Weekly Update: 11-7-16 Monster of Productivity

I fear I have become

A Monster of Productivity.

My skin has hardened into

Scales of armor:

A prison for my soul,

Small and groaning

From the pit of my stomach,

Giving me indigestion.

 

I fear my hands have sharpened into

Claws to shred soft young skin.

I fear my tongue has become a slab,

My voice a gravelly rumble.

I fear my eyes have become

Deadened to sunlight. I cannot see

A duck fishing on a rippling pond

In autumn. My mind are gears

That crunch and crunch as they

Grind together.

I fear

I have nothing left to fear

But myself.

* * *

Today I had the sudden realization that this week might actually be--comparatively--easy. So easy, that I might be able to spend this morning doing something fun and spontaneous.The revelation shocked me to the core.

Last week, I was busy with three jobs, two projects, and one Nanowrimo. But I wrote up a schedule, calculated my hours, and executed like a 5-Star General. For all my angst and fear of Nanowrimo, I ended up ahead of my word count. (Incidentally, last Friday, I also got a letter saying I got into my Credential Program--so yay for me--student teaching, here I come.)

Having decided that I had some free time, I took a walk this morning and read some poetry by Pablo Neruda. My mind was filled with motion and took quite a bit of coaxing to adapt to stillness and contemplation. I thought about how the plants of So-Cal never seem to change, that the seasons are indistinguishable, that it seems so timeless. And yet, when I went to the park, I could recall the me of yesteryears, angsting about where my life was going.

I haven't felt that sort of angst in a while.

Which is good, I suppose. I feel settled, I have a routine, I'm happy. But I worry that I spend too much time doing and not enough time being. Does that make sense? Take writing, for example. I've developed a considerable set of skills. I can outline, knock out word counts, revise, and edit. But do I actually have anything to say? Have I somehow lost the art in the obsession to master skills?

Maybe what I really want is time to relax. A large chunk of time where I'm not juggling schedules, projects, and expectations, where I can walk and read and have adventures and not worry about the To-Do List waiting for me at home.

Carmen's Haiku

She finds pixie dust

in corners. In jars she hides

pinches of magic.

All of my fellow Pendragons inspire me. We're a fantasy-based writing club that meets at Panera on Sundays for critiques; but some of us also meet Friday to do additional writing. Today, it was Carmen and me. She was describing how she tried to make everyday people and objects magical. I tried to add that she was able to see magic where others saw dust... and suddenly the poem was born.

Just hope the other Pendragons don't get jealous.

Poem: Picnic at Manzanar

Picnic at Manzanar

Twenty-eight rice balls
have gone in our bellies.
Now we sit swapping licorice
on shaded park benches

in a place where the desert
crashes into the mountains.
But had we arrived
just seventy years sooner

we might have dined on
Jello served on steamed rice
and listened to teeth chatter
in the cramped, hot mess hall.

How strange this quiet tragedy
has brought us all together
in a place where barbed wire
lies on the other side of the river.

--Rebecca Lang
January 27, 2015

* * *

I originally wrote this poem back in 2013 and even posted it on the blog. (You can see the old version here.) This week, I happened to glance at my old poems and decided to revise it. I'm not a poet by nature, but I do appreciate the craft of putting a feeling into words and then reducing those words to their absolute essence.

Manzanar is an old internment camp in central California, between the Mojave Desert and the Sierra Nevadas. Back in World World II, Japanese Americans were forcibly removed from their homes and imprisoned in this and many other camps across America. They had to share barracks with other families, endure public toilets (some without stalls), and dine in communal mess halls. Some of the cooks didn't know how to prepare Japanese cuisine and gave them things like the Jello rice slop. Life did improve, though, as the Japanese set about turning their sparse surroundings into a community.

I'm half Japanese American on my mother's side. My grandparents came from Hawaii, and my grandpa actually saw the planes fly toward Pearl Harbor. They were never interned, but they had to hide their culture. My grandma, for example, stopped going to Japanese school and get her hair permed to look more America. I don't actually think she minded that in the least. 

My mother spent much of her childhood denying that she was Japanese. She was and is very much American. It wasn't until she heard about Manzanar and other Japanese internment camps, that she began to connect with her Japanese heritage and even embrace it. I always thought it interesting how such a terrible event could bring out a sense of pride.