Monday, June 08, 2009

ASLE - The Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment

Another cool morning in Victoria, BC, after a week of unseasonable heat. I came down to do a talk for the 9th biennial conference of ASLE, the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment, which is an international academic association of scholars, educators and environmentalists working in the burgeoning field of literary eco-criticism. The theme of the conference was “Island Time: The Fate of Place in a Wired and Warming World,” and the conference offerings reflected the astonishing international polyculture that’s grown up around “environmentally inflected” literature. (This is a phrase I read in the Association’s call for papers, and I liked it. “Environmentally inflected” -- the tone is light, understated, discreet. What would its opposite be? “Environmentally loaded”? “Environmentally charged”? “Environmentally fraught”? Hmm, not half so inviting...)

It was interesting to get a sense of how eco-criticism, by focussing its lens on the role of environment and ecology in literature, has elevated the status of “nature” from mere setting or background of story to that of the protagonist, or even the story, itself.

Here are some examples of the conference offerings:

• What Are You Doing Here? Environmental Justice, Inclusivity, and the Question of Community
• Fact and Fiction: Bruno Latour and the Representation of Nature
• Nature and Human Values: An Ecopedagogical Model
• William Wordsworth: Ethics, Aesthetics, and Authorship
• The Textual Animal: Birds, Pets, and Wildlife on the Page
• Get Outside, Get Dirty, Get Smarter: Ecopedagogy and Three Examples of the Outdoor Classroom
• RT: Returning Home: An Emerging Landbased, Ecofeminist Environmental Ethics in Taiwan
• Disaster! Collapse! Writing on Radical Change
• Globalization from Below II: Resisting Corporatization and Commodification
• Aves Triumviratus: Three Chicks Writing About Birds
• (Un)Natural Visions: Ecocritical Perspectives on Film and Visuality
• Environmental Identity: Sexuality, Disability, Ethnicity
• Let the Water Hold Me Down: The Poetics and Politics of Water
• So Descartes, Darwin, and Basho Walk into a Forest: Practrical Models for Science /Humanities Dialogue

…etc., and there was so much more. Six hundred and fifty plus scholars from around the world. Seven concurrent sessions, three times a day, for four days, plus plenaries, roundtables, workshops, pre-conference seminars, receptions, poetry readings, caucus meetings, and, well, you get the picture. It was intense. A bristling forest of ideas, a veritable storm of words. By the time I spoke, at the final banquet, my head was spinning.

So I decided to start with silence. With stillness. I asked everyone to get comfortable and then introduced a short “thought experiment,” directed at watching the mind, watching the body, watching the breath. You could call it a thought experiment, or a meditation, the words are not important. There had already been so many words, and I felt it would be interesting to try a more direct way of exploring the conference theme of "place," to create a direct experience what it is to be in place, exactly where we are.

Silence—alone, but especially in large groups—is such a profoundly powerful and intimate experience, and I really believe it's the basis for intelligent action, and speech, and engagement with the world. We need to learn to take a backward step, away from all the clamor and content and information coming at us, competing for our attention, and instead, from time to time, to direct our attention inward, carving out the space necessary to reflect and make intelligent decisions.

I wish I’d thought to end my banquet talk with a challenge to the members of ASLE. They are educators, and it seems to me that in order to counter the cacophony that is our wired world, they could make the time in their lives and classrooms to share some silence with their students. I’ve done this frequently with groups at colleges and universities, and the students are almost always astonished by the experience. Some find it uncomfortable, but most find it interesting, and many of them report that it feels really good. Their lives, they tell me, are never silent or still, and so it feels amazing to just sit. I'm always reassured that even if they forget the words I've spoken in my talks or classes, they will, somewhere in their bodies, remember that feeling of sitting in silence.

So if any of you ASLE folks out there are reading this and want to take up my challenge, here’s a great organization to check out. It’s the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, whose mandate is to work “to integrate contemplative awareness into contemporary life to create a more just, compassionate, reflective, and sustainable society.” And a great thing is that you can download MP3's of short guided meditations for free, to share with your students and to put on your iPods and practice with at home.

And if this interests you, you can also check out The Association for Contemplative Mind in Higher Education, part of the Center’s Academic Program, which “is committed to transforming higher education through the creation of a community of contemplative teachers, scholars, administrators and students. It supports the emergence of a broad culture of contemplation in the academy and the development of contemplative pedagogy, research methodology and epistemology that will be of value to students, teachers and researchers.”

I’m more and more convinced that we need to cultivate mindful silence, and share it with others whenever possible, if we are going to be able to make the careful and difficult choices we will need to make in order to survive in a wired and warming world. This seems to me to be a key piece of activism and eco-pedagogy that we can all learn to cultivate.

Finally, as a footnote to this theme of Island Time, I wanted to mention an interesting article I came across in the Telegraph about homo floresiensis, a now extinct and miniature member of the genus Homo, whose fossilized remains were discovered on Flores Island in Indonesia, and to whom we modern humans are closely related. The article, entitled "The original hobbits whose brain shrank due to remote home, cites a recent study which suggests that living on a remote island might have been the evolutionary cause of their brain shrinkage over time.

For those of us who live on remote islands, this comes as no surprise...

posted at 6/08/2009 11:46:00 AM [::]

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Sunday, February 01, 2009

unsettled

The last day of January. I’m leaving for the monastery in 4 days, and everything feels vivid and transient and a little sad. In the morning when I open my eyes and see my husband sleeping next to me, I find myself holding very still so I can watch him breathe. Then, when I get up, I notice that it is 8:00 and I’m well rested, and I’m aware that soon I will be achingly sleep-deprived and getting up four hours earlier at the sound of a bell. I make a pot of sencha and come upstairs to write, and I appreciate the stillness of the house in the morning, this solitude, and the green bitterness of the tea. I am grateful for this unstructured time alone to track my thoughts; at the monastery I will have very little privacy, and my days will be lived by the schedule, which sounds rigid, but I look forward to the containment. As I sit down at my desk, I feel a fierce appreciation for my computer, and this keyboard, and the way my fingertips translate thoughts into words and put them up onto the screen, letter by letter. This keyboard is especially precious to me right now. Of course I can do more or less the same thing with my fingers and a pen, but this interface is familiar to me and has many advantages.

I'm leaving my computer behind, along with my cell phone, and it is both scary and exciting to think about being without these devices for two months. I’m especially interested to see if the absence of a digital interface will change my thoughts and the action of my mind. Will my thinking feel different? Will my mind feel less agile? More fixed? Less fragmented? More cumbersome? Calmer? More agitated? Will my thoughts feel more tangible? Will they feel fast because handwriting is slow? Or slow because the computer invites leaps and quick re-adjustments? Will I go through withdrawal, or the bends? And how will this make time feel? Will the days be long or short? And what about my social networks? Will I be lonely without email and my twittering friends?

I had a disconcerting experience the other day while reading a book. I wanted to recall something the author had written several chapters earlier, and I experienced a shuddering jolt of cognitive dissonance when my mind reached for the global search function and almost simultaneously realized that no, this was a book, with pages. It struck me as wrong, somehow, that the only way to find the reference I needed was to flip through pages.

And there was another incident, during a conversation, when I needed a fact about something--the scientific name for a banana slug’s blow hole (the pneumostome), or the previous role of a supporting actor in a TV show I was watching (Justin Kirk in Weeds and Angels in America)--and for a brief and jarring moment, my mind actually mistook itself for Google. The question arose, initiating the search, and then…nothing. My mind just hung there, like a frozen drive, or a system crash, spinning like the pizza of death.

No wonder I feel stupid all the time. (I remembered pseumostome, but I had to Google Weeds to find Justin Kirk.)

I’ve been worried about my memory ever since my mom was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, but it’s quite possible that the lapses I experience are not lapses at all, but rather phantom gaps created by the very technology that was invented to fill them. There’s an article in my De.li.cious feed from the Journal of Higher Education, called The End of Solitude, which talks about this phenomenon, how technology creates the problems that it’s designed to solve. Thus, television creates boredom by alleviating it, eroding the skills we need to entertain ourselves. The Internet creates loneliness by enabling constant connectivity with our social networks, thereby defamiliarizing solitude and turning it into something to fear and avoid, rather than to savor.

I think something analogous is going on with my experience of the way my mind conceives of memory and information. My cyborg mind has melded with these digital interfaces and become so conditioned by access to these certain types of information, that it now compares itself to Google and Wikipedia, and finds itself continually wanting.

So, it will be interesting to see if my experience of my mind changes, and if the conditioning can be reversed. This monastic retreat is an experiment, one I’ve always wanted to perform on myself, and right now I’m caught between leaving and going. It is an unsettling time, and I’m enjoying it.

posted at 2/01/2009 12:00:00 AM [::]

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Thursday, January 01, 2009

2009...

posted at 1/01/2009 10:31:00 PM [::]

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Sunday, December 14, 2008

Parking

Took the Cathay Pacific red-eye from Vancouver to New York last night. It’s always strange, and also not strange, to make this trip.

Strange because at home in Manhattan, I sit in Taralucci e Vino, a small crowded cafe in the East Village, drinking latté and trying to decide which movie to go to and where to eat, and less than 24 hours ago, I was at home on an island in the middle of Desolation Sound, walking through a mist-shrouded rain forest, in the company of eagles and cougars and wolves. On the island, there are not so many humans and at this time of year no restaurants at all.

Not strange, because New York is a part of me, and I’m part of it, and the minute I set foot on the sidewalk, I know where I am. I am intimately familiar with the sidewalk, the cracks and stains, the odd, irregular grey dots that look like age spots on old skin, but are probably from chewing gum pressed deep into the cement by other soles. I know how to jaywalk here, how to gauge the lights, cross in front of cabs, cut through crowds. I know which stores are new, and which have folded. I am dismayed at the introduction of Muni parking kiosks on every block. It’s the East Village, and now you have to pay for parking?

And yet, even while I’m happy and engaged here, I’m missing the dripping cedar boughs and the lapping tides and the cries of the bard owls at twilight. In New York, you pay three dollars for an oyster on a half shell. At home on the island, oysters are what you collect and eat when you run out of cash to pay for groceries.

I have friends here who are my family, my history, who are as much a part of me as blood and bone, and I have new friends there, whom I am growing into, my foreseeable future.

Strange and not strange. How much longer will I be able to straddle these worlds? I love it here, and I love it there. I know that flying back and forth is not ecologically sustainable, and I feel guilty about the carbon costs of our vacation, but soon I’m afraid this will not be a problem, because soon it will not be economically feasible for us to make a trip like this. Am I sad? Of course I am.

Tonight, as we walked down Broadway to the Angelica theater, we were struck by how empty the sidewalks were. It was five o’clock on a Sunday afternoon, with only 10 more shopping days ‘til Christmas. The stores were advertising deep post-Christmas level discounts, and there should have been throngs of shoppers, yet so few were out and buying. Is this what the Depression will look like?

Yesterday morning on the island, my cat, the little murderer, killed a pygmy owl and laid it at our bedroom door by the suitcases. It was his gift, a last ditch attempt to convince us not to go. I’ve never seen a pygmy owl before. Oliver brought it in to the bedroom to show me. Its eyes were closed and its neck was limp and broken, but otherwise it was intact. A tiny owl, only six inches long. Not officially endangered, but probably ought to be. Oliver put it in a Ziplock bag and stored it in the freezer.

We love our cats. They kill rats, vermin, they are symbionts and they help us. But they also kill song birds and pygmy owls and endangered shrews. Are domestic cats wrong? Should we not have them? The wolves are out in numbers this year, in packs, roaming the island, making humans nervous. Some of the old timers are calling for a wolf cull, like the one in the 70’s. I heard about it from an islander who was a child at the time. There was a bounty. She saw a pick-up truck go by, and the bed was filled with the dead bodies of wolves, stacked like cords of firewood.

Sometimes I feel, deep in my bones, that it is not natural to have so many choices, so many identities, and places to be, and lives to lead, and foods to eat, and things to want. And yet, having so much, having had so much, I am exceedingly reluctant to settle for less. Of course, when the time comes, I will settle. I’ll have no choice. Am I sad? Of course I am.


Pygmy Owl from The Why? Files

posted at 12/14/2008 10:11:00 PM [::]

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Thursday, October 02, 2008

A Way With Words - meditation & writing workshop

Last month's writing workshop was wonderful! We decided at the last minute to do it as a non-residential workshop and to hold it at the Whaletown Institute. We had a full house, and it was intensive, like a writers' boot camp. We focused on the foundations of story: what triggers a story, and how do we bring it to life on the page. We worked extensively with character, location, voice, point of view, and authorial stance--what John Gardiner calls "psychic distance," or the level of intimacy a writer maintains in relation to his or her characters.

It was so much fun, in fact, that I've decided to do more workshops, and so the next one will be in Vancouver, on October 17 - 18, in association with the Hollyhock Foundation. The title of the workshop is "A Way With Words" and this one will focus on meditation and writing, and the ways these two contemplative practices enhance one another.

Fiction, but also literature in general, trains us in empathy by requiring us to inhabit another's experience. To read literature successfully, we have be willing to enter our characters' minds and skin, to see with their eyes and to feel with their hearts. This is the prerequisite of the writer's work, too, and I'm particularly interested in exploring how traditional Buddhist meditation practices can support our experiences as writers and readers.

You can read more about the workshop in the What's New section of this site, or at the Hollyhock website. To register, please contact Hollyhock at 800-933-6339, or send an email to registration@hollyhock.ca.

Here's a pdf poster of the event:
WayWithWords.pdf

I hope you will come!

Whaletown Institute Writers' Workshop - Foundations of Story

posted at 10/02/2008 11:47:00 AM [::]

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Friday, July 25, 2008

Engaging Fictions: Writing stories of social change

I'm going to be teaching a fiction writing workshop in September, at Channel Rock, on Cortes Island. I know it's last minute, but I just decided to do it, and if it goes well, I'll repeat it next year. So check out the description at the Channel Rock website, or in the What's New section of this site, and drop me a line if you'd be interested in attending something like this, either now or in the future.

Labels: Channel Rock, fiction writing, workshop

posted at 7/25/2008 11:52:00 AM [::]

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Everyday Zen

Just a follow up note on new EVERYDAYZEN website: we launched the site in April, and since then we've added about 100 of Norman's talks and lectures, so please feel free to stop by and check it out. Here are two of my favorites, about language and poetry:

Language (audio)
Language and Dharma (text)

Norman is a poet, as well as a Zen teacher, and so language is something he returns to again and again. As a writer, too, I'm fascinated with language, thinking about it, thinking in it, trying to see it for what it is, sometimes joyfully, sometimes miserably, failing, always. Language is my living.

EVERYDAYZEN is the virtual home of Zen teacher Norman Fischer, and the Everyday Zen foundation and sangha. In addition to the 500+ dharma talks available for download, there's also a Study Guide and a schedule for events and retreats that Norman leads.

posted at 7/25/2008 10:42:00 AM [::]

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Tuesday, April 29, 2008

The Art of Losing

I just figured out that I can upload files to this weblog, so here's a link to the PDF of an article called "The Art of Losing: On Writing, Dying, and Mom," that I wrote for Shambhala Sun magazine last month. It's based on a talk I gave at a benefit for the Zen Hospice Project, and some of the bits of it are from this weblog. I really like the way Shambhala Sun did the layout, with such nice photographs of my mom. I don't know if it will look as nice in the PDF version, but you can always buy a back issue of the magazine, too, if you really want to see how cute my mom was.


ArtOfLosing.pdf

posted at 4/29/2008 02:38:00 PM [::]

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Why Bother?

I wanted to make sure to link to the article, "Why Bother?" by Michael Pollan in last week's New York Times. The title says it all, and it's required reading if you're feeling a little overwhelmed by the state of the planet.

I'm a big fan of Pollan's work. His 1998 article, "Playing God in the Garden" was one of the things that inspired me to write about genetically engineered potatoes in "All Over Creation." I ended up incorporating a description of the article in the novel, where one of the characters, Elliot Rhodes, a PR flack for a biotech company, comes across it, much to his dismay. In 2002, when the manuscript was finished, I felt I had to contact Pollan to let him know that I'd appropriated his factual article into my fictional novel. He was extremely gracious and told me that he had been reading "My Year of Meats" when he was writing his article "Power Steer," about a steer he purchased in order to learn about how modern, industrial steak is produced in America. That made me very happy.

posted at 4/29/2008 02:06:00 PM [::]

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As will be gathered
from these notes of mine,
I am the sort of person
who approves
of what others abhor
and detests
the things they like.

—Sei Shonagon, The Pillow Book
circa 1000 AD

Clearly,
if Sei Shonagon had had access
to the Internet,
she would have had a weblog
instead of a Pillowbook.

—Ruth Ozeki, Weblog
circa 2000 AD

 

 

It starts with the earth. How can it not? Imagine the planet like a split peach, whose pit forms the core, whose flesh its mantle, and whose fuzzy skin its crust - no, that doesn't do justice to the crust, which is, after all, where all of life takes place.

—Ruth Ozeki, All Over Creation

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