in my writing, like the intentionality of line placement and word choice. But for now, it remains my favorite poetry form because it liberates me from restrictions.

My writing professor said that when students ask him if they have what it takes to be a writer, he asks them if they like sentences. If you don't have a passion for sentences, then the joy of writing is lost. Interesting theory. (at least I can say that I do like sentences and don't find the question strange.)

Cavities

At this particular moment I believe that perhaps the fatal difference between real life and artistic representation is thus: In real life, struggle is agonizing and draining and ugly. But life spawns art. And in art, struggle is still painful, perhaps more so, yet emotionally cathartic and moving--therefore beautiful.

***************************

Cavities

After putting the goggles on, I become like
an obedient young scientist awaiting dissection—
the eye of a cow or worse, cat carcasses, trembling with tools in hand and
avoiding her lab partner’s confident gaze

instead it is she who does the science
to me, it seemed more like destruction
drills whirling in the deep cave shaving off pieces (you never
know when you're strapped to the chair and gaping like a fish)
then construction, the molding of pearly gates in darkness
and the wads of cotton lay passively under all this
to soak it all up

she tells me to think of distractions when I’m
squirming because the cotton has slid from
under my tongue when I think too much of
silence and numbness and the tools spitting out water light and air

after it is all over I run my tongue across the geography
of everything to make sure what I can’t feel still exists
despite the numbness and the persistent feeling that the flesh that was
once so familiar was not, and has never been mine.

-from a half drugged and numb Heidi after a trip to the dentist for fillings

what in fact I keep choosing/are these words, these whispers, conversations...

...from which time after time the truth breaks moist and green.
-Cartographies of Silence, Adrienne Rich

I've been thinking about why people make art. There are so many reasons why people would write, paint, make music, create. Perhaps some do it for fame, money, or the illusion of future fame and fortune. Some people do it to survive, as their only means to earn a living. Some do it for survival because they would die a metaphorical death without art. And for some it's both.

People create with a particular objective in mind, to expose injustice and to politicize (For some reason Ayn Rand comes to mind, perhaps because her description of the human condition is so lyrically beautiful that I'm compelled to forgive her politics). And perhaps people create because it's inexplicably beautiful. Art for art's sake.

I create because I see a piece of myself and my experiences in every piece of art that I appreciate. This sounds like narcissism, but I find comfort in seeing myself reflected in others, especially when I feel like my life is a mess and that I've lost that sense of self (So I gather the identifiable pieces from other people's work and attempt to piece together something recognizable?). As Gretchen Rubin of The Happiness Project resolves, "Think about myself so I can forget myself." Art allows me to reassemble the broken pieces of myself. Good writing rearticulates my thoughts perfectly when I'm too crippled by confusion and emotion to do so myself. So I write in the hope that I may replicate that feeling, that sense of connection with someone else in the audience, if the audience exists.

I create because I am secretive and being too direct and rough with my words and emotions seems too painful. So I circumvent the issue, hope that someone will mistake my sentimentality for originality. Wanting to be original, innovative, and yet understood by everyone, yet terrified of being understood. Wanting mutually exclusive things at once (that are burning up when they are bottled up and will explode when they aren't reconciled) and wanting to make sense of the complexities of a world that encompasses so many contradictions. Wanting to say things a certain way because it's impossible to say them any other way.

Of course, I create because I want to make something beautiful.

(And I have romanticized the idea of art as a life or death matter, a matter of survival, I suppose.)

But are any of these reasons either-or, mutually exclusive? Is there a commonality that encompasses all of these reasons, besides the human element?

Maybe the capacity for art is a part of humanity, and to maintain our humanity we must tell our stories with some desperate hope for understanding and connection. History books say that all the great civilizations must have acquired some sort of capacity for language. But these standards for qualifying civilizations is according to our modern, extremely linguistic and visual culture. Though, it would be extremely difficult for us to conceptualize a great civilization that didn't prioritize language, visual art, or representation (because it would be lost to our tools of interpretation?).

Maybe in order for art to be politicizing, its message doesn't have to be obvious. The very act of storytelling can be empowering because it allows someone to reclaim their humanity by redefining a representation of hirself. In a world infiltrated with violence and coercion, art can be a subversive force. For all of society's attempts to silence voices that have stories to tell, there are those who will rebel. For a woman like my grandmother who has told stories despite the wars waged to keep her silent, her art has power.

Why do you create art?

On Writing, and Falling in Love with the Concrete

For a long time, I wanted to be a writer. I thought, talked, and dreamed about writing the Great American Novel or the memoir that would be raw and honest and lead to a kind of catharsis about myself. I wanted to be revolutionary rather than sentimental. A couple weeks ago, I went to a writing workshop with Warren Liu, Professor of Literature. He said that poetry was in itself subversive, because it's regarded as childish and worthless in society. And by valuing poetry, by making a living from literature, your existence is subverting societal standards. That stuck with me; I loved it. I loved the idea of rooting my self-worth in writing, creating beauty from a medium that is so illusive, where the line between uselessness and greatness is versatile.

Then I realized that I was in love with the idea of being a writer rather than the reality, the essence of writing. I romanticized a lifestyle to find out that I didn't have what it took to be a writer because I hadn't fallen in love with the subject, and the subject of writing is inevitably the human condition. I don't write because writing enables my survival. I don't even write to be honest because I choose to hide behind an image that I've crafted for myself. I couldn't bear to honest and carve permanent words that speak truth because those words would transform my reality and I didn't want to face reality, so I preferred to hide behind academic language. Safe, only understood by an elite group of people with very particular beliefs, distant, impersonal.

In life, I spend a lot of time being infatuated with ideals. I fall in love with love. I love humanity. Sometimes I have so much love bottled up that I could burst with all that passion, pain, and sacrifice. But somewhere along the way I've stopped falling in love with the subject, what is present, concrete, What exists outside my narrow conception of who a person is, what a place is like. Really I've just holed myself in a narrow cell fantasizing about what living the experience is really like, hiding behind the language of abstractions, and loving the void between walls of substance.

The other day we were given a piece of chocolate and asked to hold, smell, feel, taste, and see the chocolate in order to write about it. And I never really realized how I don't particularly like the smell of chocolate (it's odd and not sweet exactly). So the idea is, you have this concept of what chocolate is, but how would you know really, unless you've experienced every aspect of it?

****************

All my life I waited eagerly for rain
because of the way passing streetlights reflected
in water-on-glass shined like glitter
from a fairy godmother’s wand,
or unknown galaxies, or a broken mirror.