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The Knife and Incompetence

I felt like I’d been under the surgeon’s knife while simultaneously serving as the surgical nurse without adequate training. I preferred feeling competent, in charge and in no need of deep surgery.

Big Topics at Midnight and I were separate, but I hadn’t yet been able to let her have the teen-aged freedom she’d prefer. The mother bear in me roared when she faced the knife.

Part of me knew that the reconstructive operation required to transform this richly formatted and illustrated book/baby into an ebook was an opportunity to offer it in a form that would delight many readers. Yet part of me wailed and fought every step of the way. I didn’t know how to participate in the process, and I hated feeling like an incompetent mother.

I couldn’t even figure out what questions to ask to get the full sweep of what I needed to change. Yes, I could include illustrations but they must be in-line (translated to mean without text wrapping around the photographs). Each drawing had to be a certain size (i.e. removed, “pixel” and “dpi” requirements followed, then reinserted in the text). I could have illustrations or photographs, but not too many (130 illustrations and over 50 photographs was WAY over the limit). I was free to use two different standard fonts (of course, mine weren’t standard, and it turned out using only one font was best). Not to mention issues with block quotes and…

Some of this angst felt familiar. Waking up to rules of the game that were different than I’d learned along the way. Letting go of how I believed a book “ought” to look. Struggling to find ease with the disorienting process of continually learning something new.

I thrashed. I complained. I tossed and turned in the night. But I learned, once again, to keep walking anyway. Finding people to help along the way. Trusting the guidance that came. Releasing regret that I didn’t know this or that earlier, that I could have saved time or money or frustration if only I’d known ____ sooner. Remembering that feeling incompetent wasn’t the end of the world.

Big Topics at Midnight, the book with wild diversity in art, words, layout and fonts is still available, untouched by the surgeon’s knife. Big Topics at Midnight, the ebook with wild technological options of adjusting font size and format while holding a library of books tucked in your backpack, will soon be available.

Waking up is not for the faint of heart, whether around the big topics or computer details or simply getting out of bed and walking into a day filled both with mystery and the known.

As the sun rises on this nearly completed ebook project, I remember—despite the knife and feeling like an idiot, it’s been an amazing journey. And Big Topics at Midnight can stand strong without my help.

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Black and White

There it was again. Black and white. Separated.

My brother-in-law told me that in Shreveport, Louisiana, his hometown, a black man accused of murder would have a predominantly white jury. Not because Shreveport is filled with white people—there are more black residents than white in that city.

The issue is racism. Today. Not just in the past. Not just in Shreveport.

It is possible for people with white skin like mine to live in white-skinned neighborhoods and to look at our own experience as the norm. Sequestered, it is easy to be oblivious to injustices such as this one. I know. I did it for much of my life. I still forget.

But I prefer to live in the real world, where the diversity of our experiences is noticed.

I live in Portland, Oregon, famous for our micro-brewed beer, bicycle commuting and progressive green living. We are also known as the whitest big city in the country—or, as the census would label it, the “non-Hispanic whitest” big city in the country. We have our own Jim Crowe history. Today, gentrification is growing as certain neighborhoods become white and artsy, squeezing out long-term, black-skinned residents. I enjoy wandering among the shops on two of these streets, Albina and Mississippi, but I understand the cost to the families who once called this neighborhood home. On another front, Karyn Hanson, a friend and a city of Portland civil engineer, is working on a process to shed light on institutional bias that has racial impacts.

The focus of my life work is to open up conversations across our differences. I want relationships to hold the possibility of transformation rather than remain caught in historical or present day schism and distress. But that doesn’t mean I can ignore signs all around me that things are still amiss. Waking up first requires seeing the world around me with clear eyes in order to catch sight of things that don’t make sense and degrade us all.

I can’t stand on my high horse, however. I was asleep for far too long to have any moral superiority. I’ve woken up and fallen to my knees in shame and sickness at what I saw. But the issues at hand were far too important for me to stay there.  And injustice wasn’t the whole story. I know I need to stand up and bring my whole self to the conversations and actions across the gaps.

It is humbling. It is frustrating sometimes. But I don’t want my children and grandchildren to be trapped in the same racist systems as my ancestors. As we are today. It harms us all.

I’ve experienced the shifts that can happen in sustainable, collaborative partnerships. Not easy. Not quick. But absolutely possible.

Even in Louisiana or Mississippi or Texas or Oregon.

I am staking my life on it.

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Books for My Pilgrimage

Reading is my favorite doorway into new thoughts, experiences and perspectives.  After I’d complied my list of favorite books for inclusion in both Big Topics at Midnight and my website—a bit overwhelming to say the least … Are these my favoritest favorites? Am I forgetting a cherished book? …—I stepped back and looked over the list with new eyes.

I saw lots of diversity on the reading list, but was aware that most of the authors had white skin.  I challenged myself to expand the edges of my reading.  Last week as I was gathering up books from every room in the house to return them to the shelves or library, I realized I’d stepped up to the plate.  And I loved every book.

I’ve been drawn to novels, and here are the best from my summer’s reading:

The Girl Who Fell From the Sky by Heidi W. Durrow.  As her website says, “Inspired by a true story of a mother’s twisted love, The Girl Who Fell from the Sky reveals an unfathomable past and explores issues of identity at a time when many people are asking ‘Must race confine us and define us?’”  Great story about love and tragedy and healing, all held in a biracial family.

Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler.  This narrative leads through the fire of a civilization in chaos, but “what begins as a flight for survival soon leads to something much more: a startling vision of human destiny… and the birth of a new faith.”  I love books that head straight into tough, big topics and find transformation on the otherside.

Women of the Silk by Gail Tsukiyama.  I actually have reread one of her novels (Dreaming Water) and read this one.  Tsukiyama is a beautiful storyteller, with her books set in China (this one), Japan and/or the US.

And for a different sort of diversity, I picked up Second Son: Transitioning Toward My Destiny, Love, and Life a memoir by Ryan Sallans.  A new friend of mine is a female to male transgendered person.  His experience is far outside of mine and I wanted to know more.  So I picked up this book, learned lots and plan to seek out a few more.

Nothing like listening to someone else’s story—in fiction or memoir—to learn more about others and myself.

How about you?  What edges do you want to push out a bit through your own reading?

Enjoy.

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Celebration at the Gate

The blue moon and Big Topics at Midnight came out within twelve hours of each other.

In the middle of the reading last Thursday night, one of the friends who had gathered to celebrate the official coming out of Big Topics at Midnight: A Texas Girl Wakes Up to Race, Class, Gender and Herself pointed out a large window in St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church’s parish hall and called our attention to the bright full moon. In a room filled with old and new friends, family, the palpable spirits of my parents, grandparents and other ancestors and friends who couldn’t physically make it to the party, my life’s story was connected to the far away moon. It seemed fitting.

August 30, 2012 was a gateway moment for me and Big Topics at Midnight. Seven years of writing and editing, and two months of printing and preparing my website and beginning my blog were officially over. That part of my journey with Big Topics has closed. Finished. Done.

For years, I dreaded the next phase, commonly called marketing. I have had no experience in this aspect of promoting a book. Resource books packed full of ideas about getting my book out into the world were, and still are, overwhelming.

Then I began to remember. Every step of the way, I’d been guided, supported and excited about what was unfolding. Sometimes it was historical research, such as finding more information about the general that led my ancestor Jacob into war in 1775—where, who and why they fought. Sometimes it was my own shame that boiled and bubbled and had to be navigated before I could continue to write. Sometimes it was a paragraph that started when an opening line came to me first thing in the morning and flowed for hours before I could stop to get my first cup of tea. I trusted that the marketing and promotion phase of the book would unfold in the same way.

And now this phase is beginning to open up with ease. I know I want to work primarily through networks of friends and organizations. The path ahead is getting clearer. Good thing, because I’m already on it.

Signing Big Topics at Midnight for Ron, my brother-in-law

I may still be in the dark about all the steps I need to take in the upcoming months and years. And the Earth is trembling by the crumbling of unsustainable and unjust economies and structures. Here at this gate, it is midnight.

And yet the night sky also holds the moon and the stars. Civilization’s flickering lights can block the light of the cosmos from our sight, but the light remains that the darkness cannot overcome.

Spirit and Earth. Moon and a book. Personal and global. Big Topics at Midnight is the story of one small life—mine—and, as you remember and tell your story, we can support each other as we wake up and walk together. Shared stories hold transformative power strong enough to change the world.

I am on the other side of the gate now. My book is no longer exclusively mine. She has a life of her own. I have some remaining responsibilities,  big ones, but we are on a different journey now. Ideas are bubbling. People are stepping in to help show the way. The next part of this grand adventure has begun.

Thank you. Help. Amen.

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Sometimes lists. Sometimes listening.

I am a list queen.

Right now, I have three lists going at once—things I need to do next week, my general list and a book  order list.

Tonight at 11:30 p.m., I left behind a gently snoring Howard to get up and write down a detail about the book’s coming out party next week (on my general list) and the name of a friend who wanted me to send her mother a copy of my book (book order list).  Then I noticed that my general list was too messy—too many things crossed out—so I rewrote the list.

It’s almost midnight, and here I am still up.  Again.

I recall my reputation with grocery lists.  Nine times out of ten, I either leave my list at home or on top of the onions in the produce aisle within ten minutes of beginning my shopping.  Eight times out of those nine, I get home from the store with almost everything that was on the lost list. Knowing that about myself, however, doesn’t calm my urgent fears that THIS TIME I will forget something.

With my book just out in the world and the huge unknowns of marketing looming large in my mind, I want to cling to lists—mine and the ones that fill self-publishing books. The trouble is that my best work doesn’t flow when I’m trying to check things off.  I may feel efficient, yet something is missing.

Odd thing is, I know that my creative juices flow best when the prompting comes from deep inside me, bubbling up from my belly.  I wake with a few sentences luring me to sit down and write.  An urge arises to call someone.  An idea comes for a gathering of friends to mark a special moment in our lives.  Thoughts arrive gently, seemingly out of nowhere, each holding a bit of sparkle.

These nudges seem untimely, scattered or illogical when I try to understand them with my mind.  But time and time again, they lead to places beyond anything imagined or possible through my lists.  I get an image of the big picture of marketing the book—reaching out to meet people who are already waking up to the big topics rather than me out trying to sell the book—and suddenly the numerous details don’t seem as important.

While writing Big Topics at Midnight, I began to learn the language of my body.  Now when I pay attention to my belly or back, it gives me information about unnoticed feelings or the need to stop for a few moments and stretch. I’ve learned to hear these subtle forms of guidance even though my head often shouts that all of this intuition stuff is just a burp from my imagination.

I was born with a mind that easily learned the “right” form of intelligence—think things through, be logical and rational, and be able to defend my thinking with solid facts.  Only later did I discover the wisdom of my belly, intuition and Spirit.

It wasn’t easy to incorporate this more feminine way, of knowing, and the power of the “one right way” has a stronghold on me.  Things on my lists seem so urgent, so clear.  Intuition, on the other hand, comes sometimes in a haze and always with its own timing.  I’m not fond of waiting.

It is 12:15 a.m.  I’m up with the cool night breezes and occasional cars driving by trying to remember what I know: My most important spiritual practice is learning how to stand in the middle of the paradoxes of life.  Nevertheless, it doesn’t seem very efficient.

Actually, it’s a pain sometimes.

Lately I’ve stumbled under the weight of getting to all of the tasks on my book lists.

Still, I want to do both—following my inner guidance and my carefully crafted agenda.

So I fall down.  Then I stand back up again and return to my practice of taking the best from both approaches.  Sometimes lists.  Sometimes listening.  Sometimes pushing forward to get things done.  Sometimes sitting outside under the tree and slowing down enough to hear that still small voice inside.

Sometimes I’m a listening queen.