wrapping myself
in my own thread.
hoping to come out
a butterfly.

Doing research for a new project Keith and I are working on. Reading a lot of interesting books on slavery. I'll say more about that when the time comes, but in the meantime, I'm sitting with what I'm finding out as I'm making my work. In the stacks, I stumbled upon a book I wasn’t looking for; it’s called We Are Your Sisters: Black Women in the Nineteenth Century and it was edited by Dorothy Sterling. I opened to a random page and what I read hit me hard. A mother and daughter who had been separated due to slavery for twenty years had reconnected and started writing to one another. The daughter was free and was hoping to buy freedom for her mother and brother. The mother, Elizabeth Ramsey, writes to her daughter:

I said in my letter to you that Col. Horton would let you have me for 1000 dol. or a woman that could fill my place. I think you could get one cheaper where you are than to pay him the money. . . . I think that 1000 dollars is too much for me. You must writ very kind to Col Horton and try to Get me for less money. I think you can change his Price by writing Kindly to him.

What hit me was learning what comes along with the knowledge that one is property. I had never thought about the fact that my ancestors must have been knowledgeable about things like how much a person goes for in Texas, versus Ohio. Or how much they were each worth, individually, in a dollar amount, such that a dollar amount such as $1000 could be exorbitant. (Did they often assess one another that way, thinking of dollar amounts when they noticed each other's physical qualities?) Or the way suggesting that another person come be a slave in one's place could be discussed as a matter of fact if one were writing one's free daughter and hoping to meet one's own grandchildren. It was the matter of fact way that she thought through what it would take. Of course, of course, but it opened up a whole world of sorrow for me to read that letter. How are we still dealing with this kind of knowledge today? What is the after-image?

For the record, the daughter was able to buy her mother for $900.

I love Sandra Cisneros' work. When I first read her I thought I was going to study her intensely so I could tap into whatever she was working with, but after a powerful experience researching her for a course I took called Woman as Writer, I didn't really come back to pick up what I'd started. Well, I did track down an address for her and write her a letter (this was pre-Internet), but it came back unopened with the words: no longer at this address. By the time it came back I'd decided it was a silly letter and that it would be better just to study more than to embarrass myself in writing. Anyway, Cisneros recently gave Ramola D did an interview at Macondo, an invitation-only summer writing workshop she (Cisneros) runs in Texas. The interview was published last year in The Writer's Chronicle. Reading her words really opened something up for me and I've been dipping into it for inspiration. I'm gearing up to teach some of the lessons I've learned from it this semester, so I thought I'd post a quote here:



"[W]hat I’m looking for is a kind of generosity with the characters and a heart that understands them, beyond holding grudges or getting revenge. I really believe when we write there are moments, a few seconds, when we become the Buddha, when the writing transcends us, when we’re writing in the light. It’s channeled through us so the writing can be wiser, more loving—and then we go back to being ourselves . . . I think you have to get very humble, and fearless, for the writing to be wiser. You have to be in a zone of absolute humility for that light to be channeled through you."

A year or so ago, I was instructing my students to write an ars poetica and went to my poet-friends for some brainstorming on how to write about the art of poetry. Reggie H. sent me the poem "Ars Poetica?" by Czeslaw Milosz. Here's an excerpt I want to think more about:

"In the very essence of poetry there is something indecent:
a thing is brought forth which we didn't know we had in us,
so we blink our eyes, as if a tiger had sprung out
and stood in the light, lashing his tail."

Paine College 's first woman president said Wednesday that she will retire at the end of this academic year.

. . . What's her proudest moment from her tenure? It's hard to single out one, she said. But she offered several: increasing student enrollment and graduation rates; boosting the private college's endowment; garnering re-accreditation for Paine; and renovating the historic library in which she made her announcement Wednesday. She also said she was proud of the increasing numbers of Paine graduates who pursue graduate-level degrees at other institutions . . .

Augusta Chronicle, Dec 7, 2006 , Jeremy Craig | Staff Writer

Go mom!

Newark, NJ: A woman and her grown daughter get on the bus and sit behind another grown woman from the Southern United States.

Daughter: Did I tell you that everyday on my other bus, there's a girl who looks like L?

Mother: You should ask her if that's her.

Daughter: I'm not going to talk to her, it might not be her.

Mother: I always talk to people who look familiar. Just walk up to her and say "Are you L?" and if she says no, just tell her she looks like someone you know. She won't be offended.

Daughter: Mom, they're young. People kill you these days.

All three woman bust into laughter.