Day 31

I was 10 the first time someone called me a bitch. It was after school. I was walking home with my friends when this little tow head from the fourth grade class came up behind us. He was one of those kids who packed too much swagger for any 9 year old. I told him to get lost and he said, "Shut up bitch."

I knew that he wasn't the sharpest crayon in the box and I outweighed him by a good 20 pounds, but I pummeled him anyway. We were just out of the line of sight of the principal and teachers at the school and right across the Elm Street Baptist Church in full view of Jesus, when I knocked him down, straddled him between by beefy little thighs and slapped his face.

I can still remember the red imprint of my hand on his cheek. It was a mark of vindication and satisfaction. He reluctantly growled, "Sorry" from between clenched teeth before I let him up. As I rolled off him, I remember looking up at the giant cross that embellished the church steeple. I knew that Jesus would not approve.

Perhaps that's why tow-head's teenage sister showed up a few days later, jumping out in front of me in the alley that cut across Elm Street. She pulled me to the ground by my hair and punched me three times in the face before hissing out a warning to stay away from her little brother. It turns out, tow-head came from a long line of bitches.

Since then I have tried to tame my inner bitch. I keep her locked in the dark recesses of my being. I try to make her comfortable by feeding her cookies and speaking to her in soothing tones. She still insists on coming out into the light of day every so often. I must admit, I kind of like the bitch. I mean even with her gnarly locks, her unshaven armpits and her atrocious table manners, she's not all bad. She's honest and she knows how to stand up for herself.

When I write, it is her voice that most wants to be heard. This is a little frightening, especially to my inner nice girl, the one who acts as stewardess to the world: Can I get you a pillow, a cup of tea, a piece of my soul? Anything to make your time with me more comfortable. They're battling it out inside me: the nice girl and the bitch. I put my money on the bitch. She really knows how to kick ass.

Day 30

It has been nearly 20 years since I attended a creativity workshop featuring a man named Gordon MacKenzie. MacKenzie was an artist and writer and what he did was pure magic. In the intervening years I have attended hundreds of workshops and classes and I have never witnessed or participated in a more memorable educational experience.

Mr. MacKenzie was an elfish little man with white hair and a beard who radiated warmth. He looked like a mischievous child on stage, fidgeting and strutting from one end to the other, as if he could barely contain the energy welling up from inside. Behind him on the stage was a clothesline, strung from one side of the stage to the other. Hanging on the line by clothespins were drawings on pieces of 8 by 11 white paper.

Each of us in attendance was given a single piece of paper when we came in the door. It was a Xeroxed sheet with miniature replicas of the drawings on the clothesline. Each drawing had a corresponding number. We were asked to call out a number if we wanted to hear about a particular drawing.

Most of the drawings were seemingly abstract, bearing no resemblance to people, places or things. Take number 11 for example, it was an upside-down dome with three attached fingers pointing toward the bottom of the page. Someone yelled out "Number 11" and Mr. MacKenzie launched into a story about his former boss, "a man who would yell at the cows for chewing their cud because they weren't producing milk."

The drawing was of an udder, a reminder that the creative process requires some cud chewing, time spent doing next to nothing. A painter can't always paint. Time spent watching the sunset or observing the interactions between a mother and child or reading a book, those are all part of the creative process.

That is my plan for the day: I'll be chewing the cud.

Day 29

I got an email yesterday from a student (learners, that's what we call them now). She has been courting me to be her mentor as she approaches her doctoral dissertation. She is interested in the effects of corporate racism and the experiences of African American professional women. As a black female executive herself, she knows first-hand the realities of racism. However, she has not always found professors willing to support her perspective.

After reading her email, I was immediately excited to work with her. I jotted down the names of black feminist authors I would encourage her to read. I began to strategize about how I would help her position herself in the scholarship to support her thesis and how I might defend her against pressure from other committee members. Like an anxious school girl responding to her first suitor, I woke up this morning thinking about how to reply to her email.

Why does the prospect of working with this particular student excite me so much? Perhaps it is my love of black feminist thought; or my desire to champion oppressed groups; or my compulsion to go up against the privileged fat cats in academia. I'm not sure. But I am sure about one thing. I need to follow the excitement.

I experience the excitement as a million effervescent bubbles rising up from my extremities to my head, as if I am a tall, clear glass being filled with ginger ale. It is pure energy. I am certain that everything I see in the material world is fed by this energy. It is the same energy that gave rise to Beethovan's 5th, the light bulb and m & ms. All of these things began in consciousness and were transformed through this energy.

All creative work, including writing is fueled by this energy that we experience as excitement. We have to pay attention. When we encounter something that makes us bubble over with enthusiasm we must write about it and read about it and talk about it and dream about it. We must immerse ourselves in that energy. Like a hot spring it will heal us and make us whole.

Day 28

I was a feminist student activist, former community organizer and young mother who was soon to graduate with a master's degree in sociology when I was offered a job as a Child and Family Therapist. I didn't have a clue what that meant.

Fortunately, there was a book to guide my transition into the professional world of mental health. It is called the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM for short). As a "child and family therapist," I talked with kids (always under the guise of friendship) and observed them in their natural settings. Then I went to The Book and found a label for their behavior.

Sometimes they were Oppositional Defiant, other times Dystymic (which is an impressive way to say depressed). Occasionally I would get a kid with something really exotic, like Trichotillomania. Seriously, I worked with a kid who was a trichotillomaniac. He pulled out his own hair: the hair on his head, his eyelashes. Fortunately he hadn't yet reached puberty.

His poor little head resembled a garden that had been ravaged by angry rabbits. There were little tufts of soft, downy hair, surrounded by smooth canals of pink skin. I always thought that his head was a declaration. He was hurt and sad and angry about his parents' recent divorce and he didn't possess the words to communicate his needs. So he pulled out his hair and he got a prescription for Celexa.

It didn't take me long to realize that I was not a "therapist." I went on to become an "educator." It took me a long time to realize that they are all just labels; boxes we lock ourselves into. Even now I want to call myself a "writer." But what does that mean? Maybe I should get business cards that title me: Carbon Based Life Form. My tagline will read: The rest is a mystery...

We spend our lives trying to explain, understand, communicate, quantify and label our experience. Why is it so hard to simply embrace the mystery? As a writer, this is one of my goals. I want to let go of this need to explain every detail. Whereas some writers strive for thick, rich description, I want to learn to say just enough.

In music, they say that the spaces between the notes are even more important than the notes themselves. It is the silence, the emptiness, that brings the sounds to life. Maybe it's the same with writing. Those things left unwritten, the breaks in continuity, maybe that is the real story.

Day 27

I have this image of myself in high school. Walking across campus in all black: black turtleneck, black skirt, black tights, canvas Mary Janes from the import store. I am on my way to the theatre. I love the theatre. It's dark there and the other kids are weird like me. We are a club of misfits.

For a brief time I was queen of the misfits. I was awarded the "Most Promising Newcomer" trophy at the annual misfits ball (a high school version of the Tony Awards). My teacher tried to convince me that I should go to college and major in theatre. I smiled and nodded like a good little actress, knowing full well that I had no plans for college and that even if by some miracle I did go to college, I would never major in something as impractical as theatre.

The miracle that landed me in college turned out to be extreme poverty. During my second year, I signed up for an elective: Acting 101. I was excited as we filled the seats in the community college theatre, certain that they would all be impressed by my ability to slip into a character and bring her to life.

We read on the first day; an initial try-out of sorts. I was given a piece from a Eugene O'Neill play. My affect was flat and the words fell out of my mouth like lifeless pebbles. My accent was all wrong and my inflection was awkward and cumbersome. My talent was gone. I imagined it leaving me body; slipping out the window one night while I slept.

Despite my lackluster performance, I was cast in a one-act play. I played the protagonist: a gonorrhea germ. I was trapped, along with a syphilis germ, in the body of an unidentified host. I think it was a case of type casting. The woman who played the syphilis germ looked a lot like me, we were both short and round. The misogynist little director obviously thought that anything as distasteful as a STD should certainly be personified as fat and female.

I played the part of Gonorrhea but I didn't do it with much style or grace. That performance was my final curtain call. I knew I would never act again. My acting talent had dried up and blown away. I was no longer an actress. In my next life, I became a community educator and organizer. Later I was an activist.

Most of us have numerous incarnations in a lifetime. When I conjure that image of me walking across campus to the theatre, I realize that I am no longer that girl. Being able to distance myself in this way makes it easier to write about her.

Day 26

Roseanne has a little allegory in her latest memoir. She tells the story of selling her soul to the devil in exchange for fame and fortune. It made me think about the time I sold my own soul to the devil. I am embarrassed to admit that I didn't negotiate a very good deal. Instead of fame and fortune, I got a job at a community college.

Granted I didn't exact much of a price for my soul, but keep in mind it was the community college where I started my own academic journey, where I was inspired to pursue knowledge and letters and a middle-class way of life complete with a house in a cul-de-sac. It was the place where I first imagined myself as a professional: a person in a suit jacket with a Dayplanner and a secretary like Della Street. I longed to have a job, no, a position, at Columbia Basin College, the place where I was born again.

I applied for every position that came down the pike. Occasionally I was interviewed. In most of these interviews I was a blathering idiot. My nerves got the best of me. I also came to see that I was at a disadvantage as a former student at the college. Most of the staff and faculty viewed their students as inferior; "second class" is the phrase I later heard from a man who would become president of the college. I started to feel like a guy trying to get a date at Lilith Fair.

Finally, the perfect job came along. It was a grant funded position running a program to help first-generation students plan and prepare for college. I thought that my status as a first-generation college graduate would finally be an asset, and it was, after the hiring committee realized that there weren't many people who wanted to take a chance on a position that was only funded for a few years, and the first person that they offered the job to, a Latina woman with experience in federal programs, turned the job down. In spite of my desperation in the interview, or maybe because of it, I was a shoo-in.

Desperation, that is the blood that seals the deal with the devil. The deal takes place in that moment when you are sure that you will do anything to cross the finish line first, get that great job, or win the big jackpot. I signed on the doted line and the job was mine. It was great at first. I enjoyed the staff I worked with. Our programs were successful. We even won some accolades for our work. Oh yeah, we also helped a few students and families along the way. It was all wine and roses until the devil came back to collect his due.

I would prefer not to get into that right now...suffice to say it was ugly and painful; there was blood letting and sacrifice. It took a very long time and a battle with the devil to reclaim my soul. It changed me. I am less naive, more cautious, less inclined to all or nothing thinking.

Today, above all else, I value my equanimity. So, when I dream of being discovered, getting published, going on tour, speaking to huge audiences, and making boatloads of money, I recognize that it is just a dream. Maybe it will come true. Maybe not. Either way I will be alright. The devil doesn't mess with a woman at peace.

*The character of the devil is fictitious; any resemblance to persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Day 25

Sometimes I think I have attention deficit disorder. I got up in the morning to write and I could hardly get a thought recorded before I moved on to another, totally unrelated thought. I am like a cat that moves from a squeaky toy to a piece of string to a beam of light streaming through the window, absorbed in each, but only for a moment and only until something new comes along.

This kind of tangentiality is often associated with creativity. But I find that it is hard to create when my mind is in this state. It seems to me that creativity requires two things: first, there must be a spark of imagination, an idea. Secondly, creativity requires focus, sustained attention to an idea. I am good at generating ideas; I struggle to maintain focus.

On days when I am particularly focus-challenged I give myself permission to write badly. Holding onto a thought for long enough to articulate and expand on it may seem impossible, so set the bar low. Just write. Just put the pen to the paper, the hands on the keyboard, just get the words on the page.

One of my literary heroes is Sy Safransky. He is the founder and editor of The Sun, a literary magazine that exists through his own grit and determination. In each issue he has a page with his own musings. It's one of my favorite pieces. Well usually. This month it wasn't as captivating or inspiring as usual. The thing I appreciate most about it is that Sy put it out there anyway. Thanks Sy for inspiring me to write anyway.