Blog

Write or die


I have this great writing life.

I have this great writing life where I actually produce sentences by breathing, mostly. If not, then by eating or going in to and then back out of rooms.

I have a few electronic and physical folders where I put nonce phrases. The slowest, most personal mid-week hours produce them. It is just like the plants in my garden: from a barren, cakey bed (otherwise fertile, if mismanaged) sprouts appear. No thanks to me, they just must (earth, water, sun, seed). When I notice that one has broken through the ground, I play a sound in my head, audioizing growth: crumpling paper bags or a limp celery stalk crushed under foot. My sharp pen briefly dragging across soft, cotton paper.

Muddling through, I often water my garden at night. Equally bad, I tend to look for writing work in the fridge. When the silence reminds me that I am alone, just two eyes and stocked shelves, I decide to get on with other chores to clear my day for work. I get that reading done. I make sure I’ve taken a shower. I wipe down the ever-filthy bathroom sink…

Ick. Clean.

At the end of the day, hands on my hips, I tell people (if I see them) that I am pursuing a writing career. Then I sleep and start over exactly the same the next day. In bed, I tell myself I am surviving.

"I’m worried about you," someone said.

So, out of thin air, I decided to write or die. And lately, I’ve been watering the garden before the sun comes around.

Pulling together a writing life and a productive garden requires a few well-documented habits. On writing, Annie Dillard will tell you about them, or Natalie Goldberg or Stephen King. On gardening, I follow Barbara Damrosch and my father.

If you’re interested in either or both of these struggles, unpolished, you can follow this blog.

This year, the number of active blogs approached a plateau. I find the stasis inviting, like rubble, a flushed toilet, trees at mid-summer foliage — these and the blogosphere are the welcome mats of aftermath. So’s the wake of my writing life.

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Blog

Even foodies sweat it out


On second thought, however, I chuckled, agreeing with her confounded expression. I quickly realized the sad hilarity of the food industry. As a self-proclaimed burgeoning foodie, complete with an Epicurious.com widget proudly affixed on my Macbook, I, too, found myself lost in the culinary sphere of everything from executing the most perfectly puffed pommes dauphin to creating a delicate but savory parsnip foam. Yet as a penny-pinching college student, I can’t fathom why I feel the need to procure my lox and cream cheese bagel breakfasts from the neighborhood Balducci’s on New Mexico Ave. in Washington, D.C.

It finally occurred to me that even if I, too, wanted to purchase the outrageously expensive pounds of wild ramps at $14.99, it has become nearly impossible for food snobs to divorce themselves from loving food to loving the distinction of said product. We also can note the hypocritical nature of food snobs and regular people alike—that it is often the same environmentally conscious, Obama-sign-toting liberals that are also desperate to purchase the 43-dollar liter of Italian olive oil for their dinner soiree bruschette. Do we all just ignore the startling statistic that half the world lives on less than two dollars a day? Or should we continue tickling our refined palettes with a Northern Bluefin tuna tartare amuse bouche?

Unlike the argument of criticizing how the wealthy spend their money on extraneous costs, this contradicting question strikes up a more unsettling debate. We all may share this land, but we certainly do not share the same woes that other families do across the world. The larger problem with the agony of food and the availability of it is that it is glaringly obvious that food snobs won’t recognize the poor and hungry because they simply do not understand the plight of those suffering in a perpetual state of gastric misery. But if a middle-class citizen hailing from an immigrant home, like myself, also fails to remember about the other half, who isn’t guilty of hypocrisy and sickening contradiction?

The point of this revelation is not to point fingers or engage in a battle of who deserves what blame but rather a quest in becoming cognizant of our international shortcomings and hopefully also taking action in the cause.

Now, if only an article or a blog could effectively solve the issue of a global food crisis and simultaneously transform the minds of the greedy and wealthy, everyone in the world from Monaco to Bangladesh could head to their local Whole Foods and devour a package of chili-infused Vosges chocolates perfect for any occasion, guilt-free.

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Political Prose

Uniting a house divided

Now Obama needs to choose his running mate, and there's a good chance that it will be a woman — though not necessarily Clinton.


Today’s primaries drew a final tide of delegates to Barack Obama’s camp that, according to the Associated Press, has put him over the top. Obama will be the first person of color in American history to be a major party’s presidential nominee. (InTheFray’s Bob Keeler called it.) As far as I’m aware, he’s also the first person of color to be chosen as a major party’s nominee for the chief executive of any Western government.

So, what next? Obama has to choose his running mate, and there’s great pressure coming from the Clinton camp — reportedly from Bill Clinton himself — to put Hillary Clinton on the ticket.

There’s a chance that might happen. When his campaign began in Springfield, Illinois, in February of last year, Obama consciously put on the mantle of Abraham Lincoln. From the Old State Capitol building where Lincoln delivered his "House Divided" speech, Obama evoked that past in his 21st-century call to bring the nation together and end political partisanship. Again, in his victory speech today in St. Paul, Minnesota, Obama quoted Lincoln twice, referencing the Gettysburg Address and calling for America to restore its image as the "last best hope on Earth." Now that he has secured the nomination, Obama may continue to walk in Lincoln’s steps by choosing a cabinet — and a vice president — from among his political opponents.

As Doris Kearns Goodwin writes, Lincoln passed over the traditional crowd of yes-men in favor of powerful rivals like Salmon P. Chase and Edwin M. Stanton (a man who once called Lincoln a "long-armed gorilla") in forming his cabinet. It was an audacious move that not only succeeded in quelling factionalism in the party, but also proved Lincoln’s mettle as the kind of confident leader who could lie down with lions and, in the end, win them over with his magnanimity and the strength of his convictions. (Stanton, in fact, grew to admire Lincoln and is credited with saying upon his death the famous lines, "There lies the most perfect ruler of men the world has ever seen … Now he belongs to the ages.") In spite of all the bad blood spilled on the campaign trail, perhaps Obama will likewise rise to the occasion and make peace with his fiercest opponent, Clinton.

My sense, though, is that it’s not likely to happen. Politics today operate on a different order of magnitude than they did in Lincoln’s time, and the huge, clanking campaign machine that turns politicians into presidents today has an inertia of its own. Lincoln, the obscure legislator from the Illinois backwoods, faced a different kind of pressure than Obama, the man at the center of a fundraising and pundit juggernaut. Obama may be willing to consider Clinton, but his coterie of advisers and legions of supporters are probably less forgiving. The race for the nomination has bruised too many egos, and ego is the currency of the political class surrounding every candidate. Beyond that, there’s also the sense that Clinton represents an old guard that stands in the way of Obama’s call for change.

I think Obama will move in one of two directions for his vice-presidential pick. He will choose someone with a military background who will give his ticket a command-in-chief gravitas that can compete with John McCain’s experience and win over older voters skeptical of his candidacy. (Someone along the lines of Wesley Clark comes to mind.)

The other likely course of action would be to choose a woman as a running mate. Clinton struck a vital chord in American politics with her candidacy, and the millions of voters inspired by the prospect of a woman as president offer the key to victory in November. It’s high time that a woman was in the White House, and though the vice presidency is the equivalent of a silver medal, it still means ascending the winner’s dais. If Clinton is not Obama’s pick, then he can at least defuse much of the resentment — and up the historical ante — by choosing another woman. A unbeatable ticket would be a combination of Obama and a moderate Republican senator like Olympia Snowe or Susan Collins, though that kind of bipartisanship would have been tough for even Lincoln (Snowe and Collins, for the record, support McCain), not to mention a slap to the face of Clinton’s supporters. But a running mate from the ranks of Democratic women governors or senators could also serve Obama well in the general election, especially if she comes from a swing state such as Michigan, Minnesota, or Missouri.

Of course, there’s still a chance that Obama will unite the Democratic house by choosing Clinton. If so, he will be following the lead of another tall, skinny legislator from Illinois.

Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen

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Blog

Solidify


It isn’t often that I get a seat on the way home from work.

By happenstance, today I am standing in front of someone who vacates her seat at Park Place. You can’t hesitate for a moment if you want a seat on a crowded train. Polite people stand a lot.

I’m engrossed in my latest read, Eat, Pray, Love, when the woman to my left asks me a question.

“Do you know what this word means?” She points to solidify in her book. She has a pleasingly round face and shaved head with a five o’clock shadow. The lack of hair makes her pink lipstick stand out against her chocolate skin.

“It means to make stronger.”

We smile at each other and return to our books. After a long day at work (and let’s face it, every day at work is a long day), I’m not in the mood for idle chit chat with strangers. I wish it could come naturally for me to be one of those people who love people, but I have to work at it. I make a New Year’s Resolution every January 1 to be friendlier to random strangers, and by January 5, I’m hoping another Blanche DuBois-type depending on the kindness of strangers doesn’t disturb me from my book.

Then the woman says, “I’m going to write that down in the back of my book so I don’t forget it.” She flips the pages to show me a long list of words on which she needed clarification.

I nod, unsure what else to say, and give her my polite this-conversation-has-run-its-course look. But she hits me with a question out of left field. “How do you know if you’re a visual or aural learner?”

I’m stumped. I don’t know how you know, but you just do. “I guess whichever comes easier for you.”

“Which one are you?”

Now this seems a bit personal. I glance out the window to see that we are only at Clark Street, a full six stops from home. There’s no way to end it politely, so I give in and close my book. “I’m definitely a visual learner.”

“How do you know?”

“Well, I’d rather read directions rather than hear them, for example.”

She writes this down, too. It seems that she is also a visual learner, but she just doesn’t realize it. Her face really is pleasant and she gives off a kind vibe, not a creepy one. “Do you have any tips for taking a test? I’m always looking for tips.”

It’s been many years since I’ve taken any tests. The last one, to complete my master’s degree, was a horror show — one essay question from each of seven courses completed. We were allotted one hour per question to write our answers in blue books. Remembering it even now makes me shudder — the studying, the aloofness from professors, the pressure.

But it wasn’t too long ago that I gave tests as an adjunct instructor at a local college. I try to tell her what I would have told my students. “Be confident and don’t second-guess your answers. Your first instinct is nearly always right.”

She goes on to tell me how inspired she is by the book she’s reading and since she’s read all three books by the author, she doesn’t know what she’ll read when she’s done. So now she’s trying to read very slowly. She also thanks me for talking to her. “You know, every time I get on the train I ask God to put me next to someone smarter than me. I’m trying to learn all of the things I didn’t learn when I was younger. I know I’m kind of old for this. It’s not easy starting from scratch.”

“No, but you can’t give up. It’s never too late.” The train pulls into Grand Army Plaza and I take my leave of her.

In a ten-minute conversation with a woman I’d never laid eyes on before, and probably never will again, I’ve been reminded to trust my instincts, that smarts don’t only come from a book and the power of tenacity. As it happens, all things on which my soul needed a bit of a refresher.

You can’t get that driving bumper-to-bumper in your SUV now, can you?

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personal stories. global issues.