YAY! UCROSS!

This is one of the really great things about being a writer. Writer's Residencies. I just heard that I get to go to Ucross once again. I began work on Turpentine the last time I was there and it was such a great experience, I've wanted to go back ever since. Ucross provides very nice rooms (bedroom and private study) delicious food prepared by a talented chef, lunch brought to your study every day and left quietly by your door as to not disturb, beautiful views and places to walk, and a number of fellow guests who are prose writers, poets, visual artists, film-makers, to talk to after hours.
You should apply.

roller derby for OBAMA

I went to see my darling niece chew up the competition at her roller derby bout in Seattle...(she is beautiful) and saw this button on this bag. May Obama be as successful in his bout as the Pink Pistols were in theirs!

edit, clarify, converge, clean-up, understand

Three chapters when one would do. Two scenes that are point for point alike, but set in different places in the novel. A character protests three times, four times... and all that nodding! I'm at the end of the novel, and more than anything else, I'm trying to clarify, simplify. The shadow on the edge, the out of focus figure, the attempt to see what's there (is it there?) by paring away the extra.

Protest

Standing in a crowd of people, coming to the line that the authorities say you must not cross. To acquiesce means your shout is not as loud, your message may not be heard. To go forward-risk arrest, injury, perhaps. It is a time in which a larger import, yet one distant, more abstract, is in conflict with the personal self. I don't want to get hurt, arrested. I don't even want to be rude.




Protesting is like voting, but corporeal. Standing in a crowd one easily recognizes you could go home and no one would even notice. Your body among all those bodies is negligible. However, it is the act of letting go of the ego, the insistence that only the recognition of the individual matters, that allows for the great movements of idea, of humanitarianism... and even evil. The great power is the balance between the individual and the crowd; to both think for oneself and be willing to act, vote, protest, arm and arm with many.