Put yourself in the way of your fate, I tell my students, on the last day of the Wesleyan conference. It’s advice I got from a horoscope back when I was either getting into or out of graduate school. I don’t remember when. I tell them about community, about my experiences with the Asian American [...]
Entries from June 2008
June 24, 2008
never dark palace. made looked said.
Jane Kokernak at leafstitchword sent me over to Wordle today. Below is a word cloud using the pages of my unfinished new novel, The Queen of the Night, that I read from at the Wesleyan Writers Conference last week. And this is of my essay up at Guernica.
June 20, 2008
Korean Enough
I teach a class in the novel for three days at the Wesleyan Writer’s Conference, and then drive to New Haven to take the train into New York City Wednesday night, headed to an event co-hosted by Guernica Magazine and the Asian American Writers Workshop, a reading/party for the June fiction issue that I guest-edited. [...]
June 16, 2008
The Bishop’s Daughter
I am sitting in the audience listening to my friend Honor Moore read from her new book, The Bishop’s Daughter, here at the Wesleyan Conference, and with some excitement, I hear her talk about being “in England that summer with friends”. Hidden in that sentence was one of my favorite sprees ever, with her, a [...]
June 12, 2008
How To
On Monday, I strike my head at the gym. I don’t think much about it. But then as I sit drinking my coffee this morning at the cafe where I sit and work all day, a friend becomes concerned. Don’t even finish that coffee, he says. He drives me to my doctor and sits in [...]
June 9, 2008
And A Shot Rang Out
I never want to read anything again that doesn’t begin with, “And a shot rang out,” Kingsley Amis is reputed to have said to his son, Martin. In my memory it has something to do with the appearance of The Rachel Papers, but I don’t have the Martin Amis autobiography handy to check. I think [...]
June 6, 2008
Deconditioned
Because my therapist and I concluded that much of my recent lethargy and even depression began when I stopped using yoga to talk to myself, I find myself in the second floor yoga room of my gym at 7AM this morning, studiously full of rage at the man next to me, who I’ve decided is [...]
June 3, 2008
Eyes Up Here
Summer moves in. The heat makes me feel a little flushed, even when I’m doing nothing. Over the weekend, my downstairs neighbor moves out, and has the cable turned off, and as we shared his signal, my apartment goes wirelessfree. I walk around it and feel like it’s quieter. I go to the video store [...]
June 2, 2008
Reality-Based World Takes Slim Lead, Needs Your Vote
NY Times Public Editor puts writers (and public) on notice that while opinions are opinions, they should be based on facts. Wealthy no longer able to have cash bonfires, fearful of future. Here’s an example of the kind of article during the election cycle that makes me insane: this one asks whether or not Obama [...]
June 1, 2008
The Cellar Where They Keep The Little Dark Chocolates Filled With Almonds Of Heaven and Hell
A thick rain comes down this afternoon, sheeting rain. On the roof of the gym, from inside, it sounds like drums. In the short time it takes me to get to my car from the gym’s door, I’m soaked. At home, I’ve left two windows open and rain has blown in on the floor. A [...]
