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.)

it was an old theme even for me:/language cannot do everything--

-Cartographies of Silence, Adrienne Rich

I just watched the Disney Pixar film "Up", and I was crying within the first ten minutes. I realized that very, very few movies make me cry. Seriously, out of all the movies I've seen over the years, I can count all the times that I actually got emotional on one hand. And then when I thought about the movies that actually made me really cry rather than just tear up, (that I remember), I only came up with these: "Persepolis", "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs", and "Up", all animated films.

I'm not sure why animated characters affect me so much more than real life actors. For a long time, I thought of myself as coldhearted and closed off because I couldn't cry during classic tear-jerkers like "Titanic", and I was the one sitting dry-eyed during movie nights/sleepovers while my more sensitive friends and their mothers were in tears. But then I found myself shedding tears over Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs on the plane to Louisiana and fighting to hide my embarrassingly public display of emotions from people sitting next to me, thinking, these characters are not real! I find that I'm most affected by profound relationships between pixar characters, maybe because their faces are so expressive. And when their expressions are joyful, I feel it so much more too. The scenes from Carl and Ellie's life together were so adorable that I wanted to cry whenever he mentioned her during the rest of the movie. The special effects in Up were also so imaginative and evocative. In recent years, it's been hard for me to take special effects in big-budget fantasy films seriously because they're so ridiculously extravagant. But maybe because the characters and settings aren't supposed to be real, but childlike and fanciful, Pixar is able to utilize new technology in a way that's fantastical but not overdone.



I couldn't help noticing that the Pixar films I've seen recently, Wall-E and Up, both incorporated underlying themes of environmentalism, which was really interesting to analyse (Yes, I can't seem to escape from analyzing all elements of pop culture that I come in contact with, blame it on my liberal arts education). Up revolved around this theme of nature, and what it meant to be in touch with nature as an explorer. Of course, these are all mainstream themes of environmentalism focusing on preserving nature, rather than the global effects of Capitalism and overconsumption, but that's another issue.

Up was also the one of the only mainstream films pf my memory that actually features an Asian American main character, Russel, a chubby, coddled kid of the technological age who gets caught up in an adventure.

All in all very satisfied with the film, and now I feel the need to stuff my mind with more cutesy Disney films meant for children. I finally made it to the library today and greedily grabbed a giant pile of books that I'm not going to be able to finish, even though I know I should have restrained myself more. I managed to get English and China Witness, and hopefully I'll get through part of those before break ends. But I'm now caught in reading Alice Munro's collection of short stories, "Too Much Happiness." I also have Lorrie Moore's new novel "A Gate at the Stairs," a collection of Adrienne Rich poems, and Issac Asimov's "Foundation." Going to the library to pick out books always makes me really happy, and the Germantown library has a fantastic collection, and I couldn't refrain from borrowing too many as usual. So even though I love books, I never thought about getting a Kindle because the experience of trips to the library and browsing for books is so integral to my love of reading, and as I really read only a small percentage of what I borrow.

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?