4/19/2010
Good Day, Kolas-- I'm here getting ready to head into Chi for yet another lecture event. This time I'm only 1/3 of a panel, so the pressure's off. I had the worse week for fitness and health ever. Well, not all week. I had an amazing time in Yakima, WA. Huge crowd at the talk, and a 250 people luncheon. The theater in Yakima is gorgeous and old, and it's haunted. You know what I like. I like haunted buildings. This one's haunted by Shorty the stagehand who committed suicide there in 1938.
In the greenroom, the walls are autographed from the 20s burlesque to the present. Bob Hope, Gene Autrey. Salman Rushdie. Lisa Ling. Naomi Judd.
I got to tour some of the arhchard business in the valley. Amazing visit to the apple-processing plant. You never imagine how much high tech goes into your lunchbox apple. The charming and capable Rosa (from Mexicali) led me through the maze of robots and computers and moving doodads and scanning dealybobs. Gala apples moved in a river of red.
Then my hosts kindly took me to their wine cave. Great racks of fat oak barrels. Hundreds of gallons. The vintner was there and took me deep inside andgave me samples. He knew the personality of every barrel, the nature of every generation of oak and grape. Frankly, after about 6 samples, I thought it all tasted GREAT. We ended with a killer port that was still hyper-alcoholic...you know how the youngstrers are. Rambunctious. Bold, yet insinuating, with a slight bouquet of spring flowers in its nose, while breaking in a buttery fashion across the tongue, leaving a misty aftertaste. Uh. Or something. I was trying to walk straight.
TOO BUSY TO WORK OUT. Too freakin' tired. But there was a jacuzzi in my room. It was big enough for us all to have a party. I bubbled myself to sleep in there.
Up at 4:15 for a long flight home and up in the morning for a long drive to Champaign to watch Eric's Junior Recital. He KILLED it. I was stunned at how good he was. Go, sonny boy! But...the worst motel ever. Out in the sticks. Smelled like an old folks' home. Bad beds. Bad water. Dirt and dust.
Bad college boy food all weekend.
I lectured on Sunday at the library, and we drove home--caught in traffic delays almost two hours. Look, if you're trying to get healthy, don't hang out with college boys. Bad pizza at 10:00? Really? I'm dying.
So, back to trainer Wed. I'm going to be destroyed. Smoke is going to come out of my body. Because I have sinned. And retribution is coming. Sigh.
Oh well. Made mucho dinero this week.
AND TODAY WE DELIVER THE FIRST HALF OF HUMMINGBIRD'S DAUGHTER II TO MY EDITOR.
It is a good day.
Almost Home
In the greenroom, the walls are autographed from the 20s burlesque to the present. Bob Hope, Gene Autrey. Salman Rushdie. Lisa Ling. Naomi Judd.
I got to tour some of the arhchard business in the valley. Amazing visit to the apple-processing plant. You never imagine how much high tech goes into your lunchbox apple. The charming and capable Rosa (from Mexicali) led me through the maze of robots and computers and moving doodads and scanning dealybobs. Gala apples moved in a river of red.
Then my hosts kindly took me to their wine cave. Great racks of fat oak barrels. Hundreds of gallons. The vintner was there and took me deep inside andgave me samples. He knew the personality of every barrel, the nature of every generation of oak and grape. Frankly, after about 6 samples, I thought it all tasted GREAT. We ended with a killer port that was still hyper-alcoholic...you know how the youngstrers are. Rambunctious. Bold, yet insinuating, with a slight bouquet of spring flowers in its nose, while breaking in a buttery fashion across the tongue, leaving a misty aftertaste. Uh. Or something. I was trying to walk straight.
TOO BUSY TO WORK OUT. Too freakin' tired. But there was a jacuzzi in my room. It was big enough for us all to have a party. I bubbled myself to sleep in there.
Up at 4:15 for a long flight home and up in the morning for a long drive to Champaign to watch Eric's Junior Recital. He KILLED it. I was stunned at how good he was. Go, sonny boy! But...the worst motel ever. Out in the sticks. Smelled like an old folks' home. Bad beds. Bad water. Dirt and dust.
Bad college boy food all weekend.
I lectured on Sunday at the library, and we drove home--caught in traffic delays almost two hours. Look, if you're trying to get healthy, don't hang out with college boys. Bad pizza at 10:00? Really? I'm dying.
So, back to trainer Wed. I'm going to be destroyed. Smoke is going to come out of my body. Because I have sinned. And retribution is coming. Sigh.
Oh well. Made mucho dinero this week.
AND TODAY WE DELIVER THE FIRST HALF OF HUMMINGBIRD'S DAUGHTER II TO MY EDITOR.
It is a good day.
4/11/2010
Boo-Boo the cat has figured out that, if she sneaks into our bedroom at 5:45 and starts knocking things off our nightstand--like the phone, the radio--it'll wake us up so we can feed her.
I am getting the first 350 pp. of Hummingbird's Daughter II (I can't find a title I like yet) finished this weekend. I don't like blogs that boast about how nifty the author is, but I rock. I RULE. This is the best prose I have ever been able to write. I'm thankful for that.
Sometimes, you write past your own limit. Does that make sense? Especially if you surrender to the process that I try to embrace (see Lu Chi's WEN-FU, or my own attempts on FB and twitter to explain "eloquent trust"), you find yourself exiting your own zone and entering a zone beyond. I ahve to catch up to the words that sometimes make themselves do stuff I couldn't figure out on my own. I spoke a few posts ago about the discipline of joy; I'd like to amend that to add the discipline of trust. It takes a while. Like learning you can swim.
But...oh no...that 350 pp is the first half. DANG! Help me, somebody! Make me some tea! The trouble with going epic is that, you know, you write A WHOLE NOVEL'S WORTH and then have to get up the next day and write another! I can do it. I've been doing my treadmill and my TRX and my sit-ups and curls.
Also in this process has been my data-mining, trying to get my thousands of pages of source material in some semblance of order. I told my editor I have lost or misplaced enough for a PhD dissertation. And still I have bins of stuff. Folders, boxes, disks, notebooks. Once the book's done, I promise, I am going to make the world's biggest Teresita bibliography available. For all the scholars, MA students, and fellow authors who are sure they can do a better job than I did. (I know you're writing that book, Sandra!)
David Romo and I have kicked around the idea of an annotated bibliography. He has some top secret stuff in El Paso. I have hired assssins to take him out so I can steal his archives. Who knows. I am also thinking of a brief non-fiction book that would talk about all the strange things that happened to me on this hechizero-path. Duende upheavals for sure.
Twenty years...now twenty-five years. Coming to a close soon. I have a pile of other projects. Two books of poetry, a new novel or two, some stories, a YA book, some non-fiction ideas, and I want to publish my drawings. I have twenty years' worth of stuff that wants Teresita to get out of the way. But once that's clear, then what? I have more!
If you saw my posting from Tucson Festival of Books, you saw when the shaman blessed me without a word. That was one of the coolest things ever. I wish I could find him and tell him it's working.
Oh...but he knows.
By the way--U of Illinois named me Distinguished Professor. I am still shocked. As, no doubt, are my colleagues. I told my boss: "You should have named me Distracted Professor."
Back to work. Got a lecture in Chi tomorrow. Off to Yakima on Tuesday.
Thinking of you,
L
Boo-Boo is Evil
I am getting the first 350 pp. of Hummingbird's Daughter II (I can't find a title I like yet) finished this weekend. I don't like blogs that boast about how nifty the author is, but I rock. I RULE. This is the best prose I have ever been able to write. I'm thankful for that.
Sometimes, you write past your own limit. Does that make sense? Especially if you surrender to the process that I try to embrace (see Lu Chi's WEN-FU, or my own attempts on FB and twitter to explain "eloquent trust"), you find yourself exiting your own zone and entering a zone beyond. I ahve to catch up to the words that sometimes make themselves do stuff I couldn't figure out on my own. I spoke a few posts ago about the discipline of joy; I'd like to amend that to add the discipline of trust. It takes a while. Like learning you can swim.
But...oh no...that 350 pp is the first half. DANG! Help me, somebody! Make me some tea! The trouble with going epic is that, you know, you write A WHOLE NOVEL'S WORTH and then have to get up the next day and write another! I can do it. I've been doing my treadmill and my TRX and my sit-ups and curls.
Also in this process has been my data-mining, trying to get my thousands of pages of source material in some semblance of order. I told my editor I have lost or misplaced enough for a PhD dissertation. And still I have bins of stuff. Folders, boxes, disks, notebooks. Once the book's done, I promise, I am going to make the world's biggest Teresita bibliography available. For all the scholars, MA students, and fellow authors who are sure they can do a better job than I did. (I know you're writing that book, Sandra!)
David Romo and I have kicked around the idea of an annotated bibliography. He has some top secret stuff in El Paso. I have hired assssins to take him out so I can steal his archives. Who knows. I am also thinking of a brief non-fiction book that would talk about all the strange things that happened to me on this hechizero-path. Duende upheavals for sure.
Twenty years...now twenty-five years. Coming to a close soon. I have a pile of other projects. Two books of poetry, a new novel or two, some stories, a YA book, some non-fiction ideas, and I want to publish my drawings. I have twenty years' worth of stuff that wants Teresita to get out of the way. But once that's clear, then what? I have more!
If you saw my posting from Tucson Festival of Books, you saw when the shaman blessed me without a word. That was one of the coolest things ever. I wish I could find him and tell him it's working.
Oh...but he knows.
By the way--U of Illinois named me Distinguished Professor. I am still shocked. As, no doubt, are my colleagues. I told my boss: "You should have named me Distracted Professor."
Back to work. Got a lecture in Chi tomorrow. Off to Yakima on Tuesday.
Thinking of you,
L
4/07/2010
Whew. I've been writing like crazy on the Hummingbird sequel. We're close to the first 350 pp being DONE. I cranked out nearly 60 pp today in new stuff and revision. It's so adult. It's so rich. I will confess now that I'm getting excited.
But I'm not here to talk about that right now. I am here to complain about my cat. Boo-Boo. You see, Boo-Boo is evil.
She looks like the black dragon in that 3-D movie. We always knew she had a wicked streak. But the other day, we left a steak out on a platter. hey, she's a small cat. No prob. BUT SHE STOLE THE STEAK. She stole the steak and ATE IT. It was bigger than Boo-Boo.
Now we have realized that Boo has organized a midnight crime syndicate in our house. I don't know where she thinks she's going, but she has targeted one wall of our hallway and is apparently trying to tunnel through it. Boo is making a break for it! Scratching her way into the drywall.
But get this: she has formed a gang with our dogs. They are working in collusion. There were some bits of ham left over in a container. I was going to use them for dog food in the morning. But Boo, master-mind, apparently got up on the counter, opened the container, got the ham and dropped it to the dogs!
Now, what I need to figure out is, what do the dogs owe Boo-Boo? Eh? What heinous debt is she going to collect? What hellish plot have they bought into for four measly slices of ham?
Somebody...help us...before it's too late.
Good Morning, New Mexico
But I'm not here to talk about that right now. I am here to complain about my cat. Boo-Boo. You see, Boo-Boo is evil.
She looks like the black dragon in that 3-D movie. We always knew she had a wicked streak. But the other day, we left a steak out on a platter. hey, she's a small cat. No prob. BUT SHE STOLE THE STEAK. She stole the steak and ATE IT. It was bigger than Boo-Boo.
Now we have realized that Boo has organized a midnight crime syndicate in our house. I don't know where she thinks she's going, but she has targeted one wall of our hallway and is apparently trying to tunnel through it. Boo is making a break for it! Scratching her way into the drywall.
But get this: she has formed a gang with our dogs. They are working in collusion. There were some bits of ham left over in a container. I was going to use them for dog food in the morning. But Boo, master-mind, apparently got up on the counter, opened the container, got the ham and dropped it to the dogs!
Now, what I need to figure out is, what do the dogs owe Boo-Boo? Eh? What heinous debt is she going to collect? What hellish plot have they bought into for four measly slices of ham?
Somebody...help us...before it's too late.
4/05/2010
I'll be on the air Tuesday morning on Albuquerque's NPR affiliate, KUNM, from 8:00-9:00 am. If you're in the area and up having coffee, check it out.
1 on 1 with Maria Hinojosa
4/02/2010
Last fall, I taped a lengthy interview with award-winning Latina Maria Hinojosa (my Tijuana homegirl!). We talked about borders, politics, books, music, everything.
I don't much like to watch myself on TV, but her show will air on PBS next Tuesday. TiVo it and enjoy it at your leisure!
For now, she's posted a preview on her YouTube channel. You can see it here.
I don't much like to watch myself on TV, but her show will air on PBS next Tuesday. TiVo it and enjoy it at your leisure!
For now, she's posted a preview on her YouTube channel. You can see it here.
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