AWP Weekend Round-Up

A recap of AWP experiences by Kore author Heather Cousins,
author of Something in the Potato Room.

While I was volunteering at the AWP table, Patricia Smith came by. Patricia selected my book for the 2009 Kore Press First Book Award. This was the first time that I have spoken to her in person; it was wonderful to be able to grab her and hug her to thank her for selecting my manuscript. She was sweet and encouraging. I gave her three big hugs. And she smelled like poetry. Just kidding. About smelling like poetry. I'm not sure what poetry smells like. She just smelled nice and warm. I also got to meet Carolyn Forche while volunteering at the table. She came by to autograph copies of broadsheets of one of her poems that Kore produced. She and Patricia and Barbara Cully were all at the table at once, and I was scrambling around looking for a pen for Carolyn to sign broadsheets and hugging Patricia and trying not to knock over the Kore table and feeling like my head was going to explode at the thought of all the amazing women and poetry powers gathered in one small space!

I gave Carolyn a signed copy of my book, telling her, as I handed it over, apologetically, "You don't have to read it." Patricia laughed kindly at me and told me to never say such a thing about my work. She said, "Whoa! Have we got a lot to teach you!" Then she laughed and put a wise hand on my back. Patricia gave me a much-needed jolt of power, strength, and confidence.

I was impressed by the number of people, while working the Kore table, who came by and expressed a love and interest in Kore Press. There were also many women who stopped who were not familiar with Kore and who, when I explained the Press's project of publishing women writers, stood up a little straighter and got a little glimmer in their eye and said something to the effect of: This is so important. Or, there need to be more publisher's--like this--for women's voices. I got into conversations with several women about the failure this year of Publishers Weekly to recognize any works written by women in their list of the "Best Books of 2009." There were also several brief, but important conversations about the marginalization of women's perspectives and women's voices. I found this marginalization of women's spaces, lives, and writing brought up in panels that I hadn't thought would necessarily address , including Thursday's panel with Cate Marvin, Malachi Black, Dean Young, Jerry Harp, and Roger Reeves, "Toward a New Criticism," and in Saturday's panel "Hot/Not: A Panel on Sentiment," with Joy Katz, Sally Ball, Mark Bibbins, Jenny Browne, and Sarah Vap. Vap presented a paper that I thought was particularly eloquent and beautiful. Several writers in this last panel addressed the idea that the sentimental is often, problematically, connected with the lives and emotions of women and children.

I also attended the WILLA Benefit at the Denver Press Club on Friday night, which was a wonderful event in support of women writers. It featured burlesque dancers and roller derby girls, as well as some great poets: Patricia Smith, Kim Addonizio, Dorianne Laux, Cathy Park Hong, Ana Bozicevic, and two of my own friends, who earned PhDs in creative writing from the University of Georgia: Lara Glenum and Danielle Pafunda.

The Play “Coming in Hot”
by Joanna Frueh

Tenderness is not what I expected from a play based on a book by women soldiers. Yet tenderness is the quality that has most stayed with me from Coming in Hot. The actor Jeanmarie Simpson delivered the work as a monologue that propelled into the audience the individual emotional atmosphere of 14 “characters,” the authors who had served in the United States military .

On a bare, shallow stage the script from which Simpson read sat on a black music stand while next to her the sound artist Vicki Brown, on viola, played her own music, whose ethereal eeriness functioned to paradoxically lift many of the stories from grimness, such as corpses described in detail and a fellow soldier/rapist eluded, and to ground those stories in tonal roots. I heard angelic music. I heard the music of soil, of death, of passions confined, plundered, gushing.

Huge images, including those of women troops, Baghdad street scenes, the solider authors themselves in military gear, and Simpson performing the play in a different space and costumed as a soldier–white T-shirt, dog tag–and tending a coffin, projected to the left of her and Brown. The images held my attention far less than did the performers. I like LIVE. I like its directness and expressiveness. I like being in the presence of human beings breathing, sweating, and creating. With them, I feel my own presence. I liked the simplicity of dress–black, which I read as neutral more than funereal. In black’s neutrality and with my eyes mostly on the performers, their art as well as the crispness of the writing grew far larger than the visually large impact of the projections. With Simpson and Brown, I felt my humanness.

“Coming in hot” is military jargon for arriving with guns blazing. That’s often what heroes do, both real and mythic ones. The weapons of heroes may be lethal to human flesh (Genghis Khan) or loving to the human heart (Buddha). Either way, heroes produce social or cultural change. (I include spiritual change within those 2 categories.) Heroes are unique and special. Everyone is probably not a hero, although people have the capacity to be one. I’m defining “hero” differently from the way that I often hear it used today, as an adjective applied to virtually all soldiers returning from Iraq. In general, people use “hero” loosely.

The artist Barbara Kruger lampoons that looseness as she critiques the convention of the hero, the always-a-guy with public or personal, romantic or professional muscle. In a text-only work from 1983, in which What big muscles you have! in red overlays black text on a white ground, the “feminine” compliment, “Ooh, what big muscles you have!” turns into absurdity and ingratiation as we read line after line composed of “compliments” such as “My lordship,” “My Rambo,” “My baby mogul,” “My sugar daddy,” “My banker,” “My pimp.” Looking over the list, I end up thinking that any male in any role could be on it. The hero reduced to pablum.

The heat with which heroes blaze into us gives them the power to serve as activists in our lives. Artists can be such heroes. No surprise that “My great artist” is in Kruger’s list. The artist as hero is a repeated, though often implicit, theme within art history. The controversial artist or art work–heroes do tend to be controversial–often deals with social problems, frequently reflecting rather than transforming them. In other words, we get reiterations of issues rather than offerings of solution. Some have responded to Coming in Hot as controversial, and on the blog for the play I read, “Controversy is a good thing.” Our culture loves controversy and believes in its capacity to bring fortune, fame, or at least talk to a person, event, or work of art. Activism interests me far more than does controversy, which I see as a distraction, from something that either may or not be significant, both affective and effective. Controversy can become people’s focus, whereas activism needs that focus.

In this activist play we listen to a group of people whose speech about their own experiences and perceptions tends to go without a public hearing. That, to me, is the activism in Coming in Hot–women first. And it’s women first throughout the entire creation and production, from the authors of the book Powder to its editors Lisa Bowden and Shannon Cain to its publication by Kore Press, devoted to works by women and published by Bowden, to the book’s adaptation for performance by Bowden, Cain, and Simpson to the very live art by Simpson and Brown.

Brown’s music was heated, it was freezing too, and its vibrations enwrapped Simpson’s corporeality–her body, her voice. That voice and her demeanor became increasingly tender as the performance progressed. Greater softness, which was a matter of vocal malleability, and greater nuance produced a compassionate humor as well as that tenderness, which I felt at its height near and into the end of the performance. During that time the character whose voice and gruesome yet poetic remembrances recur throughout Coming in Hot calls herself “mother of the dead.” The author of those remembrances prepared and processed the bodies of United States dead in a Mortuary Affairs Unit, which was work for which she volunteered while fulfilling formal duties as a Marine. Mother of the dead–she is the overarching activist in the play: mortuary goddess, a gentle Charon “ferrying” the spirit remains of her comrades wherever it is those remains go, speaking in the utmost gentle caress with the love whose realization, which is an activism unlike any other, can end all wars.

For more information about Coming in Hot go to:

http://www.korepress.org/

http://www.korepress.org/Powderstage.htm

http://cominginhotplay.blogspot.com/

Relics of the Past

Written By Robin Black

So, it’s Sunday morning and CBS Sunday Morning just did a feature on Susan Boyle. And damned if that number isn’t featured prominently: 47.

Her age. My age.

Middle-age.

I was an unrepentant weeper when she made her debut. I watched the thing oh, I don’t know, maybe thirty times. (Maybe 47 times?) I read all the criticism, that of reality shows in general, of her voice, of the set-up, suspiciously perfect, Simon’s shocked expression a little rehearsed, perhaps? And I agreed with much of it. I pondered the feminist angles – I ponder them still. And then I clicked back over to You-Tube and I wept. Cried my blessed eyes out every damned time. Great big snuffly sobs.

It’s a late-bloomer thing. You wouldn’t understand.

Or maybe you would. It turns out a lot of people do. It turns out, as I’ve learned, that a lot of women do.

A couple of weeks before Susan Boyle took the world by storm I spent a week as the Fellow at the Sirenland Conference, in Positano, Italy. The Fellowship is awarded to an emerging writer who doesn’t yet have a published book. It’s an amazing conference – stunning location, brilliant teaching and serious attendees, many of whom were women more or less my age. By then, my book had been under contract for about six months and I had received both a lot of congratulations and a good many warnings about the impact a first book might (and might not) have on my life. I’d also answered numerous questions from other early-career writers about how it had all happened, how I’d gotten an agent, all that kind of stuff. And I expected more such conversations at Sirenland, which was fine with me. I was delighted to talk about my book.

But what I experienced there was unlike any of that. The women I met, not all but many, were less interested in the the fact that I had sold my first book at the age of 46 than they were overjoyed by it. They didn’t ask me the kinds of questions I had grown accustomed to, not at first. They just beamed at me. They stopped me in hallways to talk about how much my story – a mother home with kids for nearly two decades getting her first book contract at 46 – meant to them. They spoke about hope. They expressed great surprise. More than one woman said the story made her feel like crying. One woman did cry.

I was taken aback, at moments moved close to tears, myself. And I was glad to have made them so glad. Surprised that they seemed so surprised. But mostly, I have to admit, I was upset by what I saw. Their joy, their shock, bespoke such a deficit of hope for themselves. It was clear to me that though they were writing, and working hard at it, many, many of these women shared an underlying assumption that the world wasn’t really interested in what they had to say.

“The editors who liked the book all talked about appreciating what they called the ‘maturity’ of the stories,” I began to add, when I told the story. “It was actually viewed as a positive that the author had some years behind her. That it didn’t read like a book a twenty-something could write.”

More happiness. More shock. More hope.

Just as I had understood that their joy wasn’t exactly about me, Robin Black, getting a book contract, I realized that their hope wasn’t exactly for themselves getting one. It was something more basic, more elemental than that.

I write a lot about women in their sixties and seventies – in my fiction, I mean. I do so because I find older women fascinating – think of all the life they carry! What wealth, as characters, they bring. And think too of what a vastly complicated existence they live, how complex a discrepancy is so often forged between who they understand themselves to be, and how they are viewed by the world. If they are viewed at all, that is. If the combination of their gender and their age has not rendered them, as one friend put it, describing her progress down a street, “eerily transparent.”

“First people stop seeing you as sexual,” she said. “Then they stop seeing you at all.”

It’s a terrifying thought. Not being seen. Not being heard. Truly terrifying. Yet it’s also an everyday kind of fear. For many women, invisibility is an expected, largely unexamined consequence of age. There it was in Italy, that assumption, revealed by the celebratory response to the possibility that it might not be true.

When the whole Susan Boyle story broke, there was phrase often used in its recounting. Written off. Susan Boyle had been written off. By the judges. By the two men who asked her rude questions. By the young girls in the audience who so evidently considered her a joke. How laughable of a woman who offered so little of what we are used to applauding women for to walk on that stage! How presumptuous of her to stand at its center!

Written Off. Maybe it’s because I am a writer that I find the phrase to be such a chilling one. I think of writing as a means of creation, not of disposal. Or maybe it’s just because I’m a woman who is no longer young.

It took my meeting those writers in Positano to understand how deep the fear of being written off runs in so many women as they feel themselves age. It took my own inexplicably emotional response to Susan Boyle’s moment of being heard – of writing herself back on – to understand how deep that same fear had long run in me.

Now what we all need to understand is how to eradicate that fear, how to render it irrelevant, how to write it off as a relic of the past – instead of ourselves.

A Place in the Sun, in Turkey, Malgre Sangre

Written By Arpine Konyalian Grenier
Reblogged from http://the-otolith.blogspot.com

Arpine Konyalian Grenier is a former scientist, musician and financial analyst, a graduate of the American University of Beirut and the Milton Avery Graduate Center for the Arts, Bard College, New York. Her work has been described as a mosaic of narrative that takes us out of our provincial concentration on American life to encompass broader social and geopolitical issues with a decidedly urban and postmodern sensibility. She has authored three collections of poetry, and has been featured in numerous publications including several anthologies.

I am watching hunger. May 20, 2009, Tucson International Airport. The lady bound for Chicago, for her granddaughter’s graduation, has just finished eating her yoghurt and granola mix. She is not too happy about her trip, not happy she’ll be away from Tucson, likes the slow of Tucson. She does, however, wish me a wonderful trip to Istanbul. “It’s good to close the book and go forward,” she says when I tell her I will also visit the Konya/Aksaray region where my father came from. I wait. There’s still an hour before takeoff. Hal would have been a great distraction now, his German/sailor/soldier mind and ways. We all distract ourselves somehow while we’re waiting, my meditation beads tell me. I’m wearing them. So then, next to this cute little girl of probably seven years old who’s coloring pictures as she waits, so intensely filling inside the lines with blue then orange and, and, I have an urge to suggest she color outside the lines (am glad she has not colored the wings of the angel). “What happens if you color outside the line here?” I ask. She smiles. “I don’t know,” she says, and returns to filling in the color.

Having already noticed how much we’re alike, I now want and need to learn to accept that, to also accept and love the unknown I come from. At Gate 15, Dallas/ Fort Worth Airport, they’re announcing KLM Royal Dutch Airlines’ flight information in French. I’m surrounded by languages I recognize or don’t. Have I been too long away from these sounds and minds? Always a misfit this I and yet this here feels fit/unfit and familiar in its strangeness. So, to be familiar with a strangeness or, to find the strangeness within the familiar, that’s all pulse, isn’t it? Otherwise, life is unbearable. Agency is fluid, remember? Moving (velocity?) allows sight when screens are in the way. “The dogged, organized and slightly boring make better corporate officers than the warm, flexible and empathic types,” says today’s International Herald Tribune on page seven. Oh well. Dallas to Amsterdam will be a nine hour flight.

There is no other city like Venice, and I bet there is no other city like Istanbul either. I was not brought up to consider (regard?) Turkey. I had never looked at her, let alone seen her. Placed as displaced, the only way to have was by not having and the only way to get out was by not getting out, like the main characters in the film, A Place in the Sun. What did they end up with? They had other options. I do too. Forty some years after I voluntarily left Lebanon where I was born, I will be visiting my father’s hometown wherefrom he barely made it alive way before he’d turned school age. In Turkey, I will be experiencing the culture of my ancestry as well as the culture I had run away from. Turkey and Lebanon, both Mediterranean, both left behind. I want to tend and befriend, accede to the full experience of the four noble feelings: glad, sad, bad, mad. So far, I’ve repressed some of them. No more fight, no more flight.

Amsterdam Airport. Several Turkish women with children are already waiting at the entrance to Gate 53. They look at me as if they know me, their eyes like Armenian eyes. I am leaning against baggage cart racks, planning the introduction to my presentation for the 2009 Dink Memorial Workshop sponsored by Sabanci University, Anadolu Kultur and the International Hrant Dink Foundation. Choke. It seems all I want to do is express gratitude for this opportunity, and love. That is and must be enough, I hope. Sabanci is a fairly new and progressive, private university, and I have heard a lot of good things about the workings of Anadolu Kultur. Luckily, boarding and takeoff have been efficient and uneventful. We’re on our way to Istanbul. The flight is serving me well as I’m practicing Turkish with the woman next to me. She and her children are returning to Turkey for the summer. Her husband is a visiting professor at some university in the United States.

We’re almost there. I see Istanbul, that ancient city, said to have been built on seven hills. At the baggage claim area I notice a Sabanci University greeter’s sign with my name on it. We embrace. The greeter is Ezgi (it is a modern Turkish name, she says), beautiful, smart and personable. One of the precious qualities of the Mediterranean region has always been simultaneity — an attitude of togetherness (asabia in Arabic) that harbors elements of pride and respect towards one’s community and society. Even Aristotle has not properly dealt with this matter in his ethics, I am thinking. Then I wonder, were the so called Dark Ages really dark, was the Mediterranean region included in this (Western) assessment? Maybe not. My ruminations are interrupted by the striking beauty around me. The limousine ride along the sky-blue waters is amazing, the terrain reminds me of the coastline of Beirut. “We’re crossing the Freedom Bridge,” says Ezgi, “it was constructed in memory of our 500 years of freedom.” I feel off kilter, wasn’t that 500 years of capture? I suspect she is being whimsical.

Uses of language: to cover/uncover a choice we forget to remember but also to access, a choice for celebration of capture of or freedom from blind spots, not just of the majority but of minorities as well. “Be brave,” they said. Were they? Women with bodies elsewhere denied them, and Kurds. Others too. So much of Constantinople is in Istanbul, I feel, like so much of the Turkish in me. Conjecture, possibility, likelihood. Relief?

Hotel Troya. It is 1:15 AM. I have checked in and settled down. The uniquely embroidered bedcovers flash unlived parts of my life into my head. My grandmother’s house, her kilims and shawl, I am revisiting to reinvent. Too many thoughts and feelings force me out of bed to pen and paper. Couldn’t sleep and wouldn’t. I also have some trust issues here. Will I really receive a wake up call from the front desk at 6:30 AM?

Flash forward. In the end, I will be speaking Turkish fluently, all the Turkish I have heard in my lifetime but, never spoken. The sound of it will feel good, gemütlich. So too will be the four days of the Dink Memorial Workshop at Tutun Deposu (an old tobacco warehouse, now a cultural venue), the space, the presentations, the hospitality, the attendees, all in harmony. The theme is Gender, Ethnicity and the Nation-State: Anatolia and its Neighboring Regions. Opening ceremonies include Kapilari Acmak/Opening the Doors by Kardes Turkuler and the Sayat Nova Choir, then memories and testimonies, presentations on contemporary constructions of Kurdishness and Armenianness, gender, ethnicity, history, ethnicity and violence, Circassian beauty, the Ahiska Turk, the Abkhaz surrender, Hamshen Armenians (who?), art and politics across borders, the xeni, the yabanci, the koylu, the kaba. Sophia, a Greek-American participant from Michigan State University comments about qualifier suffixes in Turkish; like for example with surnames, ‘li’ is for location as in Konyali (from Konya) and ‘ci’ is for occupation as in boyaci, painter (boya is paint). She is adorable. I am living hunger.

That first evening at Karakoy Restaurant, I sit with Rakel Dink (a stately, wise woman, widower of Hrant Dink) and Fethiye Cetin, an attractive and intelligent attorney and author. The mezza, wine, fish and hospitality are talking. Us too, lovely. Here are participants from 15 countries. Following dinner, Osman Kavala from Anadolu Kultur invites everyone for drinks at Cezayir Restaurant. We are discussing yapmak (to make) versus etmek (to do). Nefret etmek (to hate) has been interesting for me because in Turkish, nefret (hate) becomes a verb only with the auxiliary, etmek. For hate, I prefer to use the auxiliary yapmak (actually have a poem titled, nefret yapmak) because I feel hate does not come from natural action, that it takes effort to hate. So, for the verb to hate, ‘making’ hate makes more sense than ‘doing’ hate, I say. Others have different opinions, especially since the expression nefret yapmak does not make sense in Turkish.

Later, some of us are singing Bank Ottoman, the Armenian revolutionary song about bombing the Bank. This is an incredible experience; fifty years ago it would have been unthinkable. Some want to also sing it in front of Bank Ottoman itself but, that would have been stretching it. I must say that over the years, Armenian revolutionary songs have come to reflect much more than the long lost and sadly dated spirit of the Armenian revolutionary. Sung on the occasion of weddings, funerals and other ceremonial functions, they have become the vehicle for expressing passion at large, fanning encumbrance, urgency, rattling history?

It’s almost midnight, the conversation continues. Osman tells us that a few Armenians have been influential in Turkey’s transition from the Ottoman to the Republic. He mentions linguist, Agop Martayan who was given the name Dilacar (language opener) by Ataturk. He and a few others were noteworthy in westernizing the Turkish language. Martayan also codified the Turkish alphabet and edited the Encyclopedia of Greater Turkey. Then there was Edgar Manas, a prominent composer who orchestrated the Turkish national anthem. When Dilacar (Martayan) passed in 1979, the official Turkish news agency chose not to address his Armenian origins. Osman also states that before Ataturk the Ottoman resembled a ‘mother with no arms’ while after him it was hailed as Anavatan (Motherland), that Anadolu means full mother, and that it is Istanbul (‘I go to the city’ from the Greek), not Islambul, Ahtamar (from the Armenian), not Akdamar. All this time we’re getting closer to one another as we continue to float. At some point we are saved by our union, on a raft, over water. A place in the sun, indeed.

The following day of the Workshop I meet more attendees. Some are local, others first generation here. Ayse Gul’s mother is from Eastern Europe, Osman’s father too. My watch battery just stopped, Hermine takes care of it right away. She is local but feels diasporan. Helene, an artist, asks me to participate in her (diasporan) video project. But everyone is diasporan, I say, there but not there, clueless, ortancil (in the middle), and older is not necessarily elder. I want to loosen and undo matter, I also need glue. I am flushed, yet powerful. Everyone is nice here. There are no ‘where are you’ or ‘how am I doing’ types. The women are beautiful, soul is in their eyes. I can easily be seduced by the men anytime, anyhow. The five times a day call (ezan) of the mosque is beautiful. (Early Christians used to pray that often too, then they changed.)

The last evening, we use public transportation to go to the Giritli Café for dinner. It is fun being pressed against one another in the train during rush hour, experiencing the bumpy ride together, holding unto each other, refusing to let go. A gypsy family entertains us at the Giritli. The performance is stunning, the songs and dances full of love and hope and passion. We’re all alike as we’re different. I feel it.

The Workshop is over. The days seem to have swiftly glided by. In the end, we have developed kinship. The locals present us with gifts: Ebru, a magnificent book on the cultural heritage of Turkey, edited by Ayse Gul Altinay, and another splendid volume titled, Armenians in Turkey 100 Years Ago, compiled by Osman Koker. We are also given lokum. That’s Turkish Delight. Later I bought more lokum from Konya for the folks back home, no one liked it so I indulged. It was superbly fresh and delicious. In the end I have questions, concerns:

- Let’s talk a bit first please.

- Did you know some call me anzkam (Armenian for one who has no feelings)?

- Should I send my poem, He rules his own house, to Nichanian?

- Should I tell him about the titles of my manuscripts?

- Verbs in Turkish seem to have the unique quality of distinguishing between what’s observed and what’s rumored. How to make that work for, let’s say, improving the exploration of causalities?

- Can there really be such a thing as ‘usurping mourning’?

- Why didn’t Zabel Yessayan’s writing have her contemporary, Halide Edib’s complexity, why did she decide to be a writer anyway, why didn’t censorship and abandonment have better effects on her writing, how on earth could she write poetry instead of prose in order to conform?

In the end, several journalists interview me. They print what they wish.

Istiklal means independence in Turkish (I know that from the Arabic), and Hotel Troya is in the Beyoglu section of Istanbul, off Istiklal Avenue. The rates are decent and the staff, pleasant. It is owned and operated by an Arab from Antakya. Other Arabs work here as well, like Sami, Murat. They are from Antakya too. They know Kessab, my mother’s birthplace by Antakya, on the Syrian side. When Murat first introduced himself to me, he said, “My name is Murat, a perfectly Turkish name.” A few days later I find out he is an Arab, Sami’s neighbor in Antakya. Their families are still there. “There is no work in Antakya,” they say. Sad commentary. “We cannot get jobs like other Turkish citizens here either.” Another sad commentary. Ah, the archness and brickness of categories!

Next morning I get up late and enjoy a leisurely breakfast, compliments of Hotel Troya. This is no ‘continental breakfast’, it is more like a generous spread of many kinds of cheese, butter, fruit, choice appetizers and egg dishes, cereals, breads, cakes, and beverages. The figs and cumquats sparkle against each other, ready for consumption. The coffee is well roasted and fresh. I am full. My friend Burcu will be here in a few hours. I am waiting in the main lobby, reflecting on the who and what all of the past few days, all of it highly interactive between participants and attendees, truly. The only intolerance has been that of non-communication.

Having already noticed how much we’re alike and different, I now want and need to learn to love that, shifting and turning without undoing myself, without unseeing or dismissing others either. That will help me love myself someday, love and accept the oppression I come from, the oppressive that has released these new days for me (us). In Armenian, azcagan is relative, it comes from azc = nation. Can I make humanity my nation, or is the thought nationalistic still? How does one categorize nationalities? Shall I give up the concept altogether because it is neither integrative nor constitutive? Yet, an ethnic slant provides powerful multi-layers within the larger world.

Perhaps one must focus on connection. The human, impregnated (embarrazzado), embarrassed and humbled by connecting and sharing is addicted to the connect. Face it, I tell myself, the parameters of ‘then’ were different from those of ‘now’. Beware of easy gratification, of ascribing the ‘grotesque’ to an ‘other’. Civilization is no more that brazen foreign woman, that one-toothed monster coming at you. Do not fear cultivation. Go beyond (Armenian novelist) Raffi’s Zahroumar.

I also very strongly remind my self that when I am not mindful of an inner power, I am afraid. Catastrophe often arises from the fear of those in power who are not really in touch with their inner power. That’s failure between two magnets to connect. Where are the waiting points? The question burns and is burning since conclusions have measured in the missing, and explicity (or by omission one) is limiting. Ah, but the unsoundly extended in the interim. Whirling and swirling, we, sediment or vomit (banal, boyuk) from some concoction neither of us has wished to undo so far. We need a backdrop or setting similar to the Higgs’ field with or against which elementary particles acquire definition. That is the physical world’s metaphor for love — a necessity — humanity’s challenge for a future in which we really can have it both ways — union and progress, and then some. There’s movement and fluidity when we’re learning about each other, plowing, bouncing, lingering, stretching, moving on as we grow. No more (vampire) sucking blood or just yearning and longing, more like werewolves, shape shifting organically. Then there’s hope. It is the hope of the witness whose integrity is integral to generating hope, hope to make the river newly. No more plaster for the cracks, no fuss, no silence, no stutters either. No debunking but the exemplary, to rethink what is time what is space between two magnets. Coherent decoherence. Catastrophic laughter then? Parity is not conserved but passed on otherly then, ebru created colors and shapes allow the passage. Silk.

Ipek is silk. I remember actor/director Caspar Ipekian’s National Theater Group in Beirut. One season it produced Levon Shant’s Heen Asdvadzner (Ancient Gods). I was a young little girl then. Zinc and titanium enhance the toughness of silk now. The gods are at it again, oriental as ever. Untergehen. En face de _

Such was Saturday night’s candlelight poetry reading at Tutun Deposu with Karakasli who writes in Turkish, and me. Later she said, “I will always remember you touched me, you smiled and sang, ben Konyali sen Karakasli/nerden nere nerden nere. You did trust me, Arpine, you opened up your heart and all the love and spirit of Istanbul poured in, it was an unforgettable time, you were generous.” I reciprocate and “because we are strong inside,” I add. Bursar maybe. Some cannot win, having lost sensitivity towards the dipole, a dipole moment is missing.

The concierge informs me Burcu is here. Burcu is Turkish, educated in the United States. She has been kind enough to be showing me a bit of Istanbul during the next few days. Ah Istanbul, the yoghurt seller’s bells, the shoeshine boy, roasted chestnut vendors everywhere. The City is trying to remember itself in order to move forward. The sherbet vendors of the Ottoman are still around in tourist areas. There are dogs (and cats) everywhere, they are called street dogs, not stray dogs; they carry tags. Past Bogaz Turu, the Tunel, over the Bosphorus Canal, it is Dolmabahce, Besiktas, Ciragan, then the first bridge, Ortakoy, Rumeli Hisari, Yali, then the second bridge which is newer. The boat ride is breathtaking. Now the Asian side: Kanlica, Sahil Yolu (sahil = coast), Yenikoy (here’s the summer presidential palace), Sariyer (with characteristic onion shaped domes), Rumeli Kavagi, Anadolu Kavagi. We’re on land again, climbing up to the ruins. There are many who do the same. Then it’s lunch with cherries and kemalpasa (after Kemal Ataturk) at the Yoros Café. The view from this elevation is spectacular. Yesterday I tasted sekerpare. These are scrumptious desserts. What I taste, hear and see has been cementing what otherwise would not have surfaced, as most of experience does not tip or announce the death anthem, as we all want to be coming from somewhere. Be wary of narration, do not give into it, I tell myself. Rest assured. If read to one reads, if looked up to one looks up, from love or fear. The Turkish writer Namik Kemal said, “In the end, regret is useless”. Choose.

I tell Burcu about Biz Miyassine (We Together), a Turkish and Armenian organization based in France. Who shouts loudest. Connection is a basic need, humbling and addictive yes, but there is beauty in the connect. We are after that beauty. It provides reflection, harmony, tells us how to travel in space, in life. Laws of the Universe help me understand that more than one object can occupy the same space and more than one space can be occupied by a single object. I am learning the lesson of refugees, remembering the ‘wild elephants’ below, remembering also the sadirvans (fountains) for ablution. Insight alone is not enough. I need to be where things are simultaneously horizontal and vertical as well.

We walk from Misir Carsisi (Spice Bazaar) to Galata Tower, to the Hyppodrome. Then we ride the local bus to Haghia Sophia where it is not about de formation or re formation but castration/cover up. Maiming? Granted that has come about much earlier than similar silencings, there are staggering reverberations everywhere. That’s ancient history, says Burcu. I revert to the now. How about health education, how well has it developed in Turkey, I ask, as I see too many overweight people. Food is of utmost importance here, of course. We’re in the Mediterranean where emotional connects are mostly set up through food and music. Those are addictive too. OK. What to do with Turkey, what will Turkey do, what Turkey does malgre sangre.

Question: is what one does with the past the future?

We’re at Yerebatan Sarnici, the underground cistern by Haghia Sophia. School children are crossing the street. They are on a field trip. I hear the teacher’s excited voice, “Isn’t this fun, we are going mahajir” (that’s exile, aksor in Armenian). I am bemused. Other, less fortunate children are selling pocket size Kleenex type tissues, one TL each. They are convincing. Later we visit the Blue Mosque, then the Islamic Art Museum. There, I see a most beautifully lettered Tugra (declaration of order). Call to order regarding an issue, any some issue. I need a tugra for love. I tell Burcu I would like it in Kufic (the alphabet used in this region many years ago, before Arabic). She appreciates my hopes and wishes. Next, the Grand Bazaar and Beyazit Square where pigeons, handicraft booths, and stately trees and libraries create a memorable atmosphere along the street. Here’s also Istanbul University, its palatial (Ottoman) Ministry of War chambers house the University’s rectorate now. The static pays the price, definitely, remains residue, its heap of hells alternately capsize and swell. What good is veracity then, its pace cumulates anguish and abandon.

Knock knock, who’s there, open the door, what door, ah yes, say it anyway, anyway lightly. Here are some Turk and Armenian issues: borders, ghosts, mute or loud and raspy. Whispers, no stutters. The following morning Burcu and I light candles and pray at the Holy Trinity Armenian Apostolic Church. Another Turk is praying there too, he says he prefers the church to mosques.

Topkapi Palace is next. Heavily armed soldiers mar the entrance to what may be considered one of the marvels of the world. The setting, the grounds, the intricate mosaics and jewelry are aesthetic masterpieces. It is interesting that the harem is by the old Council Chambers, also interesting that five starred designs (engravings) are after the sixth, eight starred after the ninth. I notice them again and again. It is all a matter of dignity even though dignity must step outside itself, reckon erg, love being, loved. This is my last day in Istanbul. In the afternoon we visit the Kariye Church, the Old City Walls and the Suleymaniye Complex. The latter is being renovated. Later for dinner, we have kazandibi, a creamy dessert made from chicken meat, and kunefe with warm cheese. I hug and thank Burcu. We will stay in touch. Tomorrow, Konya.

The Turkish Airlines flight to Konya has been a pleasure: the clean and friendly atmosphere on board, that delicious sandwich, the cabin music, a captivating rendition of Eastern and Western sound. Kadir, a Konya University volunteer student greets me at the airport. Kadir means capable, he tells me. It comes from Arabic, I tell him. He is charming. In Konya, the ezan is amazingly well articulated both in musicality and words. Ney is the Sufi flute and neyzen is its player, and ‘Oh Mevlevi Presence’ is inscribed in Ottoman Turkish (with Arabic letters) above the entrance to the Mevlana Museum, Mevlana Turbesi (Rumi’s tomb) prostrate while his father’s upright, in his honor. Turbe is tomb. Kadir tells me Rumi’s philosophy and followers are called Mevleni, and his teachings, Mesnevi. There is a beautiful seccade (carpet) I want to take home with me. It is really beautiful. Mevlana was also called Rumi and Celalettin. The region was first Seljuk then Ottoman. So are my roots, I tell myself. I am also Armenian from Beirut, Kessab and Pasadena. Puzzling, baffling, but maybe not. We lunch at a local restaurant that only serves tirit, a local dish - spicy bread assortment smothered in some yoghurt sauce, delicious strips of meat on top. Later, we taste etli ekmek (meaty bread) which is another local dish. The restaurant owner calls me hemseri (relative), is offended when I offer a tip. When the ezan starts, the owner and servers are less social, more reverent. We also indulge in pistachio ice cream and dondurmali baklava at Mado, which stands for Marash Dondurmasi (dondurma is ice cream). Soon Mado will be available in the United States and Russia.

We then visit the blue mosaic studded Karatay (young horse) Museum which used to be a Seljuk madrasa (school), then the remains of the Seljuk Palace. An aesthetically pleasing structure has been constructed around the columns in front; it looks more recent. I notice that hardly anyone visits Tebrizli Semsettin Turbesi (tomb of Semsettin of Tebriz). It stands by itself, a serene and sacred place emanating love and compassion. Semsettin was Rumi’s ‘Other’. Kadir tells me his views about the passion to reason dilemma of human kind. I am surprised as he is only twenty years old. Now we’re at the Alaeddin Keykubat Mosque and Alaeddin Tepesi (hill) where one finds the largest man-made junction of roads in the world, I am told. This is Selcuklu Beledyesi, the doubly fundamental thrives here, the Anatole and the Seljuk. For me there has been a third, the Protestant.

In Konya, I stay at Ogretmen Evi, the hostel for teachers. At the entrance, a quote from Ataturk reads, ‘Muallimler yeni nesil sizin eseriniz olacaktir’. These are wise words to teachers. After checking in, we take the dolmus which is a city minibus, the word means full. It is always full. We pass by Sarraflar Carsisi, the exchange market. They exchange money and gold and all things precious at this glittery complex. Over the bridge, yet another quote, ‘Ya oldugun gibi gorun, ya da gorundugun gibi ol’ (either look as you are or be as you look), then a billboard, ‘Hayatinizi Tatlandirin’, sweeten your lives, it says. My Turkish is smoother now. The sound makes me feel more like who I am. The ezan reminds me of Beirut. I love its daily and repetitive melodic gyrations.

We pass by Konya Lisesi, a 100 year old school. Then, along a crowded street I notice an old, run down building that looks like an Armenian Church, Armenian or Greek or other? It is closed, is always closed, says Kadir. There is a sign in Turkish in front of it, ‘for bicycles only’. Kadir is girisikli (resourceful, entrepreneurial). He reassures me he will find out about the Church. The following day, however, he disappointedly informs me he has located no information at all. The building is an architectural beauty, I am surprised he does not already know about it as he is a local.

For breakfast we have pohaca and simit at a food stand. The old man at the stand asks, “Are you speaking English with the lady?” Kadir says, yes. The man is happy a Turkish young man is speaking English. Dunya Kenti Konya, reads the sign over an underpass. Konya, World City. Fake tulips will do in Konya but, they must be red and in the center of town, just like statues of Ataturk, focal, with message, vocal and local, never the lesser. I hope to return to Konya during the Selcuk University Spring Festival (Bahar Senligi), next. People are reverent here.

On the dolmus again, we’re looking into City of Aksaray travel at two different transportation agencies: Tokat Yildizi and Kontur Ozkaymak. Kadir is originally from Tokat so we choose Tokat Yildizi. The line is Aksaray to Nevsehir to Kayseri to Sivas. Aksaray is two hours from here. On the bus, I am glancing at the landscape but also taking it in. First, we pass by suburban Kule Site (tower city), a cluster of towering commercial and residential buildings, then the region turns ova (plain and wide planes), genis duzluk. Lavender and yellow wildflowers and occasional herds of sheep line the asphalt. The bus attendant is serving complimentary juice and cake. He is gracious. Kadir reminds me of Rumi’s three words — hamdim, pistim, yandim — I’m created (graced?), weathered (seasoned?), consumed (finished off?). I want to remind myself of the cycle of these words everyday of my life. The driver is playing what is called Arabesk music. It is sad and mostly heard by the working class. Then there is Turku which is Turkish folk ballads. Sarki means song, politicians’ affairs often are karanlik isler (dark business, under the table affairs?), dogum guni is birthday, and yumusak is soft. Kadir is telling me all this. (By the way, he is the only person I met in Turkey who has asked me about the Armenian Genocide, and he did use the term, genocide. I told him about April 24th, the Armenian Genocide commemoration day, also that April is Abril in Armenian, and it means 'to live'.)

More exchange on the bus. Kadir tells me Yeva is Havva in Turkish when I tell him Hawa = wind = love in Arabic. My, my, how all inclusive that is. Alan is space, liman is port, hava limani is airport and deniz limani is harbor. Evle is married because ev is home, and being married, one has a home (as if). We chuckle. Akraba is relative, devlet is state as in Plato’s Devlet or Amerika Birlesik Devletleri (USA). “I know bilezik is bracelet, it must come from the idea of being united then, huh, interesting,” I say. We continue, animated as always. I tell him about my poetry manuscripts and about poetry and art in the United States. He tells me about the three main political parties in Turkey. The Secular Party (CHP) is an older and democratric party, they love Ataturk. The Religious Conservatives (AKP) support capitalism, they do not care for Ataturk. Then there is the Nationalists (MHP) who disapprove of capitalism. Himself voted for the Liberal Democrat Party, it is a small party, he says. He then tells me about Gazi (veteran) Antep, Kahraman (heroic) Maras and Sanli (glorious) Urfa. The adjectives were bestowed on these cities for their valor during the 20th Century.

We’re in Aksaray now. It is much smaller than Konya. I am being noticed as an Out of Towner right away because not very many people visit here. We shall spend one full day here. First, we stop by the 12th Century Egri (bent) Minaret, then the Ulucami. Ulu means exalted. I see the sign for a hasta hana and remember the words (hospital, house of patients). There are numerous pasta hanas here as well, pastry shops. For lunch we have karniyarik, incir tatlisi and sarma tatlisi. The eggplant dish and desserts are other worldly. Kadir teaches me to say ‘yarasin’. That is said in response to someone expressing gratification after a good meal, but more so after having had a good drink of alcohol, sort of like a post bon appetit, excusing/allowing for the intake of alcohol perhaps. It is colloquial. I am calling him Sanli Kadir now. We are unable to visit the churches and caves at nearby Ihlara Vadisi because of time constraints. Next time. For now, I’m happy simply walking the streets, having small talk with the locals, touching merchandise here and there.

On the way back to Konya, we see a leylek (stork) at the Aksaray Autobus Station. It is aracil in Armenian. I remember the song, Pari Aracil. The bird brings good news, they say. Softer, lighter against the snow covered peaks of Hasan Dagi, it looks like hope itself. Softer and lighter is safer. Method, tell me more. When I feel, hearing and seeing are superfluous.

We’re having complimentary juice and cake again as the bus crosses the genis duzluk one more time. Kadir is proud to be from Tokat, the region is famous for scarves (yazmalar). Besides Istanbul, Ankara and Konya, the major cities of Turkey are Izmir, Adana, Bursa, Antalya, Diarbekir, Erzurum and Samsun, he tells me. In Gazi Antep, they have 40 variations for making kebab, kelime is word (like in Arabic), seyyar satici is person selling on the streets, nefes is breath while nefis is self. 20th Century Turkish poets, Cahit Sitki Taranci, Necip Fazil Kisakurek and Atilla Ilhan are worth reading, he says. I will do so when I return home. I tell him a bit about my obsession with the neutral non-zero of Higgs’ field. He is fascinated. Now we are testing ourselves as to which Turk in the bus is really Armenian. He says he knows them by their broad shoulders and noses. I say, I know them from their eyes, they look needy as in muhtac insanlar. He we are needy too, hungry. My visit has been icli (hearty) and tatli (sweet). Kadir has been a reflection of what Turkey is slowly becoming these days, the best of the East and the West. Tomorrow I return to Istanbul, then Tucson.

On the way to Istanbul Ataturk Airport, I tell the taxi driver about my bagimlilik regarding Istanbul, my sohbet in Istanbul. He tells me I am hayat dolu (filled with life). I think I am umit dolu (filled with hope). Next time in Turkey, I will also go to Eastern Anatolia, Van and Kars, to Ahtamar and Ani Harabeleri (the ruins, remains of the ancient Armenian City of Ani, of 1000 churches). At the dry point one experiences stance, direction. The origin of excess may have come from the push to eliminate pulse, stance, direction. Kadir has been saying, “Sora, sora, Bagdat bulunur”. It is a proverb. Ask and ask, Bagdad will be found. Question: is what one does with the past, the future? How do I answer? What do I do with remains?

Many years ago I was given a bandaged doll for Christmas. What could I do with it, what can a five year old do with or for the bandaged, bandaged from long, long ago. And yet, all parts of a simulacrum breathe, in time, in space. Those farther away survive as much or as well as those, closer. I am Hye Gin (Armenian Woman). Gin, from gyne. I remember that agency is fluid, and that the functionality of identities is identity too, a gate that can slam shut or open. I’ll go through it not knowing what’s on the other side. Who is to say when which creates, what. The only what I know is the gill I breathe from.

No one is gone or left behind, nothing either. A so called level of mileage between us throttles. It is time to toot the horn. A hard and soft non-existence is running, parsing and bending away from categories. I am culturally un-locatable, and my task is to avoid excess, that’s all. I’ll use myself, manipulating the essentials and how they work at large. I’ll use, instead of express myself, unfolding within a creating, invisible and unaccountable, yet on the grid, abandoning self, not because I cannot be documented but because of gratitude, hope and love. There is no product where love is, but a fullness pushing forward, pushing beyond catastrophe or misuse or the good and the bad. I, visible practice, underpinned by an invisible, conflated and conflagrated for a behemoth size aspiration, an associative moral headed whereabouts, ailing, wailing, failing, longing for many worlds while nurturing the longing. The Turkish poet, Taranci, said, “I want a country … let there be an end to brothers’ quarrels … I want a country … let living be like loving from the heart.”

Question: when a concept or person is unpopular, what happens to the policies surrounding it? Toughen or relax or revise the genetically biased tune or tone, incentives all around, resurgent, hand to hand, interventionist mode driven. I am returning home. On the airplane, the couple next to me has a small child, Noah. They are flushing him with love. Grace is not required but necessary. Hal has been saying he has a lot of love to give, is looking for someone to give it to. That is normal and customary. I now remember I flew KLM Royal Dutch Airlines first time when I left home for the USA, to find myself, I had said, to claim my self. Now I say I have a place in the sun, glowing, without being on fire. Ben kendimi gelistim in Turkey. I developed, moving from unknowingly being Armenian Turkishly to knowingly becoming American, Armenianly.

Agony, Ecstasy, and Creation

"Bailey Doogan's work has inspired me for many years. As I found myself turning 50, and coming to terms with the effects of aging on my mind and body, her work that illuminates the female experience, the experience of depression and loss, I wanted to have a sit-down dialogue with her." -- Jeanmarie Simpson


JS: The newest works that you’re showing are a series of self-portraits. Do you call them paintings?

BD: I call the paintings “paintings”; I call the drawings “drawings.” The black and white works are drawings. Many people call them paintings, I think, because they’re big, they’re substantial, they’re heavily worked — many think of drawing as work that is small, often done quickly, often more linear – a study for painting, sculpture, something more substantial. Drawing is all of the above, more or less.

JS: Who calls these paintings?

BD: I’ve had everyone call them paintings: artists, gallery people, regular people. The large drawings are done reductively. I guess my process is like a painting process because I take a large piece of 100% rag paper, a heavy paper. I cover the front with about four coats of gesso and apply one coat on the back for a counter-tension, which is what you would do if you were preparing a canvas. Then I cover the front surface with charcoal. Often I’ll step on it, spray water on it, sometimes even roll on it, activate the surface because I like to kind of create a world that the figure is going to live in. Then I draw reductively. First I draw the form in roughly. After that, the work is done with sandpaper pulling the white out of the dark.

JS: What I think is really interesting about this new series is I can look at the paintings and I can look at the drawings, and I can’t tell the difference. It doesn’t read immediately that they’re black and white and this is color. It’s only that you’re mentioning this now, that some are paintings and some are drawings. I think it’s the detail and the texture that strikes you. I can’t even imagine seeing all these works together in a gallery. Will they be?

BD: This series of paintings and drawings of my hand manipulating my face was at Etherton Gallery, my gallery and the only venue where the paintings and drawings were seen together — two drawings and five paintings. Before the Etherton show, there was a group exhibition in North Carolina that included the two large drawings, and an exhibit in Baltimore with the same two large drawings. The woman who organized and curated the Baltimore exhibit, Joan Weber, purchased both large drawings. Currently, both of the drawings are at the Tempe Arts Center on loan from Joan Weber. I’m now working on two new large drawings. I’m excited about them. There’s a point when I’m working on the drawing at the very beginning that is wonderful, ecstatic — everything is just flowing and it’s all coming together, and then it’s struggle, struggle, struggle, and then maybe another epiphany, but then struggle, struggle, struggle, and then some point where I know what I’m doing and it’s all just ecstatic. I’m obviously a two-dimensional gal, but it feels like I’m crawling over the surface of the form, and it feels like I’m modeling — there’s a kind of energy, the marks that define the face or the body.

JS: I can see how it would quickly feel like a sculpture because of the dimension of it. Your work is so dimensional. The painters you are compared with — the ones who are likened to you and you to them — Lucien Freud and Alice Neel and Francis Bacon…

BD: I admire all of them. I especially like Freud. He just piles it on. With him, there is something about depicting physicality that I relate to. I think he just keeps putting the paint on until it feels right.

JS: Do you do that?

BD: I do in painting, and drawing too. Some areas are heavily worked, especially with painting — thickness builds up. Many view this as a technique. I have trouble with the word technique. I guess it’s part of the process. I’m just putting it on until it feels right, but what happens is it becomes very physical.

JS: And the character. People call it character. It’s like an old person in the theater — they say they have character in their face, and all that means is lines. They have imperfections or whatever. How often do you really see a little perfect young face with character? The character has to be a lot more demonstrated on the part of a younger person where it’s apparent in elders.

BD: Well, that term laugh-lines literally does mean that you have lines from laughing or lines from frowning, and of course a lot of it is from gravity.

JS: I think this is so fascinating, the way you described your process, the feelings of your process, because I felt like you were describing my process, which is interesting because, with painters, it’s often so difficult for me to relate and I just can’t, whether it’s an original work of mine or a work that’s collaborative work, or I’m taking on Lady Macbeth. It starts out with this ecstasy of the material, which is so beautiful, and then you hit this wall and think, “What am I doing? I suck at this. I was wrong. I never should have taken on this project,” and then I go in and talk to the other people in the process and they say, “You’re out of your mind. Let’s just keep moving.”

BD: The agony or ecstasy!

JS: I don’t know how artists can not be like that. I don’t understand Bacon when he says he doesn’t feel anything when he paints. I don’t even believe him. When I look at your work — all of your work is beautiful — but I have to say the last 20 years of your work that’s really dealing with the aging body and the female form, and the agony and the beauty of character and the exposed beauty, the nude aging human, is to me like watching a magnificent opera or a symphony.

BD: Thank you. That makes me feel good to hear that.

JS: It’s dimensional, and not to, in any way, diminish Francis Bacon’s work or Alice Neel’s, but I don’t get that richness from them that I get from your work.

BD: Often we know artists’ work from reproductions, and some work reproduces better than others. Freud’s work is very physical. I have to tell you a Freud joke. I obviously love Freud’s work. I had some people at my studio…I don’t know when this was — maybe six or seven years ago. They were being effusive, very complementary — of course, that always feels good. They really liked that work, and at one point, one of the visitors made a comparison to Freud and said, “But your work is so much better because yours is so alive; I can feel the blood and the juices — it’s pulsing. In Freud’s work all the people look dead.” I said, “They’re not dead, they’re just British.” [Laughs]

JS: Exactly. That’s what it is.

BD: There’s a certain kind of light in London. It’s a beautiful light, almost watery — a limited, grayed-down value range.

JS: I really do think that your work does reflect that Catholic…

BD: Oh yeah, the Catholic stuff is there.

JS: I mean, our relationship — as women raised Catholic — to the Vatican, to the Sistine Chapel, to Da Vinci, to all of that magnificent idyllic…

BD: One thing about Catholicism, vis a vis body, is the corporeal, that Christ came down to Earth, and he suffered and died and all of that. Transubstantiation — that the word of God was made flesh, so it is all about flesh. The body is mortal but luminous, not just a receiver of light but a giver of light. I’m no longer a practicing Catholic, but I have all that culture. I’ve always liked the term “Practicing Catholic” — if you practice long enough, will you eventually get it right? I had a show at University of Texas at El Paso of many of the big paintings. Often when I have exhibitions, many people are outraged, shocked; some people love the work, but often not. The director at UTEP said they had more people come to that exhibition, and people kept coming back. Mexico is right there, and UTEP has the largest Mexican-American student population of any university in the country. They got it. It was what they saw growing up.

JS: And you really turn it on its head. That’s what is so beautiful about it — your Ex Cathedra piece, which they used on the front of your retrospective catalog…

BD: I selected it. I wanted to show the entire painting, but that was nixed. Ex Cathedra is a painting of a woman floating in a chair-like position. Ex Cathedra means “from the chair” in Latin. When the pope speaks infallibly on issues of dogma, he speaks Ex-Cathedra from his chair of authority. Cathedral comes from the same root.

JS: She looks as if she’s in agony.

BD: People have told that me she looked tortured. I thought she looked like she was in ecstasy.

JS: That’s a really good point. Ecstasy definitely looks painful sometimes.

BD: Things are ambiguous. The other thing I realized about my work is how often mouths are open. And again, that was nothing I ever consciously thought about. When models posed for me, I would say, now look this way and open your mouth. I’m getting to the point where I can’t give a reason for why I do something. What did I really intend? Who knows? I think it was something about trying to speak or speaking, but it just may be about being open. I don’t know. We have orifices. [Laugh]

JS: I think that a lot now too, and I wonder if that is an age thing, just to come to terms with that and become so comfortable with it — what goes in comes out. I don’t know what it is, but it’s wonderful to just be free about that stuff, having been raised Catholic — that the body is something icky and yucky. You got to this happier, more buoyant place with these newest portraits, these self-portraits.

BD: Yeah, I went through a hard time for almost three years. Even when you first interviewed me, it was still too close, I couldn’t talk about it. I think I worked so hard for the retrospective. I probably completely wore myself out. A physical and mental collapse is what I think happened. I had never been sick before in my life — always just been chugging along, able to do everything, and all of a sudden, everything came to a halt. One of the things that happens for most people when they’re depressed, and it certainly happened for me, is withdrawal. Not a good thing. I remember one day, I was already beginning to feel better but didn’t realize it. I went into the bathroom, looked in the mirror, made a face, and laughed, which was something because I had lost my sense of humor — the worst thing that can happen to you. Depressed people are often a pretty humorless lot. I was steeling myself to go out and I thought, “Okay, so I’ll smile. I’ll look interested.” And then it became a game, and I started using my hands to push my face around. I loved the smiles and grins. Who doesn’t? I talked to friends about the difference between a smile and a grin. What does a smile mean? What does a grin mean? So I started pushing my face around, and of course, as you get older, your face is more elastic. There is more stuff to grab. I was actually able to reach one arm over my head, stretch it to the opposite side of my face. In that position, I was able to stick a finger in my mouth and stretch it into a grin. I especially liked the idea of combining my hand and my face.

JS: So then you started doing these new paintings and drawings…

BD: I get very obsessive; I would make the gestures and then write a description of what I had done: left arm goes over and grabs, neck is in this position, finger comes up from chest to chin… I wrote it all down. I knew I wanted to have a photographer take head shots of me in those positions.

JS: That process of just going through the motions — of making your face, putting on a face, going through the gestures — was part of bringing you out of your depression?

BD: I think so. They say if you just keep smiling, you’ll feel better.

JS: Yes, I’ve found that to be true.

BD: Like everything else, if you pull or push on one area, you affect another. Moving your nose around will change your eyes, etc. The painting where I’m pushing my chin up makes me look thoughtful.

JS: If you’re in an accident or get a scar or something, what that does and how people react to you because of it — it’s fascinating.

BD: People love the images where I’m smiling or look perky. Many people had difficulty with Five-Fingered Grin because it was too much of a grimace.

JS: There you go again!

BD: I never know, but I’m not exactly naïve.

JS: We share that. People always like the cute little fun characters I play. I just have to admit, for me, the characters who are on the brink of cutting their own throats are the most interesting, the ones I relate to for whatever reason. But I have a history of depression too, and I think for those of us who have been there, I think we’re as sick as our secrets. The more we turn it over and put it out there, the more we get people to look at it, the more comfortable we are with it, the less scary it is and the more we can examine what happened to us. I don’t like bouncing around with the happy-bubbles all the time. That feels like denial to me.

BD: Also, I think depression causes great discomfort in other people because, first of all, you’re not a barrel of laughs… I mean, I don’t think I was. And then people who love you don’t want to see you suffering. I have great sympathy for the people who had to put up with me during this time because, in a way, we were both mourning the loss of the person that we knew.

JS: And there’s really no going back, is there? Once you’ve been through it, you’ll never be who you were again. You may not be depressed anymore, but you’ve been deeply changed by it. One thing I have recently felt fascinated by, as an actor, and you can do this as a visual artist and I would love to be able to do it, but the expression in the eyes of someone deeply disturbed — an Alzheimer’s patient or someone with dementia — that innocent, whatever-that-is in the eyes; I desperately want to capture that, and so far I can’t. I haven’t been able to figure out how to do it. I’m looking and trying.

BD: I don’t know if I’ve ever been able to put that into my work.

JS: Have you tried?

BD: I don’t think I’ve tried because that was never in any…

JS: I’m sure you could. What would it be like for you to paint one of them?

BD: It would be pretty extraordinary.

JS: I’m interested — and this is just happening as we’re talking — do you think you’d feel like you’re betraying them?

BD: I wonder if I would feel that way. It’s interesting, I was listening to an interview with the director of that new film, Precious. The main character is a young, very overweight black woman who has been abused, is not very educated and ostensibly doesn’t have a lot going for her…except that she’s an exceptional person. The director said that before he found the woman who did play that part, he went around the country and auditioned a lot of young women. They were young, from poor backgrounds, abused, overweight. Finally it hit him, and he said, “I can’t do this to them. I feel like I’d be exploiting them.” I understood that.

JS: In Gilbert Grape, it’s so touching, and that incredibly beautiful and 500-pound woman… Johnny Depp, who played her son and had to say some really demeaning lines, turned to her and said, “I really hate saying these things to you,” and she just said, “It’s okay. It’s a good job.” She really wasn’t an actor before that, but the exposure gave her a whole new lease on life.

BD: You could take the position that you are exploiting a person, but you could also see it as honoring who that person is.

JS: I come back to your work again and again. I cannot look at one of your paintings without… I can’t glance at your work. I can’t. Your work is so rich and I say dimensional, but that’s not what I mean.

BD: I’ll take dimensional.

JS: It’s dimensional in the sense that you really feel like it’s three-dimensional, like you can touch it. It jumps out from the page. It doesn’t seem two-dimensional. It’s got so many layers of meaning, content. So much going on that it’s like revisiting a Shakespeare script as an artist. I’ve doneMidsummer Night’s Dream 17 times, and every time I’ve done it, I’ve learned something huge about it. I’ve approached each production uniquely because I’ve been in a different place each time.

BD: That’s a wonderful play. It’s funny and romantic and complex.

JS: And it always reveals itself in new ways, and your work does that too. I can’t glance at it because it grabs me and forces me to think about… Not think…I don’t want people to think, I just want them to experience. And that’s what happens to me with your work — the impact of the experience. Opening up your retrospective, I had a catharsis about my own work.

BD: That’s wonderful.

JS: If you knew you were going to die tomorrow, would you feel that you had to do something work-wise? Like, I have to do this. I have to stay up all night?

BD: I’d feel like I had to finish the two drawings I’m working on. It’s funny — this summer, I saw a friend of mine who I hadn’t seen in 20 years, Toni. She has two grandchildren, about 18 months old, who she adores. She said, “I’d love it if you would do portraits of them.” I thought, oh God, no. And then I went over to her daughter Koren’s house — her daughter lives next door. They all live on the Chesapeake Bay. It was a moonlit night and the light was beautiful. The two twin girls were luminous. One a little devilish and the other sweet and pleasing looking, so they’re very different and both so alive, constantly in motion. For the entire time, one of them, Josephine and Catherine — I think it was Josephine — was sticking her hand in her ear, in her mouth, pulling her hair out, gesturing. There was electricity between them — both 18 months old. I thought, you know, I could do this.

JS: I think if you wanted, you could dance your way to the moon. Thank you, Peggy Bailey Doogan.

Masha Hamilton is the author of four critically acclaimed novels, most recently 31 Hours, released in September. She is the founder of the Camel Book Drive and the Afghan Women's Writing Project.

Shannon Cain: What inspired you to launch the AWWP?

Masha Hamilton: I returned to Afghanistan about a year ago, last November. On this trip, I found a greater pessimism among the women than during my previous visit in 2004. My own travel was severely limited due to security considerations, and the women I interviewed often spoke about how quickly the Taliban had taken over in the '90s, how quickly they were not allowed outside except in a burqa and accompanied by a male relative, how quickly they were denied access to schools. How quickly their worlds shrunk. There was fear that this could happen again. Although "moderate Taliban" may be a meaningful term in terms of negotiations with the Karzai government, it seems less meaningful in terms of women's rights. So there is definitely concern among Afghan women as the Karzai government moves toward incorporating the Taliban in some fashion.


SC: How did you organize the project and get it started?

MH: I had long considered teaching an online class to Afghan women writers; I decided to launch the class a few months after my November visit. But enthusiasm among the Afghan writers was palpable, and I rapidly understood the demand would outstrip my ability to meet it. That's when I began reaching out to American novelists, short-story writers, poets, memoirists, etc., who also teach, many of them my friends, and asking them to volunteer on a rotating basis.

SC: What are some of the barriers/risks these writers are overcoming in order to have their voices heard?

MH: Sometimes these women are overcoming major risks just to participate in the project. In several cases, their families do not know they are participating, and would not be happy. Virtually everything on the blog goes through some revision process, so exchanges back and forth between the student and her teacher are critical. Yet many have difficulties getting us the work: going into an Internet cafe is not possible for a woman alone, and a woman who goes in with a male relative makes herself the center of unwelcome, and sometimes threatening, attention.

SC: How has working with these writers changed your teachers’ perception of Afghan women? And your own?

MH: If you take a look at the newsletter, you will see the section called "A Word From Our Teachers." Often, they comment about how much more they understand about Afghan women at this point, and that they have been both educated and moved by working with the writers in ways they hadn't anticipated. This is definitely a two-way street and women at both ends of the project are benefiting. My own perceptions of Afghan women were formed by my previous trips, when I interviewed women in prison in Kabul and Kandahar, child brides, matriarchs of opium-growing families, war widows. I grew to appreciate the grace with which many handled enormous hardships.

SC: What are some of the stumbling blocks you’ve encountered along the way?

MH: The only stumbling block – which is also a strength – is that the teachers are here and the Afghan writers are there. We've largely overcome that with the help of a couple of awesome and amazing liaisons in Afghanistan. We also have a volunteer blogmaster in California and a volunteer technical director in Indiana who set up our secure online classrooms. This project has helped connect people in unusual ways -- I've heard from those who've read the blog and those who've heard about the project, and through this, I've been able to take part in some inspiring conversations. My hope for the coming year is that the blog readership will continue to grow because I think this is a unique and valuable project.

SC: Here at Kore Press we believe in the power of literature as a means toward social justice. Do you see the project contributing somehow to an improved standard of living for women in Afghanistan?

MH: That’s a large goal and my own goals are more modest. I hope we can connect Afghan women to American women as well as to readers from the U.S. and elsewhere. I hope the Afghan women can benefit as much as their teachers and readers do from this exchange. I hope we can let these women know we are here, we are listening, we care.

SC: What would you say resides at the heart of the Afghan Women’s Writing Project?

MH: AWWP is about sharing your story – and I think this is a human need that has been denied Afghan women for many years. Their stories were either seen as irrelevant and value-less, or expressed via male relatives, or sometimes expressed via the media. But not in their own words, in their own way.

Being a Woman: My Only Sin

Photo by Heidi Levine

Reposted from the Afghan Women's Writing Project http://awwproject.wordpress.com/

(Eds Note: This essay was written by one of our writers, but contains no identifying information due to security considerations.)

I love my job. I know it can help bring changes in women’s living conditions in my province. But there are obstacles.

Recently I received a death threat from Taliban. I was on my way to work when a neighbor called out to me and said, “You must return home because we found a letter from the Taliban threatening you, and you must quit your job right now.”

“I want to see that letter,” I told him.

He said, “That is fine,” and gave me the letter, which said the Taliban in my province were planning to kidnap me, my sister and my father and then kill us.

As my family was at risk, they decided to move to another city. They were not happy about leaving me alone and asked me to come with them, but I thought about my responsibilities for the women in my province, so I remained behind for my job. I am not living with my family any longer. I only go out covered in a burqa. I am still working.

My early life began like this: when I was seven years old, my mother got sick, so I began to take care of our home, washing clothes and dishes, cooking. One night during the Taliban regime, our family left Afghanistan at midnight and headed to Iran. It was cold and dark. We were traveling in a car and the roads were unpaved and dusty. Finally we reached the Iranian border. We found a place to stay for the night, and in the morning we crossed a river and then took another car to Zabol in Iran.

In Iran, we started another life with many difficulties. My father was working and my mother and I began to work also. We deshelled nuts for a shopkeeper who paid us about 1000 toman so we had enough to buy bread. I have many bad memories from that time. I remember when I was eight years old; I went to bakery to buy bread. I was the first in line, but the baker did not give me bread because I was an Afghan. I waited until 10 p.m. that night. It got darker and darker and I was afraid, as our house was very far. Finally I got the bread and was running home and, on the way, crying. When I got home, my mother was waiting at the gate, also very worried.

At that time I wanted to study, so I tried to enroll in official Iranian schools, but as I was an Afghan, I was not allowed to attend the schools. I did find a literacy class and I started my primary education there until sixth grade. That meant when we returned to Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban, I could go directly to school to learn subjects, not simply to learn to read.

The first day of school in Afghanistan, I was so glad. I felt I was floating in the sky. It was a sunny day. I was with many Afghan girls standing in the yard of school and waiting for our teachers. It was 2001 and I was in the sixth grade. We did not have chairs, desks, books, or a blackboard and our floor was dirt, since everything was lost during the Taliban regime. I was an intelligent student and the teachers loved me. I never missed a day, even though my mother was sick. I got up early in the morning to clean the house, make breakfast and cook lunch.

In 2004, my life faced another tragedy. My family forced me to marry an uneducated, older man. I was sixteen years old. The man I was engaged to was my father’s relative. From the beginning, every day, I was beaten by him. He wanted to prevent me from going to school; he never allowed me to see my friends and relatives. I tolerated everything because I was an Afghan and it was shame for my family if I complained about my husband.

After three months, my husband sent me to my father’s home and left me. When I was 17 years old, he came and divorced me. I was pregnant. I was happy that this cruel man would leave me alone, but I was worried about my child. After he divorced me, people started to say bad things about me because they did not accept a divorced woman. My child was born in a hospital but since then, I have never seen him. It was a boy and my husband’s family came to take him forever.

There was no way forward for me except to continue my education. I finished my pre-university classes and wanted to go to a university. But my mother was again sick and required an operation that cost the equivalent of eight-thousand dollars. So I worked for three years to help raise this money. My mother had the operation and is now fine. I feel so happy to see her finally healthy after 17 years.

As for my own future, I don’t know what it will be. I know I want a university degree someday, and I know I will keep trying.

By Anonymous

Victoria Garza

Victoria received her Master of Arts degree in Film and Media Theory, History, & Criticism and her M.F.A. in Film Production at NYU. She received the Tisch School of the Arts Fellowship and was nominated for both the Directors Guild of America Scholarship and the Women in Film Scholarship for her documentary Claribel. She has twice been awarded the National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts Entertainment Industry Scholarship. Victoria just finished production of a documentary on immigrant street food vendors in New York City. She resides in Los Angeles, where she writes and develops projects for her production company, clearthoughtmedia.

Left behind

and drenched as the grass,

with drops of dew.

--Kobayashi Issa

For twenty-three days I am terrified of dying. I am terrified that I or my parents or my grandparents or the dog across the street will die. Having decided I was barely surviving, I decide I am a Jew and hiding in Ohio. When I suggest this to my mother, she gently asked me how I can manage to be a Catholic and a Jew at the same time. I remind her that the early Christians were Jews and so was Jesus Christ. “Yes, that’s true,” she says, while patting my hand to keep me from pulling a loose thread from her brown and orange flowered bedspread. I tell my mother all about Anne Frank and remind her that people can be hiding for years and everyone thinks they are dead—but they are not, they’re just hiding. My mother says that my sister is not hiding.

I know she’s dead Mom,” I say. But I also think my sister is bound to show up at any moment, and so I should therefore be prepared. Thus began my love of lists. As long as I could list my thoughts, I felt a degree of control over them, as if listing was slapping them into submission. My most important list was a series of questions I was going to ask my sister upon her return home. The relief I feel from performing the exercise is so profound that it consistently overshadows the knowledge that she is not coming back.

Rather than add to my list, I always change it. I choose eleven, one number shy of my favorite number. There was some logic to this, but I can’t remember what it is. Maybe it’s the same logic my cousin Rachel (whose pajama party my sister and cousin never arrived at) uses when she decides to skip her 7th birthday. We find out a year later when she announces to everyone’s surprise that she is a year younger than she actually is. She says, matter of factly, “I skipped a year.” I skipped weeks and months after Gina’s death. I just wiped them off the map of time. And then I skipped time altogether when I took to daydreaming without realizing it. Anything could set me off. I fell into a trance once while looking at a beetle behind the garage. When I finally hear my mother calling , I have no way of explaining to her what I was doing. I can’t say, “I was looking at a beetle,” because that would sound stupid. So I say, “Nothing,” which my mother, like all mothers, takes to mean that I was doing something I shouldn’t have been doing.

Death does that to time, compresses it, slows it down until it doesn’t exist. A year feels like a week, three years, like three weeks. Carlos Casteneda’s Don Juan says that death lives behind you on your left, an arm's stretch away—ready to tap you on the shoulder. Lorca calls it duende, death as friend, death as companion. But Grace resides to my right, and she is louder and far more beautiful and more powerful than death. She is capable of coaxing death to do whatever she wants. She can make death shut up. Death whispers, “Certainly, if it can happen to you, it can happen to anyone, or worse yet, it can happen to you again.” Then Grace would whisper, “Yes, my girl, it is not only true but it is The Truth, so why worry about it?” So after twenty-three days, I decide I want to die. I imagine my death in hundreds of ways. I die riding my bike, smashed to a pulp by a reckless teenager who only has his driver’s permit. I die by drowning in dirty Lake Erie after jumping off the jetty. I freeze to death outside my bedroom window eating too much snow. I get struck by lightning. I die when I fall out of a tree and crack my head open, and instead of blood pouring out there are just dead thoughts that trickle out and collect in a puddle, which I then stomp on and watch scatter in the wind. However, finally thinking I understand what an attack of the heart means, I decide to die of a heart attack. Except in the case of my heart, it will not give me any warning—it will just beat slower and slower until it stops, like melting an ice cube under my armpit in the middle of summer—slowly or quickly my heart would start shrinking until it is the size of a pin head beating tiny beats, like a lighthouse beam flowing through my bloodstream, working its way out through my eyeball and then flying away. My heart would wave to myself, dead down there in the yard.