Happy New Year! No Resolutions for Me.

Melinda Palacio

I sat down to write my New Year's resolutions but came up blank until I realized that my life is a work-in-progress, never finished. Perhaps, the masterpiece that is I will not be complete until someone, maybe my godson, puts the last rose on my coffin or virtual memorial stone. Not that I am a morbid person, just realizing that my time on this earth is finite. I plan on honoring this time by living in the joyous spirit of my mother, Blanca Estela. I was very depressed after her death, but at some point in the last decade, I chose to live. I'm grateful for family that I still have, especially my mother's mother who has a wicked sense of humor and makes me laugh every time we speak. Laughter has been a great healer throughout the years. And all my life apparently. My grandmother used to say that when I was a baby I was laughing in my crib with the angels. I still laugh in my sleep.

Most people's resolutions involve losing weight or getting in shape. Check. Last year, I fully recovered from my broken leg (and my year from hell, Adios 2014 and don't come back). Thanks to a new and improved spring in my step and ankle full of hardware, I am free to walk, run, jump, plank, and balance on one leg. The leg that broke, my right leg, continues to be my dominant leg. I am no longer crooked thanks to my wonderful yoga teachers. I still have a bit of a confidence issue that I continue to work on. When I approach a long flight of stairs, I take a breath before ascending or descending them. I am overly cautious about enjoying the outdoors and going hiking. I plan on overcoming my fear of falling next year, but this is something I've been working on since before I broke my leg. I've also taken a page from La Bloga's Gluten Free Chicano and tried out some gluten free recipes and have a adopted a low- carb diet so that I can have my cake and eat it too once in a while. So far, I've lost ten good pounds and counting. Adios extra stomach luggage. I'm glad I have a head start however since for me the process of shedding pounds is excruciating slow.

During most of my yoga meditations, there's usually a point in the class when the instructor reminds us to "let go of that which does not serve you." After two plus years of hearing Disney's Frozen, Let It Go, song, I've decided to let a facebook friend or two go. Since 2015 was the year of the fade away, I feel comfortable in unfriending people simply for being creepy or insincere in their friendship agenda. Adios creepy people. No explanations needed.

Last, but never least, is the most important business of writing. Yes, another work-in -progress. It's always satisfying to see books come to fruition. I plan on continuing work on two books and sure hope to finish them. Twice a month, I look forward to materializing a blog post for La Bloga. The time before a book belongs to the public is the sweetest. However, I am happy to announce that I see the three letter word approaching both manuscripts. And many of the poems for my bird book have been accepted and published by a variety of literary journals and websites, including the Academy of American Poets, The New Laurel Review, Rare Feathers: Poems on Birds & Art, Latina Authors andTheir Muses, The Mas Tequila Review #10, and three publications coming up in 2016, the new journal MockingHeart Review, the anthologies Coiled Serpent by Tia Chucha Press and Poetry of Resistance forthcoming from the University of Arizona.

 

Happy Day One of 2016! I'm looking forward to continuing my journey. Thank you for enjoying La Bloga, sharing our community, and supporting our literature. Join me in keeping bookstores and our culture alive through writing. Since I am in New Orleans for the New Year, later today I will eat black eyed peas, cabbage, and ham. My friend Crystal says the cabbage is for prosperity, the black eyed peas for good luck and the ham is to continue to look forward because a pig cannot turn its head to look back. Provecho and Cheers!

Writing Without Teachers, What a Concept!

The basic philosophy of the book is that there is no ‘bad writing’ and that we have to give ourselves permission to write everything that is in our thoughts in order to get to the writing that has more focus and energy to it.

The first three sections of this book are set up to help anyone interested in writing to do just that. Section one is an explanation of how the freewriting exercises work. It's a simple method for generating writing by simply timing yourself for ten or twenty minutes, then writing as fast as you can without stopping. The key is to not think about what you're writing but to simply write. There are no rules to worry about. Grammar, spelling, syntax, logic are put on the back burner. You simply write what ever is on your mind as fast as you can until the time is up.

The reasoning behind this, according to Elbow, is that when we worry about whether we are doing it right we're in the process of editing and we don’t just edit out grammatical errors but also thoughts and feelings that could potentially enrich our writing. The writing time should be exclusively set aside for the the process of producing, an editing as a discrete function should only come later. Elbow suggests keeping a freewriting journal that consists of daily ten minute entries that he calls ‘mind samples. These ‘mind samples’ can then be combed over for ideas of what to further write about.

Here's more from Elbow himself:

"...look to see what words or passages seemed important -attracted energy or strength. Here is your cue what to write. Or think of a person, place, feeling, object, incident, or transaction that is important to you. Do one or two freewriting exercises while trying to hold it in mind. This procedure will suggest a subject and a direction."


In Chapter Two, Elbow describes the method he refers to as ‘Growing’. Using this model, I'd do a freewriting exercise on everything I know about a particular piece I'm working on for forty five minutes, writing everything that is in my head, without stopping. At the end of the forty five minutes I would then, for fifteen minutes re-read and extract the core of the writing: words, phrases, feelings, moods anything that ‘stuck its head out’ at me.

Then I'd jot down a summary of what all these essential things were telling me. Then, I'd do another forty five minute freewriting on this assertion, exploring whether I believed what came up or or not, but with the main focus being the same as in the first exercise, to write as fast as I could, and not edit myself.

When I was done, I would again sum up what I had just written and once again make an assertion about its main idea. For a third, and final forty five minutes, I would freewrite around this last assertion to explore any thing that might still be lurking in my mind. In the final hour I would again extract the essential elements and then do the task of editing what I had into a more coherent piece.

This has freed me up at some level from part of the anxiety I feel in initiating writing. Beginnings are always the hardest part, and like a lot of people, the panic at having to come up with words has left many a page and screen blank and left me feeling frustrated. The process of distilling and summarizing the underlying assumptions behind the writing has also strengthened my ownership of my own approach, my own aesthetic, and has helped me build a deeper gut-level confidence.

I’ve done a lot of freewriting in the past, but never explored it so deeply before. Most of my ‘finished’ writing has come from ‘internal cooking’, letting ideas percolate inside until some burst of inspiration caused me to sit and write them down and, many times, it’s a process of fits and starts. Elbow advocates the balance between external and internal 'cooking,' letting ideas and words intermingle to find new, richer ideas.

Resolutions - 10 TTD before you stop

Those of you who didn't come up with resolutions for the new year--or your life--can plagiarize anything below that fits.

1. Get drunk with your mom in her adobe house.
If you live long enough, you'll get discomforting reminders from afflicted family and friends that we're all mortal. I still have one parent and hope to kill a bottle of Presidente brandy with her in an adobe made under her specs and supervision. She attended an adobe construction school in Arizona and remembers it well. Your parent likely has a different dream; find what it is and jointly kill your preferred bottle, once it's accomplished. I did this once--a memory worth repeating.

2. Become a master teacher.
Yours might not be about teaching, so substitute your own mastery. It's not about which craft; once upon a time, human culture was a life-journey from novice to master craftsman, for every trade. Today, instead, we go from job to job or are often forced to change careers. But at least once, disregard the mierda your bosses or company shovel onto your back and decide you'll learn more about your employment than your boss could ever know. Then go past that until you stand above all the mediocrity that passes for "competent."

3. See and hear a jaguar in the Petén jungle; settle for a mt. lion.
They're as equally endangered and unique as whales, wolves or polar bears, so take your pick. But do it before our presence on the planet leaves a gap in your time here. I'm not greater than a jaguar--my personal favorite--especially when it comes to who fits better into the environment. That's why I'd like to meet Jaguar, on his turf, no matter I hide behind the leaves. If the encounter turns deadly, at least I'll have checked off this item and perhaps served a great meal.

4. Draw the dinosaur glyphs in an Anasazi canyon.
Yours might be to dance a mambo at Stonehenge or sing Lucy in the Sky, nude, on a barren beach, right before a hurricane, but do it while your legs and voice still work--however you can reconnect with antiquity amid what remains of the simpler, unspoiled world. Mine is getting tribal permission to enter a side canyon closed to non-natives. Drawing the pictoglyphs that resemble dinosaurs presumed extinct before the arrival of humans, would be this artist's dream, and fun; something to leave behind to worry myopic Euro-American scientists.

5. Spend 2 weeks in Cuba.
Cuba is not about Castro's faults or communism's failures; it's about a people who successfully defeated the torturous dictator Bautista and withstood his CIA-U.S. military bullies longer than many of us have been alive. I want to spend time (legally, if Homeland needs to know) with people who live free of student loans, variable-rate mortgages, endless wars and onerous medical insurance. I want to traverse the U.S. embargo (legally, Homeland) and discover life in a simpler society, less oppressed by capitalist materialism. I want to speak Spanish in a country where its literacy is nurtured and revered. Although other places may fit your needs better, do the same before they get invaded. Whatever needs to be changed in any country will be decided by people who stayed and bore the burden of citizenship. Exchanging experiences with Cubanos is a time-sensitive, historically unique opportunity. For one reason or another, things may change soon, not necessarily for the better.

6. Write one book, self-published if necessary.
You'd be in good company: Elements of Style and Bartlett's Quotations were originally self-published; Tarzan and the translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, as well. Shelly, Carl Sandburg, Thomas Paine, Upton Sinclair, Mark Twain and Walt Whitman all resorted to it. So why not? Face it: if you're about my age, you were captivated by Michael J. Fox's changing history in Back to the Future so his dad's SciFi novel got published. But you and I don't have a DeLorean time machine. Fact is, there's too many writers and not enough readers in the English language. If you don't write, splurge on framing an unsold painting or a collage of your own original dichos.

Your self-promotion will stop friends and relatives asking when your work will be exhibited or for sale. Plus, you can put it next to Leaves of Grass and pull it down sometimes to feel its weighty significance. Of course, this suggestion comes from an undiscovered talent, so if you're more talented, or luckier, keep on.

7. 50-yd.-line seats at a Dallas Cowboys game.
Okay, this one's a little self-indulgent, but what would a 10 List be without some of that? Replace this one with your own indulgency, but mine is to be close enough to the DC Cheerleaders to count their freckles, or whatever. Berate me, if you will; I'm probably more flawed than you.

8. Finish the house.
If you're lucky enough (or unlucky enough), you got a house you gotta get done with. That half-finished basement or those unfinished windows will hound you 'til your done, even if you spouse doesn't. At least your widow(er) will then have a nice place to host your wake and not squander the life insurance on less qualified contractors.

9. Play with adopted grandchildren.
Though some of you only want your own grandchildren, I'm not a believer in the arcane "my bloodline must carry on" BS. There's not only too many of us on the planet, there's too many orphaned or homeless little ones out there, many because of U.S. actions within or against their countries. I don't need a grandchild that resembles me or carries a genetic propensity for alcoholism and weight-gain. Why wish labor pains and stretch marks on a daughter or daughter-in-law? Kids are kids, and if we're around them long enough, our genetic make-up preconditions us to love and care for them as if they were our own, no matter.

10. Go on a vision quest.
Since my indigenous blood is as diluted as rosewater and my self-education lacks spine, I never experienced this. My rites of passage amounted to communion and confirmation, both of which focused on my memorizing God's plans and judgements about me, rather than finding out about myself. Whatever your ethnic roots, consider reclaiming a piece of ancient heritage. Modern society's clobbered our psyches to where we've lost connections not only to the planet, its fauna and foliage, but even with our true selves. Spending a week, alone, away from civilization, sans phone or IPod, unable to stuff my gut or fret about societal responsibilities--all that would force me to be with my Self. It would prove more difficult than the other 9, no doubt, but I should discover what's really under there. We could all maybe use some of that. Before we stop.

Rudy Ch. Garcia
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We need 1 new Bloguista contributor!

RudyG must take another spring sabbatical from La Bloga, since he enrolled in two courses to complete his teaching accreditation. Whether he survives the ordeal or not, La Bloga is searching for a new contributor who could more or less regularly post on Thursdays. If you are such a person, or want to nominate someone, please contact any Bloguista. At the least, Thursday will be available for Guest Posts.