Author: Jennifer

After two years and six months, the revised novel is finally out the door. In the damn mail, dude.

You’d think I feel an enormous sense of relief.

You’d be so wrong.

I’m still waiting for the elation. I’m not even close to feeling it. Maybe I haven’t internalized that the enforced morning march to the computer is over?

Although. . . It was kind of delicious to kick back in the reclining Queen Anne and, without a speck of guilt, read the bitch of a Sunday paper. In one sitting—comics and all. Did a crossword puzzle, even. On a Sunday. How remarkable is that!

Even more remarkable is that now I have anxieties out the wazoo:

Thank the good sweet stars we’re off to China. Plenty of ancient and beautiful things to distract me. New folks to meet. And, now, I can shift my worries to 14-hour flights, summer heat, squat toilets, soup for breakfast, and, the ever popular: children pointing at me. Okay, then. Ni hao. Coming at you. To relax, hear?

Been thinking a lot about China lately. The earthquake, most particularly.

But, my friendship with my Shanghaiese neighbor and cardio-walking partner—heightened now that she’s on the brink of moving to the South Bay—has also pulled China into a unique kind of focus. At the end of our morning walk, Fei-Fei and I stop in a eucalyptus grove in Golden Gate Park where, laughing, she teaches me to count in Mandarin while we see-saw our arms and rotate our necks and fight dizziness and talk and talk about Chinese culture, mores, norms.

Been also going to the Chinese Consulate and waiting on block-long lines (about 20 percent of San Francisco’s population is Chinese), because of our impending trip to Beijing, Xian, Nanjing, Suzhou, Hangzhou, Shanghai.

So, you know. Took three visits.

One visit to take a number and wait, only to discover from an lcd monitor that new requirements in this Year of the Olympics oblige every visitor to present firm documentation of all hotel bookings and plane tickets.

Second visit to turn in said documentation with the applications. And also to be questioned nicely but firmly about the “Writer” designation I’d filled in under “Occupation.” Uh-oh. (At least I hadn’t checked the “Journalist” box, buddy. Bugs in my green tea?)

Third visit to wait again in a ragged line, monitored as usual by two tall, firm-faced Russian private security guys. I turned over the $300. And, Je-sus, finally had the two visa-stamped passports hot in my hands.

Less than a week later, I found myself back at the Consulate. This time waiting on a solemn line to pay respects to the more than 60,000 people dead in Sichuan province. The Chinese Consulate-General bowed as attendants handed me a white paper carnation to signify death and mourning. I am the only non-Chinese person. My first reaction is to balk, wait outside. But my friend gently pulled me in.

As we shuffled on line, she whispered to me that I am going to be on the Chinese news channels. Indeed I can already see the photographers eyeing me. I could not feel any more Black. The attendants broke out a fresh condolence book because, I suspect, I’d be writing in English. They bowed and handed me a votive candle, the little light like a gem. My friend and I clasped it in our prayerful hands, bowed three times to the altar. Emotions rush me so hard I am only vaguely aware of the camera flashes, the video recorders. I set the candle down to join the hundreds of votives already set out. I bow, bow, bow again, my legs tea.

Wow, you guys. Thanks for all your very flattering emails about my piece “[tag]Blue Black Berry[/tag],” newly published in [tag]Fringe Magazine[/tag].

Isn’t it supremely paradoxical that a piece so flagrantly autobiographical—vintage photos and all—should butt right up against my blogged denial that my current novel is sheer fiction? “Blue Black Berry” is all me. Fiction only lightly filigrees this willfully-blurred, kind of meta piece.

I hope to God I’m done writing about the event that has so colored my life. (Accidental pun acknowledged and unedited.) For this is the third time I’ve written about a subject that is deeply personal. It’s a low and steady thrum in my life. It is raw and honest, and will probably make some of the people in my family uncomfortable.

But writing about it is my way of exorcising, I’ve come to see. For I’ve rid myself of The Nasties before by setting them down:

One late January morning in 1988, I went with my brother, my sister, to fulfill the Jamaican requirement that bodies be officially identified before they are released for burial. The image of my dead mother being sat up to be dressed by the mortuary’s two wizened women attendants was a short and ugly loop of film that disturbed me and iced my gut for a very long time.

The moment I wrote about it in my abbreviated memoir, “Horse Dead, Cow Fat,” I was free. (Until I called it up just now, of course.)

Perhaps I need to write down something else that has been haunting me since Christmas. On the plane to Rio de Janeiro, I woke up to find my husband gone from the seat beside me. In my fog, I looked around and saw him a couple of rows back in the darkened cabin, intently reading in an aisle seat’s small round of light. I get up, find my shoes, and go to say hey, hi, to him on my way to the loo. In passing, I tenderly rub my knuckles on his overnight bristles. He looks up at me, polite and stricken.

Awk. Wasn’t him. I’d caressed the face of complete stranger, his wife beside him giving me the same half-fearful look you give crazy folks. In the heat of my profuse apologies, she slightly rolled her eyes as she almost wagged her head. Her man, embarrassed for me, ever so mildly smiled.

Crap, crap, crap, crap, cringe!

Okay, I’ve set it down here. We’ll see how well my theory of demon-beating holds.

[Tag]Jennifer Coke[/tag]

Tell the truth. When you read a novel, is the protagonist the author on the back cover?

I’m asking, because more than three times already, someone has slipped and called me by the name of the main character in my new piece, “Grace Notes.” Oops.

Okay, she’s a Jamaican woman who lives in Park Slope, Brooklyn. These are my unescapables. I’m protesting into the wind, I know., but she is so not me. In a way she’s almost a stranger. Odd to say, clearly. Yet she’s a woman I’ve seen on the streets. I’ve watched her on a plane. I’ve watched her buy magazines. She’s this tall and too-lean, brown woman, younger than me (naturally), prissy, who never swears. She seldom says what she’s thinking; she forgets to breathe.

It’s a little off-putting only because of the events that happen in the story. Grace Notes is a kind of domestic, literary novel about sex (there’s a fair amount of it), and the fallout of one brief sexual encounter. Sometimes when I’ve come together with folks for a critical reading, there’s an exaggerated dancing of eyebrows at the naughty bits. Which has prompted me, embarrassed, to remind folks, Hey, now, guys, this ain’t me. I just know, though, that everybody’s picturing me there in that bed. Or wherever.

I feel sorrier for my poor husband. People ask me about the book at parties. I give a thumbnail of the plot line. And without fail—without fail—someone will turn to my husband and say, Uh-oh, what do you think about this, then? My Beloved, smiling very broadly, gives them his standard line: I’ve already told her if the guy in her book has anything resembling me, I’m calling the lawyer. I’m so glad his eyes twinkle as he says it.

He needn’t worry. I don’t think. The husband in the book is a PR guy, a big ole sports-obsessed, Midwestern Italian man, impulsive as all hell. Not even close, dude.

You know, I believe in my heart that I would acknowledge if the character were me, or if the circumstances were particular to me. Fact is, this novel spored while I was a juror in a murder trial. I wondered about the wife of one of the witnesses, the conversations they would have to have. It never crossed my mind that people would assume it’s my own damn life.

Perhaps it’s an inevitability that people will assume your fiction is autobiographical. Here’s a quote from the San Francisco Chronicle’s David Wiegand in his review of “Miss Austen Regrets” on PBS’ “Masterpiece:”

What we know for sure about [Jane] Austen’s 41 years on the planet comes from the few letters her sister failed to burn after the author’s death and from a memoir written by Austen’s nephew many years later. With such a dearth of facts, it has been left to her readers to fill in the blanks with whatever clues they believe they find in her six novels.

Jesus. Thank God he goes on to say, though, “In the end, however, they always have to wonder if their construct is true or not.”

Then just yesterday, tooling around, I stumbled across this article by Sue Miller, Virtual Reality: The Perils of Seeking a Novelist’s Facts in Her Fiction. She opens her essay with:

Before my last book tour, I made myself memorize a quotation from an interview with John Cheever that began, “It seems to me that any confusion between autobiography and fiction debases fiction.” Thus girded, armored, I hoped to silence forever the questioner who sits there in the third row waiting to ask, “How much of your work is autobiographical?”

Maybe I’ll just shut up now. And eat it.

[tags] David Wiegand, Jane Austen, Grace Notes, Sue Miller, John Cheever [/tags]

I, of course, should be slashing and tightening and tweaking the 420 pages of the novel. But, what am I doing?

Squandering an hour or more making an avatar of myself. As we say in Jamaica, cu ya (look at this):

It made my husband laugh–he thought it was cute. I only WISH I looked as good as this chickie! And, wasn’t it genius that one of my choices for a background was SF’s own fabulous Palace of Fine Arts?

Hey, go to Meez.com and give it a try. Will you be like me and try to put together someone that kinda looks like you? Or would you go for your alternate deep, cool and damn goofier self? I want to see it!

La Recoleta Cemetery; Iguazú/Iguaçu Falls; Christ the Redeemer Statue

[Click photos to Enlarge]

It wouldn’t be Christmas without me and the Sweetie chasing down summer, right? This year, Argentina and Brazil—and the stunning Iguazú or Iguaçu Falls, depending on which side of the border you happen to find your feet. (For more photos, click on the name of the country.)

We had to look hard to find Christmas, boy. In Catholic countries yet. Buenos Aires, for example, had slim, slim festive pickings. There was an almost total absence of Christmas decorations—lights even—along showpiece boulevards or stores or parks. So, true, we did find Father Christmas in a mall, and a lone extravagant Christmas tree. But we saw not a single Santa line. Heard not one note of Christmas music. Saw not one red Salvation Army kettle in all the time we were in Argentina.

Christmas did pop up momentarily in Rio de Janeiro, though. Coca Cola sponsored an hour’s worth of a spectacular Feliz Natal Parade, which obliged that there was a lead pack of Coke trucks outlined in white lights. Like this:Coke in Lights

Human Christmas Tree

It’s Copacabana, and Cariocas have been to samba school for their Carnival—they’ve had years of practice putting on a scene. This time mostly for kids? Hundreds of folks paraded as characters from cartoons and children’s books dancing PG-sedately and synchronized to music from “My Fair Lady.”

It rained like the dickens, and the parade started three hours later than advertised. Nobody grumbled. Except for, well, maybe a few North American tourists. Wussies, we watched high and dry from the tenth floor.

Little Guy Dropping Off His List

So, all right, to be fair, we also did glimpse Christmas at the Crystal Palace in rural Petropolis, a two-hour, gorgeous drive from Rio through mountains and valleys and lush forest vegetation. Again, no long lines for Santa. Only a handful of kids smiling for a parent’s camera, the kids getting one piece of candy from Papai Noel and a chance to deposit their little lists in a box. Pretty cool, pretty low-key.

Toy Soldier (Deceased)

Still. Here I am again, looking for the Christmas of my fantasies. Of course, it ain’t anywhere. It’s never going to be anywhere.

And, yet, something absolutely special happened. We got to spend some time with my eldest brother and his family in South Beach, FL, and got a glimpse of how incredible it would be if we knew them better. And we surely did nyam up the groan of great Jamaican food they laid out for us. First taste of ackee, mashed green bananas, bammie—any Jamaican food for that matter—for Mr. Sweetie. Oink. Oink. Snort!

Camille

So, yah, I know. I haven’t written here since last Christmas. Thanks for wanting to know what’s up with me.

I’ve been writing, basically. Pulling prose and chaffering with myself. And avoiding the pull of writing here—which is infinitely easier. And a bleeding thief of time. But, look. It’s September, and after 130 new pages, here I am butt-deep in the final scenes of “Grace Notes.”

Don’t clap yet. I still have to start from the top, do continuity stuff, cut stuff, spackle stuff, love stuff and hate lots and lots of stuff.

Yah, but, sure, but yah, but what else have I been doing?

The NIH decided to discontinue funding my sweet little job helping to monitor research protocols for safety. I got shunted to an execrable job with two factional bosses of the same Christian first name. I’m still having horrific dreams about that job, boy. Got some character studies out of my time there, though, and I’ve soooo used them in the novel. Like this. Tee hee. Can you see the writer’s revenge dripping from my mouth?

The awful truth is that much of the writing I’d done during those double-stressed months had to be thrown out.

Fuh. Good to be gone from that. Good not to have to rush home and square myself in front of the blinking computer. Good to have time to fight snails and other leaf-cutting bugs in our little garden. Good to walk uphill to get dim sum. Good to have time to go dream by a cold ocean.

We also went to Greece and Istanbul for three weeks. The photos, of course, are languishing on my desktop. Another casualty of the book. But, c’mon, at least I’ve downloaded them from the camera? Here’s a tease:

Also, in the months I haven’t written here, wonderful Grace Paley has died. She was 84. I studied briefly with her, and I’m so very grateful her life brushed mine. See my old comments about her here in the New York Times, if you’d like.

The [tag]Amaryllis[/tag] Bloomed Exactly on Time This Year

No exotic travel photos to post here this year this Christmas. We stayed home for a change, hung out with great friends, saw the high-brow Smuin Christmas Ballet, the low-brow “Oy Vay in a Manger.” And listened to this Sarah McLachlan cut more times than I care to admit.

But, hey, you interested in a dozen things I remember about [tag]Christmas in Jamaica[/tag]?

www.jcdc.org.jm/jonkunnu_characters4.htm
www.jamaicans.com/cooking/seasonal/sorrel.shtml
www.basic-recipes.com/xms/de/jamaicanpudd.htm

This week I was doing research for my novel, and all of a sudden I had tears on my face.

One of my fictional guys is Terrence Yee Fat. He’s a biracial, bisexual Jamaican man mostly because I need him to represent the kind of duality, the straddle, immigrants sometimes feel, do. I’m in the middle of a scene where he’s cooking, and I wanted him to have a slight [tag]word-retrieval problem[/tag]. Why? No good reason—other than when I’m the least bit distracted, my brain will perversely not fetch the word I need.

I love to blame this occasional tip-of-my-tongue problem on the code-switching I’ve had to do since, oh, when I was pre-verbal, probably. Jamaican toddlers learn a patois dialect in tandem with English. In our house, as in many households, the parents disapproved of the patois and corrected hell out of our grammar, pronunciation, accent.

So, I move to these United States and what happens? Language gets even more complicated. I need to remember to pronounce words differently. Sometimes my mouth still says, “ceme-tree,” instead of “ceme-tery.” Sometimes it says “lef-tenant,” instead of “loo-tenant.” And, of course, vocabulary changes on me. I remember bitching, in one of my first letters home, that in America a roll is a bun, a bun is roll, and a biscuit is a cookie. Also, what would be the American word for the patois, “cotch”, which means, like, to share a small space with someone?

See what I mean?

Factor in, now, that my people habitually say the generic “ting deh” (“that thing”) as a kind of placeholder for something whose name is not known, or has been forgotten, or stays undelineated out of laziness. It’s like the American, y’know, “whachmacallit.”

Okay. So, in researching this word-retrieval ting deh, I discover that there’s an official name for this problem. It’s a learning disability of sorts: [tag]Dysnomia[/tag].

Can I tell you? Stumbling across this link was like being kissed hard, sweet, long. For also here, was a list of other learning disabilities.

And, finally. Finally, I found….myself.

My whole life I’ve wanted to know EXACTLY why math is Sanskrit to me. Why I consistently misdial telephone numbers. Why I cannot read a simple compass to save my stupid life.

Think not being able to do basic math was fun? My father, God rest his soul, used my younger sister’s math skill to shame me into applying myself harder to my sums. An older sibling asked me why I was so dumb; I was already twelve years old and could not read a damn clock. A very reasonable man I was dating yelled harsh and very ugly because I couldn’t tell from the map what the next Interstate exit would be.

I’m over here playing my little violin while I give you a minute to feel bad for me.

Thanks.

We all have things we can’t do. I know that. But I had a moment of absolute, shoulder-lowering relief I felt when I found that I suffer from [tag]Dyscalculia[/tag] (“dis-cal-cew-lee-ah.”) [tag]The Nalanda Institute[/tag], I thank you. Thank you, BBC. Thank you, [tag]Wikipedia[/tag]. Thank you, [tag]LDA of America[/tag]. Thank you, Dr Bjorn Adler[/tag].

Difficulty giving and receiving change? Yes!
Easily disoriented (including left/right orientation) Yup.
Hard time learning musical concepts? Yeah.
Following directions in sports? Please. You don’t know.
Keeping track of scores and players during games such as cards and board games? Help me, Rhonda.

Oh, God. Diagnosis and validation. A dunce mi nuh dunce after all.

[tags] Jamaican patois, Ting Deh, cotch, Rasta/Patois Jamaica Dictionary

[Click on all photos to enlarge; toggle F11 for full screen]

Fog Breath
The morning fog smelled of pine trees today—green and almost vanilla sweet. (Doesn’t always, of course. Sometimes it stinks of beached and rotting seaweed.) I’m not a true fan of fog. In fact, in polite company I refer to it as the fogging fog.

We’re new enough to San Francisco, though, that I can still wonder at the warp and wisp of the different kinds of fog: The tuck of fog low over the bay. The high fog I can see a block away, but is invisible where I’m standing. The skim-blue fog that races east on streets, that smokes trees, that ticks from eaves and awnings. Heavy fog that jewels the dense canopies of cypress trees and falls like a sudden splatter of rain.

If only fog didn’t so gray the day. Or noir the night. Or give a false sense of an impending cloudburst.

It’s the end of September. Fall is here. And so—still—is the “summer” fog. I know it’s fall because TV folks on the East Coast are wearing serious, autumn-colored clothes. In SF, this city of long-sleeves and sweater sets, we’re still wearing pastel. Under fleece, sometimes, but still. It has to be fall? There’s no morning sun streaming through our skylight at 6:30 am. People are back to school. There’s NFL football.

It’s not that I don’t remember the turn, turn of seasons. I do. I may be a one-season kind of tropical woman, but, I’m not that much of a dolt that I don’t love the ripeness of autumn leaves. Even if my dread of winter’s deep-freeze used to limn the beauty. Fall in the City by the Bay means that you might stumble upon a sweet gum tree with its starred leaves dying red. And it means any day now I’ll notice that the fog has burned away for the rest of the year.

I’m impatient now, man. Because I’m just beginning to get a preview of the absolute best part of living in the West. We live not a mile from the Pacific Ocean. Where the fog forms, certainly. But also where the sun will set with exaggeration as often as the winter rainy season allows. Here’s the evening view from the Room of My Own where I sit and try to pull fresh prose from my, uh, um, person:

Sky Flambé 9.18.06	Smolder 9.19.06	Oh, Drama 9.21.06

And here’s Friday, December 08, 2006, 7:07:10 AM. Good Morning, Everyone!

[tag] San Francisco, fog, sunset[/tag]