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During the middle of the summer, I thought I would burst into tears when this day had finally come, but I’m remarkably at peace with going back to school tomorrow. Granted, it’ll be orientation week, which means that I’ll be semi-vacationing without students. Plus, I’ll be able to enjoy at least an hour-long lunch, unlike the 38-minute lunch we teachers are scheduled once the students return.
Unlike any other summer vacation in the past, I spent this one as a full-time writer, complete with making a fact-finding trip to Utila, a Honduran Caribbean island, which is the scene of my second novel, The Adventures of Infinity and Negativa. Not spending the summer moving into a new apt, working or studying has truly allowed me to unwind and get the stress out of my muscles. I’ve even started going to yoga twice a week to aid the process, but truthfully, my middle-aged lower back has been my biggest motivator for that!
As is the case with most things in life, I’ll miss the little things: mid-afternoon naps, a glass of red wine with my 1 hour lunch, and going to the bathroom whenever I feel the need. As much as I joke about wearing adult diapers so I can “go” whenever I want to, I’m not sure that I want the hassle of wearing one. Besides, I usually keep myself in a state of partial dehydration and retrain my bowels not to move so freely after eating. That’s the trickiest thing to readjust to. On the one hand, it’s not healthy, but it is necessary.
I’m sure some of my colleagues spent this weekend getting their classrooms together, but I’m going to start the new school year off right by not working on the weekends. Part of the reason stress overtakes some teachers is that they don’t take the time to de-stress, thinking that they have to get ahead or catch up. After teaching for 15 years, I know that I cannot be at my best without properly rested and as stress-free as I can manage.
The first thing that goes out the window when stressed is creativity, whether it’s creative lesson planning or creative problem solving. I learned early on by mistake that when I swam, I immediately felt more energized and as an extra perk, I intuited good solutions to problems. Years later, I read a book on genius and discovered that other creative people would swim, drive, run or otherwise engage in a physical activity in order to intuit ideas, which is another good reason not to work longer hours. I can exercise and come up with creative ideas to implement in the classroom.
Teaching public school here in Texas makes implementation of creative ideas quite tricky, but the students are worth the effort. Being happy with my job is worth the effort. I just have to stick with a regular exercise schedule to come up with the creative solutions to make it possible.
Convenient enough, this week’s blog title is a double entendre since I visited Utila, a Honduran Caribbean island in order to do research for my second novel and this was the first time that I had done such a thing. If I were the least bit apprehensive, other than my brush with ESP about the flight itinerary fiasco last Monday, then my giddiness about my new venture was laid to rest.
Not only was Utila the lush, green beauty that I had remembered previously, but it had also changed. The nuanced details that I gathered simply from being there in person are priceless. I managed to conduct four formal interviews with my favorite new toy, a smart pen that records the conversation. Everyone who I warned about the fact that my pen records, seemed rather impressed at such a piece of technology being used to conduct an interview.
I took pictures of the mundane as well as the spectacular during my five days on the island with the only notable exception being a yearly “underground electronic” music event known as Sunjam. Among other restricted items, event goers could not bring a camera or cellphones or anyother image-recording recording device. I had to take more notes during my four hours on the rented island where Sunjam took place than at any other location.
At one point, I saw four out-of-place looking older gentlemen. They weren’t exactly dressed in three piece suits, but still had that aurora about them. And stereotypically, the tallest man in the foursome was obviously the one in charge to which the others deferred. I kept my eyes on them as the tallest man, who happened to be Honduran, walked slowly around, leading the other three men and pointing things out. I waited until they made their way in my direction and took the opportunity to approach them. I figured that they had been on the island about thirty minutes discussing things in their tight little circle of four and wouldn’t mind too terribly if I asked a question.
“Excuse me, are you one of the event organizers?” I asked the tall Honduran man with my nicest, most nervous smile. He politely informed me that he was a commissioner. I nodded in acknowledgement and continued to hand him one of my business cards, explaining that I was a novelist and I had wanted to interview one of the organizers to get some background information about Sunjam. At that point, two of beta males looked around and one of them told me that when he saw one of the organizers, he’d point him in my direction for an interview. I thanked him. Before I returned to my palm tree to sit down, the commissioner handed me one of his business cards in return.
Not ten minutes had passed before I was introduced to Luis Maier, a promoter based out of Tegus who, together with his partner who owns a dive shop in Utila, had started this event 15 years ago. He graciously granted me an interview, not at all minding that my smart pen was a recording device. I just marveled at how with just a little initiative on my part, I found myself interviewing one of the top guys.
I must admit that a combination of my “star struck-ness” and inexperience at interviewing, I missed asking some of the obvious questions, but fortunately, I was able to glean more information from the official Sunjam website.
I dedicated about a fifth of all the pictures I took to my gloriously named room at the surreal Jade Seahorse hotel, Shangri-La. What a joy it was for the five days that I spent in Utila to return to that place. During my first visit to Utila, I’d taken many pictures of the grounds, but this time around, I actually stayed there and dedicated all my picture taking to my room.
Now, I’m en route to the States, but I have to first spend a day on mainland Honduras. I had caught an earlier ferry than the original one I’d planned to take, thanks to the additional transportation that Sunjam caused. I’ve finally managed to escape the airport in La Ceiba, which is by far the worst of the three mainland airports. Due to incompetence on part of the Taca Airline people working the desk, I had to pass through security a whopping four times since, for one reason or another, they kept messing up my flight information and had to issue me boarding passes three times!
Nonetheless, I don’t want to end this blog in a negative note since it’s suffice to say that I’ll never fly Taca again. What I plan to do once I’m back in Austin is to work on my novel for several hours a day, incorporating all the delicious details that I’ve gathered through traveling and interviewing people.
Normally, when I’m about to visit a Caribbean island, I excitedly count down the days. This time, however, I’ve been cringing the coming days. I’m not sure if this is a self-fulfilling prophecy or a rare psychic moment, but starting on Friday, I’ve had one aggravating thing after another happen.
First, I broke my blender. Unfortunately, the broken part isn’t one of the many parts that can be ordered and replaced. The blender motor no longer works and for that, there’s no authorized repair place in town and even if I send it back to the manufacturer, I have to pay for everything since it’s no longer under waranty. I spent an incredible amount of time looking up small appliance repair places and the only one that was open on a Saturday didn’t fix blenders. I have two more people to call, but neither work on the weekends. So, the broken blender dilemma must wait until I return. The worst case scenarios will be that I have to buy a new blender and/or try my hand at fixing it myself!
Then, my precious laptop, which is going to make life so much easier for me while writing and advancing my second novel started experiencing screen resolution problems. I did a variety of things before I stumbled upon restoring the factory settings, which means that all the software that I had installed, I must reinstall. Since it’s twenty minutes to eleven at night, I’m truly not excited about this. I’m currently reinstalling my security software and the all important MS Office. I’ll also have to reinstall my smart pen software, which is my new play toy. I don’t dare do any of this while in Utila since, I’ve already learned from my vast overseas experience, some things cannot be downloaded while being in a developing country. It’s best to get all these things squared away now.
In the meantime, I ran around town to put together my contribution to a 50th wedding anniversary gift for my parents. That actually went pretty well, considering all the electronic device problems I’ve recently experienced. The most challenging thing was getting the oil pen to write. Nonetheless, the picture frame that I decorated with it came out remarkably well without a hint of the frustration that has been building up the last 72 hours.
It’s a good thing that I don’t have to drive myself to the airport or fly the plane. I predict that I’m going to have a restbroken sleep and perhaps forget to pack something vital although I’m about 99% packed. Thank goodness I packed right after I finished cleaning up myself and my apartment after bikram yoga.
It’ll actually be delightful to be at the airport since that’ll mean that I won’t have to run around or anything, just enjoy the traveling experience. I initially thought that my forebroding feeling was nervousness about my research endeavor for my novel. After this frustrating bout of bad luck, I’ll be happy enough to vacation and just incorporate whatever I happen to absorb without any more ambition than that!
**
I knew it! I knew it! I knew it! My foreboding feeling was confirmed in less than 12 hours after I blogged the preceding post. I arrived at the airport in plenty of time to discover that TACA, the Honduran airline that was to be the carrier for the last half of my air travel to La Ceiba, had completely changed my itinerary and told NO ONE about the change.
My Continental Airline ticket agent, together with an Orbitz agent, pieced together that although the original reservation that I’d made at the end of May still existed, TACA had switched the ticket a few days afterwards, much to all of our surprise. So, now I already have my boarding pass for tomorrow at 7 am.
Yet the saga continues since TACA doesn’t want to book me in a hotel for a night. Thanks to their new bookings of my return flight, I have to leave the beautiful, laid-back island of Utila a day earlier, spend the night in La Ceiba, then catch an early flight out. My Orbitz agent gave me word that there’s a possibility of getting a later flight, which will mean that I get to spend my last night in Honduras on my island of choice, but a TACA representative will call me around 2pm today to let me know.
I’ll give them until 2:30 before calling Orbitz again for a fourth time to let them continue negotiating for me. The last Orbitz agent told me that she had documented everything and if TACA does not give me what I want in terms of a later flight or overnight in a decent hotel, then she encouraged me to call Orbitz again.
Ahh, excellent customer service! Yet another thing that separates developed and developing countries.
This week I celebrated the beginning of two very different things: a new capoeira studio and a marriage. The interesting thing is how both events gathered well-wishing people together, brought out all the smiles and daydreams about all the good times that are to come.
Of course with my luck, I’m going to be out of town the first week when the capoeira classes start at the new studio and I’m going to miss my friend’s wedding, but at least I was present for the first roda at the new studio and the “pre-wedding girl party” for my friend, which started off at Barton Springs pool and ended at her house .
Funny thing, I have hardly ever come to our Thursday rodas since I don’t actually enjoy playing capoeira, but I absolutely love training, which keeps me in shape. Just like I have no intentions of marrying, but I love helping my friends celebrate their special occasion.
At both events, I took pictures. As a matter of fact, I took 150 pictures at the roda since it was challenging to capture a good shot of the capoeiristas playing. Whereas during my friend’s pre-wedding party, I got some good candid and posed shots once I selected the correct flash setting.
As I suspected when I was 35, I’m becoming increasingly sentimental as I age. I feel so fortunate to have my life peppered with so many reasons to celebrate. My father said during his 70th birthday celebration a few years ago that the key to living a good life was laughing a lot and being happy. Like father, like daughter.
I’ve always thought of myself as the most uncoordinated person who was still motivated to do coordinated things. With lots of practice and determination, I’ve become quite decent at salsa dancing, swimming and training capoeira, but note how none of those coordinated activites involves balls.
I finally realized when I was a young adult that I don’t do well at any sport or game that involves balls. And the more balls, the worse. The last time I played pool, the only ball that I sank was the cue ball. The last time I bowled, I actually scored an impressive 133, but I shamelessly had the bumpers up. I’ve tried to bowl like an adult before, but concluded that with my special spherically-challenged handicap, I earned the right for extra assistance in my game.
Excluding ball-based activities from my life has not blocked my happiness. I’ve happily taken advantage of many wonderful things in life where I did not have to dribble, shoot, bowl, throw, catch, pitch or hit any balls. Yet, I still practice eye-hand coordination when I paint; so I’m not exactly sure what’s the basis of my spherical challenge.
So it’s quite ironic that this past Saturday, in the heat of the day, I played soccer for the first time. Granted, the field was one-fourth regulation size and we only had 15-minute playing halves with a 15-minute break in between, but I could not be told that it didn’t count as a full game. I wanted to quit after the first half along with one member of the opposing team. We figured that the teams would still be equal. Instead, we were convinced to play goalie.
If ever I find myself in such a situation again, I’ll definitely play goalie again since I’m over all this running back and forth in the heat of the day. Besides, I was pretty good at blocking potential goals, catching a few and swatting away others. I’m sure my goalie efforts helped my team win the game, 5-4.
As I watched the women’s US soccer team battle it out with the Japanese team, I could truly sympathize with their efforts. I marveled at how much they ran around without becoming winded until the very end where they were unfortunately defeated. Everyone at my table seem defeated as well except for me. That’s how I know I’m not at risk at becoming a sports fanatic.
As far as being a ball player…I’ve got a long way to go, but with my humble attitude about my skills, I’ll just have fun with my incompetencies.
Since I’ve dedicated this summer to being a full-time artist, my main creative outlet has been writing since I work my second novel daily and nearly everything I read somehow flavors that manuscript. Additionally, I finally found the time to reflect on my first two years of teaching at an Austin public school, which has been the most challenging teaching situation I’ve ever faced.
I wrote an essay, called “Monochromatic Butterfly: How Teaching to High-Stakes Testing Leads to Teacher Mediocrity.” Although I started working on this essay a few days after school was out in early June, I did not finish the first round of editing until The Fourth of July. I thought that was an appropriate time to email what was essentially a two-page protest about my current teaching situation to about 30 friends, the majority of whom were educators or had been. I requested that they email me their reaction to the essay. I made a special request to friends who happened to be English teachers and/or writers to edit the essay.
My goal was to send my polished essay with the AISD superintendent and Lloyd Doggett, but a few friends suggested that I send it to a few major newspapers as an op-ed piece. One friend, a journalist, recommended that I interview other teachers and throw in some stats. I laughed at the latter suggestion since I know that people lie with statistics all the time. I don’t want to adulterate myessay with that deviltry!
In the meantime, I was amazed at some of my friends’ passionate response to “Monochromatic Butterfly.” I emailed them back, asking permission to add their unedited reaction to my essay in its entirety. This would at least give other educators’ voices, chorusing in harmony with my main point: high-stakes testing leads to mediocrity, both among students and teachers.
With so much emphasis on the test, students mainly prepare through rote memorization and the “new strategy” that my school tried this past school year was to standardized the lesson plans as well.
I was horrified that things had worsened. My love for teaching had only lasted this long due to my freedom to be creative in the classroom while teaching the curriculum. Take away creative freedom and I might as well do some other less stressful job that pays more. (I know a few passionless accountants who make more money and have less stress than I do!)
Whatever happens as a result of “Monochromatic Butterfly” at least it has provided me a creative outlet to vent and share my opinon. Sometimes, just getting things off my chest is just the thing I need to continue pursuing happiness.
My two-week visit “back home” is nearly drawing to an end, but at least my visit will end with a bang since tomorrow’s the Fourth of July. I love coming home to attend my family reunion and then spend additional time with my immediate family. Some people find it hard to believe that I’m so close to my family since I’ve lived either out of state or out of the country. As a matter of fact, when I flew into Dulles, Mom welcomed me “To the Land of the Living” as if I were coming from a much more exotic place than Austin, TX.
I always feel that I eat too much and exercise too little when visiting my family. I was smart enough to write down some of the beginning capoeira curriculum before I left Austin both to teach my 10-year-old nephew and to make sure that I practiced while I was away. At 40.9, there’s no way that my body’s going to bounce back well from a two-week total absence from capoeira. Fortunately, my nephew’s a very active, energetic soul who happily practiced with me twice in the backyard and once at a waterpark.
This particular waterpark was more geared toward much younger kids, but my nieces, nephew and I still managed to have a rip-roaring good time. In my normal life, I usually swim 21 laps (3 sets of 7 different strokes) twice a week, but I only raced my nephew a few laps in the underpopulated pool. We were very lucky since, as we pulled up to the waterpark around 4pm, two busloads of screaming schoolkids on summer break were fetched away! I spent most of my time in the pool, practicing several capoeira kicks. Of course, my nephew joined me. With nothing much better to do, even my two nieces practiced each kick a few times.
Another day, we went bowling. As soon as we entered the bowling alley, I spotted a sea of gray-haired people and leaned over to Mom and whispered, “This is where people your age hang out.” When we walked over to the counter to get our tacky two-toned highlighter colored bowling shoes, I loudly and without a trace of shame requested bumpers. My older sister teased me, but I didn’t care. I know my limitations. I don’t do well with any sport or game that involves balls; so this would be the only way I could bowl and enjoy myself. Besides, it has been years since I’ve bowled.
Bowling has become so high tech now that they can program who gets bumpers and who doesn’t. Everytime my sister bowled, the bumpers dropped, but they were present for her kids and me. Plus, the score was automatically done by the computer. I had been looking forward to brushing up on my bowling math, but shook my head in slight disgust that all this automation would lead us to being a dumber society. Nonetheless, the automatic scoring told the truth: I won the first game with 133 points! I’d bowled 4 strikes. At the end of the first game, I knew that my second game would be lackluster since my right shoulder was in pain. Even though I was third place for the second game, I was still the overall winner.
When my sister had first mentioned going bowling, her kids had screamed “chili cheese fries!” So after bowling two games, we got two orders of the intestinally challenging dish. It was so warm, gooey and yummy, I felt guilty about every delicious bite. Surely I’d pay somehow for eating it.
This morning, Igot up a little too early for my taste, 8 am. When school’s in session, 8 am is “sleeping in,” but since I’m in the middle of vacation, it’s a wee bit early. We all got dressed to go to church, which I love attending since I don’t go to church in Austin. I love Black baptist churches, but I’ve never had the desire to join one or be baptized. It’s not that I don’t think I’m worthy or think I’m better than any other Christian. I’ve just never believed that those things were necessary for my relationship with God. And whenever I can cut out the middle man, I do. That’s why I self-published my first novel.
The minister seemed annoyed by the low attendance and commented about how we would stay longer if we continued acting like we didn’t really want to be there! Either he was joking or the energy changed enough in the room that he saw fit to release us after an hour and a half. Whatever the case, I liked his message of Independence Day being more than just our freedom from British rule. We should celebrate our liberation from whatever challenges that used to enslave us. As I gear up to start a new school year, I’m going to see how much systemic foolishness I can emancipate myself from.
Last year, I missed the annual family reunion on my mom’s side of the family because I chose to study and in between the two summer sessions, I changed apartments. This summer, I fought for my right to party! And since I”m a workaholic nerd at heart, that pretty much means that I’m not working, studying or moving this summer. Pure bliss!
I flew into DC and was picked up by one of my sisters and her family and quickly whisked to a wonderfully delicious seafood restaurant. I relax my normal workout and diet regime when visiting with my immediate family since I’m outnumbered. My sister, Renee looks forward to my visit since among other things, I help them get back “on schedule” with their exercise routine. From my perspective, however, I don’t exercise nearly as much I as normally do! Could be all the marathon TV watching I do in their company.
Two days later, we trekked about 5 hours south and checked into our hotel where we normally stay when attending our family reunion. Thanks to the magic of cell phones, Mom was waiting for us in the lobby to greet us and give me my room key since I would share a double with my other sister. After giving Mom a hug, I went to my room, hugged my sister and threw myself onto the bed. I announced to my sister, “This is all the family reunion I need!”
After a much too brief nap, we all loaded up into two SUVs and headed to the fish fry, which is always held on the Friday preceding our main family reunion main event on Saturday afternoon. I was especially excited to visit with my extended family and to see how our permanent shelter where we hold our reunions had been decorated with a Hawaiian theme. We’re not descendants of Hawaiians, but do we care? We are a creative extended family who always have a good time when we get together.
I was rather impressed that a few relatives had asked me about my book, Tribe of One. I knew that a handful of them had heard of it and some had even downloaded it on their Kindle, but I have the feeling that, due to the adult nature of the Tribe, my usual promoter, Mom, had not advertised to many people. Well, the gig would be up on Saturday since I was part of the entertainment lineup. In addition to that, I was apparently going to do a hula dance as well–a genre of dance that I’ve not actually taken classes for.
Everybody was colorfully decked out in their Hawaiian best on Saturday. And for the first time, I noticed that someone had even thoughtfully hung a picture of Obama since there’s no doubt in my family’s mind that he’s an American! My sister and I set up a table where I displayed copies of Tribe and she, being far more ambitious than I, had baskets of decorative roses as a cancer fundraiser, her face painting paraphernalia and a surefire kid-pleasing basket of candy and stickers. Even though I’m a self-published author, one thing I’ve never yearned to do was sit chained to a table and sell my book. With my sister by my side and surrounded by extended family, the experience was wonderfully different.
Since our table display attracted a steady stream of interest, I periodically dashed off and take some pictures and socialize with my relatives. I was pleasantly surprised when I first returned to the table to discover that one of my older cousins had just purchased Tribe and was patiently waiting for me to return and sign it. In the first of several signings, I began with the word “cousin.” All in all, six of my cousins bought my book, two of whom were a mother and daughter and another daughter in the same family had already downloaded it!
By the time I sat down to eat my much anticipated family reunion food: fried chicken, macaroni w/cheese, string beans, sweet corn and corn bread; I was beyond hungry and very happy that my “cousin-in-law” who emceed the program had not called me up to read an excerpt from my book yet.
I followed an older woman, who I’d never seen before (I’m not sure since she wore huge face-covering shades the entire time), recited two very moving poems from memory. So, not only was her poems inspirational and “clean,” but she’d had them memorized! I nervously walked up to the front, quickly played with the tricky microphone situation while informing everyone that I had relocated to Austin, TX and was no longer in “Africa.” My relatives swear up and down that they cannot keep up with where I live. I had served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Tanzania from ’92 to ’94 and had taught in Egypt from ’01 to ’03, but from ’03 to ’09, I was in Mexico and Honduras–something that most had collectively forgotten (and not a sole other than my immediate family remembers the brief teaching jaunt in Seoul for 14 months), but the Motherland is hard to forget, even if they’ve never visited.
I briefly warned my devoutly Christian relatives that my book contained “adult content” and even joked that my mother might want to put on earplugs, which of course she wouldn’t do for the world at that point. I told them that the inspiration for my book came when I dreamed the first line, “Life would be so much easier if I wasn’t a gay man trapped in a black woman’s body.” According to one of my sisters, everyone’s eyes got big for the first of several shocking moments of my ten-minute reading.
I especially chose a chapter that only had one curse word, which I didn’t get to since I didn’t read the whole chapter. Yet I read the word “lesbian” and used the word “balls,” meaning “meatballs,” but in tasteful double entendre. Since the speakers were right above my head, I heard myself a little too well and couldn’t hear my audience well enough to interact with them as much as I would have liked to. The biggest laugh during the reading came when I read the part about how the more expensive a barbeque grill, the less inclined men are to allow women around it. At that point, I joked a little with my relatives before continuing with the rest of the reading. Yet I didn’t read the full chapter since I couldn’t hear their reaction to the reading and thought best not to bore them.
Once I got to a good stopping point, which was after a flirty exchange between the main character, Salome, and her man du jour, I stopped, telling them if they wanted to know what would happen next, they would have to purchase the book, either on-line or they could buy it from me while at the family reunion. One of my younger, enthusiastic second cousins immediately followed me out to the table where I promptly sold and signed her a book. She told me that I’d inspired her since she had always wanted to write screenplays and had just completed her first film. I gave her one of my business cards and told her not to let anyone stop her from doing what she wanted to do. I even gave her a sound piece of advice, “The best way to shut up someone who says you can’t do something is to accomplish whatever you’re trying to do.”
Blessedly, the hula moment didn’t materialize and I got to enjoy listening to a group of teenaged cousins play music. They started off with Al Green’s “Love and Happiness,” followed by an original composition that sounded familiar and a jazzy tune. Later on, one of my 5 year-old third or fourth cousins brought the house down singing a Justin Bieber song. Thank God I didn’t follow him!
We left around 9 pm, mainly because my parents were exhausted. I feebly attempted to counter balance some of my vacation eating by working out on the elliptical machine in the hotel workout room for 30 minutes, but I’m not too stressed out about it since I’ll shed those pounds once I return to life as I know it in Austin. In the meantime, I’m just so happy that I’ve had a chance to reconnect with my extended family
I love the part of summer vacation where I start to lose track of the days. Thank God, I have a smart phone where I can input all the things that I’m going to do on a calendar! I made up my mind not to work, study nor change apartments over the summer; so now I have a wonderful routine of daily writing, and going to either yoga, capoeira or swimming–along with going out dancing when there’s a good venue to do so.
Everyone who knows that I’m on summer break always makes some jealous comment about hating teachers’ summer break, but I gently remind them that they don’t envy us the other 9 1/2 months! After teaching for 15 years, I finally understand how to use these weeks of unstructured time wisely. There’s always this tease of studying, working and or moving during the summer because “I have the time,” but this is the first time in a long time that I’m using my summer vacation for something that I normally leave town and go on vacation for: reading.
I know I sound like the typical nerdy teacher, but I’ve got lists of books that I’m determined to plow through and the maddening thing is that the more I read, the more books I put on the list. Even when I try to curb myself, I still think that now’s the time to do so since “I have the time.” One interesting thing that I’ve noticed in my concentration of reading is how many times I run across the word “struggle.”
That may not seem significant, but one of the characters in my latest novel is named Struggle. I never outline the chapters of my story or even the overall outline of the book, which would be a wonderful and logical thing to do, but it’s just not ever worked for me. What has worked very well is writing every single day. That way, no matter how little or much I write, I’m advancing the story. I like to humor myself that I’m coming up with the advancing chapters “organically,” but now that I have a serious reduction of stress in my life, I can make even more connections between the various things that I’m reading, which spans a wide range of interests from the Bible, theoretical physics and sexuality, especially women’s sexuality. In all of those topics, there’s a mention of “struggling.” I never pondered how struggle was such a universal theme in life. I guess it’s pretty ironic that Struggle is the most laid-back character in the book so far.
I’ve not organically come up with an ending to the story yet. That’s sort of the gift of my approach to writing fiction. When I finally reconcile with my subconscious about some new insight, it’s the most amazing feeling. It’s not often I get to surprise myself in everyday life, but I do increase the frequency through writing. Occasionally, when I have something stressful weighing on my mind, I go swimming and intuit a solution. Yet, when I write, I never know where the story’s going to take me.
Proving yet again that even on a two and a half month vacation, I cannot truly bring my routine to a screeching halt. I even temporarily stopped taking tango and Spanish conversational classes to free up my schedule, which made me one of the perfect people to volunteer for the ProArts sponsored Black Arts Movement (BAM) Festival. I originally signed up to volunteer for three days out of the twelve days of festivities and of course, those were precisely the three days that I did NOT have to volunteer with a notable exception of an hour on Saturday.
My first volunteer contribution was to pick up some dancers from the airport. I was apprehensive about driving a mini van, but was quite relieved to discover that it drove just like a regular car. I came pulling up to three women who just looked like dancers while wearing my capoeira uniform. Since I’m one of the few women who don’t like making several dress changes throughout the day, I could almost imagine myself as a quasi-bodyguard even though capoeira is an impractical fighting form–as a mixed martial arts fighter told me.
The following day, I picked up the choreographerof the group, Gesel Mason, from the hotel and transported her to Ballet Austin, where they were rehearsing and performing on Wednesday and Thursday. During the 15-minute drive, I learned that she was based in DC. I knew another Black female choreographer who was also based in DC, Aysha Upchurch. Certainly, I couldn’t resist asking Gesel if she knew Aysha. As this increasingly shrinking world would have it, Gesel and Aysha are very good friends. Gesel seemed blown away that I’d met Aysha when she conducted a dance workshop through the American Embassy in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, where I was a HS IB Biology teacher at a private school.
I confessed to Gesel that I’d wanted to kidnap her dancers the previous night and take them to my capoeira class since we had a drum workshop after the beginner’s capoeria class. I bragged that my capoeira group were a wonderful, friendly bunch and we did performances on a regular basis to the extent that most people associated me with my capoeira group rather than my book, which, as a self-published writer, I’m supposed to promote in every waking moment, especially since I’m on vacation. Yet, I explained that what I love doing is being sociable, volunteering, performing with my capoeira group; so I couldn’t see turning my writing into solitary drudgery.
She politely asked what my book was about and I proudly told her that it was about a sexually liberated woman who was looking for Mr. Right and attempting to be smart about it by watching how other women pick up men. Then, much to my surprise, she asked me to participate in her show: “Women, Sex and Desire: Sometimes You Feel Like a Ho, Sometimes You Don’t.” Given the content of my book and erotic poetry, this was truly a special honor. The show, which combines different media also encourages audience participation and Gesel normally invites up to five local people on stage.
I arrived an hour before showtime in order to participate in a mini workshop with Gesel, her five dancers and the other four local participants. The workshop started off with defining what a “ho” was. We actually had one man in the group, who suggested that a ho was someone who did something that he or she hated to do for money; in his opinion, the “something” didn’t have to be sexual. We agreed with that definition, but I felt that a “ho” was usually thought of being a sexually undiscriminating woman and that anytime someone wanted to insult a woman, they could toss that word out, just like “bitch” or any other of the numerous insulting words for women.
Most of us could not come up with a positive world to call a woman who was confident with her sexuality. “Diva” was suggested, but any positive word for a woman can always turn negative. Yet, as I sat on stage and intermittently participated in sex-related discussions, I felt both relieved that other women had made similar choices as I’d done and enlightened by other women’s choices and opinions when it came to sex.
On Friday, I attended the BAM Cafe, which was an evening of music, capoeira Angola (not my group) and South African short indy movies, which occurred with significant overlap. Once again, I thought I was volunteering, but found out later that I could just kick back and enjoy, which was what I had been doing prior to receiving the official word. I met the South African couple, Maganthrie and Dingi, whose films would be shown later on in the evening. After they gave me a brief synopsis of their films, I happily told them that I had visited some of my cousins who were living in Johanesburg during the time that I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Tanzania. I added, what I thought was an interesting tidbit: my cousin had married a former cricket player and the family had moved to Joburg so he could coach the cricket team there. Dingi gave me a peculiar look before asking if my cousin’s husband was from the Caribbean. Unbelievable! Once again, someone at the BAM fest knew someone from my past travels.
Just before the events began, I took a stroll around the beautiful grounds of the French Legation to see if I could make myself useful…OK, let me stop lying! I actually wanted a glass of red wine, but I didn’t want to be the first person there to have a glass of wine. The bartenders for the evening said that they were waiting for the arrival of a table cloth before they started pouring drinks. I didn’t make the connection between the two things, but figured that’s why they were the bartender volunteers and I wasn’t. Nonetheless, in order to do my part, I offered my multicolored cloth to put over the table. Then I walked away, saving my pursuit of red wine for after the movie presentation.
As I crossed the lawn, I saw the side profile of a Black woman with beautiful orangeblonde, waistlong dreads walking toward the movie screening area. I came up behind her and verbally got her attention. “Excuse me, did you use to teach African dance in Denver?” She corrected me by saying she used to teach AfroCaribbean dance. “And you’re also an indy filmmaker?” She agreed. I finally let her know that back around 2000, I’d taken several of her classes. We exchanged business cards and by this time, I firmly believed the BAM slogan: “A festival that feels more like a family reunion.”
So now, I approach each event with the expectation that I’ve got to meet as many people as possible since someone there HAS to either be someone who I used to know when I lived somewhere else or someone is good friends with a someone I’ve met in another country or state. I try to calm myself down and not attach anything mystical to these chance meetings, but even as I type this, I cannot coldly believe that there isn’t any significance to these “coincidences.”
