August 2019 finds me on vacation. Nonetheless, each Monday this month I will be offering posts from the archive (as usual, look for a workshop post on the second Monday, Q & A with a fellow writer on the fourth Monday).
PODCASTING FOR WRITERS: TO COMMIT, OR NOT (OR VAGUELY?)
Now that I’m working on my 54th podcast, I’ll admit, I love podcasting almost as much as writing. Starting back in 2009 I’ve podcasted many of my lectures, readings, and other events for my books, plus I created and continue to host two podcast series, “Marfa Mondays” and “Conversations with Other Writers.” It remains just as awesome to me now as it was with my first podcast that, whether rich or struggling, famous or new, we writers can project our voices instantly all over the world, while making them available to listeners at any time.
But first, what is a podcast? I often say it’s an online radio show. But the truth is, it’s a much wilder bouquet of possibilities.
A “podcast” is just an online audio (and, less commonly, video) file. It could be of a deeply probing interview; of a bunch of kids singing “Kumbaya”; or of say, you reading your epic poem about belly dancing in the grocery store. It could be a single file—your reading at your local bookstore on March 17, 2015, or, say, a radio show-style series of interviews with fellow horror novelists, one posted each Saturday upon the toll of midnight.
There may be an eye-crossing number of ways to categorize these things, but if you’re writer thinking about getting started with podcasting, I would suggest that you first clearly identify the level of commitment you are willing to make to your listeners who— lets hope—are going to be eager for your next podcast.
My podcasting assistant checks out the PORTA-BOOTH
1. No Commitment
This would be a single, stand-alone podcast. Such is my first, which is simply a recording of my lecture at the Library of Congress back in 2009 about the research behind my novel, The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire.
I call my podcast series “Conversations with Other Writers” an “occasional series” because, as I state on the webpage, I post these “whenever the literary spirits move me and the planets align.” Right now, that’s about once a year… maybe. By the way, I just posted the eighth podcast in this series, a conversation with historian M.M. McAllen about a mind-bogglingly transnational period in Mexican history.
This would be my “Marfa Mondays Podcasting Project,” 24 podcasts to run from January 2012 – December 2013, apropos of my book in-progress on Far West Texas. Not all but most of these are of interviews, and although I have posted 20 so far, my self-imposed deadline of December 2013 did not hold, alas. For reasons too complex to go into here, in the middle of this project, I went and wrote a biography. And that’s OK. I may be slow, but with only four more podcasts to go, I’ll get there soon enough!
This would involve high production values, a regular, strictly respected, and ongoing schedule, and would surely necessitate and perhaps even command fees from listeners by way of “memberships.” Into this last straight jacket of a category I quake to venture, for I really do love writing more than I love podcasting.
August 2019 finds me on vacation. Nonetheless, each Monday this month I will be offering posts from the archive (as usual, look for a workshop post on the second Monday, Q & A with a fellow writer on the fourth Monday).
12 Tips for Summer Day Hiking in the Desert (How to Stay Cool and Avoid Actinic Keratosis, Blood, and Killer Bees)
C’est moi on (whew) August 30, 2014 at Meyers Spring, an important rock art site of the Lower Pecos, on the US-Mexico border near Dryden, Texas. As you can see, in my left hand, I am carrying a white umbrella. So I didn’t need the hat. And that black backpack wasn’t the best idea. I also should have worn a lightweight bandana. Oh, and more sunblock. Always more sunblock. The long-sleeved white shirt and hiking trousers were both excellent choices, however.
Just returned from hiking with the Rock Art Foundation in to see the spectacular rock art at Meyers Spring in the Lower Pecos of Far West Texas (yes, there will be a podcast in the Marfa Mondays Podcasting Project, in which I exploring the Big Bend & Beyond in 24 podcasts. More about that anon).
I got a few things very right on this trip and a few things, well, I could have done better. Herewith, for you, and for me– this will serve as my own checklist for my next rock art foray– 12 tips for summer day hiking in the desert:
1. Don’t just bring water, lots of water, more water than you think you can possibly drink– bring it cold and keep it cold.
Everest Lumbar Waistpack
Of course, not drinking enough water can be seriously dangerous. But warm water when it’s this hot is just bleh–and if you’re carrying a plain old plastic water bottle in your hand, out here in Texas, boy howdy… (Last year, I hiked this way over Burro Mesa in the Big Bend National Park. Six hours. Head-slapper.)
The thing is, you don’t just want to hydrate; you want to keep your core from overheating, so every swig of cold water really helps. Before heading out, fill your insulated water bottles with lots of ice. In your car, keep them in an ice chest or, if that’s not possible, wrapped in a blanket, or whatever’s handy, until the moment you have to take them out. I did this for the first time, and wow, what a difference.
Yes, sun block stinks and feels gross, but if you’re like me — a descendant of those who once roamed the foggy bogs of the British Isles– if you don’t, you may end up helping your dermatologist buy his ski condo. And no, he probably won’t invite you.
> Watch this fun video, “How the Sun Sees You.”
> For those with actinic keratosis (that’s the fancy term for seriously sun-damaged skin), try Perrin’s Blend. If that doesn’t work, off to the dermatologist you must go.
This protects you against the sun, keeps you cool (the white reflects the sun), protects you from bug bites and scratches. Light clothes always beat dark! Flip the collar up to protect your neck. About scratches: the desert tends to be filled with cactus and thorny scrub.
4. Knot a light-colored scarf around your throat.
This protects you from the sun. A bandana works fine. Mike Clelland (more about the guru in a moment) suggests cutting the bandana in two, so it’s lighter. Porquoi pas? But I didn’t do this. Alas. Bring on the Perrin’s.
5. Wear tough but lightweight trekking trousers.
For the same reason you want to wear the long-sleeved white shirt: trousers protect your body parts, in this case, calves and knees, from sun, scratches, and bugs. Do not wear shorts unless, for some reason you probably should be working on with your psychiatrist, you don’t mind scarring and blood.
And do not wear jeans. I repeat, do not wear jeans.
6. Keep your pack as light as possible, in both senses.
Hey, you’ve not only gotta stay cool, but you’ve gotta hump all that water!
A few specifics:
> Use a lightweight pack and carry it on your hips, rather than the flat of your back (see photo of lumbar waist pack above). This helps keep your back cool. But I don’t speak from experience on this one: I’m going to try this for next time.
> Carry lightweight insulated water bottles.
> Ditch the hat and ditch the heavy hiking boots (more about that below. There are, of course, other places and times when a hat and hiking books would be advisable).
> Skip the camera or use a lightweight camera (I use my iPhone).
> Eat a light breakfast and bring only a little food– since this is a day hike, you can eat a big dinner when you get back. But you will need sustenance on the trail. I recommend date, fruit and nut bars– love those Lara bars— that is, food that is high in energy but won’t spoil in the heat, and that doesn’t require any dishes or utensils. Don’t bring anything with chocolate in it. (I brought a Snicker’s bar. Ooey… gooey.)
>Bring a white plastic grocery bag and use it to cover your pack. Two advantages: the white reflects sunlight and keeps it cooler than, say, an unprotected black or other dark-colored pack, and, in case of rain, will help keep it dry.
> Highly recommended: Mike Clelland’s Ultralight Backpackin’Tips, a superb resource for keeping it lighter-than-light, yet making sure to bring what you need for comfort and safety.
> And be sure to visit Clelland’s blog for many helpful videos and more.
7. Watch out for killer bees!
Africanized bees have arrived in some desert locales north of the Mexican border. What do bees want? Sweet things and water. So don’t carry around open cans or bottles or suddenly pick up open cans or bottles– bees may smell the water or soft drink from afar, crawl inside, and then, if you do anything they don’t like, such as pick up that can, they will go bezerk, and call in their buddies who will also go bezerk and might sting you hundreds of times.
No kidding, people and animals have died from killer bee attacks.
So be especially careful around any blooming plants where bees might be feeding. Ditto any open water, such as a tank, spring, or any puddle. And whatever you do, if you see a hive, don’t go anywhere near it. Normal honey bees, however, are not a problem. Unless you have a severe allergy, a few stings might actually be good for you! (Read more about bee sting therapy on the Apitherapy Association webpage). Your real problem is, it’s hard to tell the killers from the honeys until they attack.
8. Wear gaiters.
I followed Mike Clelland’s tip and bought a pair from Dirty Girl Gaiters (they’re for guys, too). They weigh about as much as a feather, they’re easy to attach to your lace-up running shoes and indeed, they keep the dust out.
Their biggest advantage is that you can therefore avoid wearing those ankle-high and heavy hiking boots. You’ll exert yourself less and therefore, on the margin, stay cooler. (I’ll admit however that on this last hike, a loose ball of bubble-gum cactus went right through the gaiters and stabbed me in the ankle. Oh well!)
www.dirtygirlgaiters.com
9. Forget the hat and trekking pole; use a white umbrella.
Really! Who cares if it looks nerdy? It’s nerdier to pass out from heat stroke or end up looking like a tomato. So let those guys in jeans, black T-shirts, and baseball caps cackle all they want, as they sweat & burn & chafe.
The white umbrella protects you from sun and the rain and– crucially– helps keep your head cool. A hat will trap heat on your head– not what you want out here. Plus, in a tight spot, you can also use the umbrella as a trekking pole. Added bonus: scares mountain lions. I would think. Don’t take my word for that, however. Also good, once folded, to toss a rattlesnake or tarantula. Not that I’ve had to do that, either. Just saying.
In shade, if possible. (Oh, right, you have your umbrella!)
12. In your car, leave a reflector open on your car’s dashboard and another over your stash of cold water.
If you’ve had to park outside, after a day of baking out in the desert, it’s going to be an authentic Finnish sauna in there– unless you use a dashboard reflector. In which case it will still be a chocolate-bar-melting warm, but infinitely more bearable. I picked up my pair of dashboard reflectors at Walgreen’s for $3.99 each and I was glad indeed that I did. Certainly, you could also just use ye olde roll of aluminum foil.
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is one of B. Traven’s best-known novels. It was made into a movie starring Humphrey Bogart.
The postcard from the B. Traven conference in the Mexican Embassy in Berlin. My translation: “It is not I who am important, but my work.”Reverse side of the postcard with schedule and participants.
Herewith, a few more photos:
Susana Garduño, director of the Mexican Cultural Institute in Germany, interviews B. Traven’s stepdaughter, Malú Montes de Oca de Heyman.
Tim Heyman, co-director with his wife Malú Montes de Oca de Heyman of the B. Traven Estate, delivers his keynote speech about B. Traven’s origins.
Third from left is Adriana Haro-Luviano de Rall, UNAM-Alemania; second from right is Andreas Rosenfelder, Chief Cultural Editor, Welt.
The following day another conference was held in Brecht-Haus (the former home of Berthold Brecht) in East Berlin.
As I was leaving Berlin, a friend gave me a copy of this beautiful and unusual and highly detailed German language graphic biography of B. Traven, Portrait eines Beruhmten Unbekannten (Portrait of a Famous Unknown):
Something I happened upon a ways south of Berlin thereafter. My translati0n: “Reality is for those who cannot abide their dreams.”
My esteemed amigo Bruce Berger’sA Desert Harvest, just out from Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, is sublime– and wickedly funny. Stay tuned for a Q & A.
Highly recommended also by my writing assistant. He claims this book tastes cactusy.
The brilliant Patricia Dubrava has translated the also brilliant Agustín Cadena’s flash fiction “Black Magic” in Lunch Ticket.
The Kindle edition of Mikel Miller’s mind-boogie anthology of English-language writing about Mexico (which includes something of mine), Mexico: Sunlight and Shadows, is on-sale for a ridiculous 99 cents.
Writerly Tools Nerd Alert: Moose Designs is Kickstarting their second iteration of the private workstation bag. If you have to work on your laptop on a crowded plane or train, this is a sanity-saver. (I have no relationship with Moose Designs; I am simply a delighted customer– I have their first version of the workstation bag. More about writerly tools here and here and here.)
Grace Cavalieri included my book Meteor in her review of poetry for Washington Independent Books: July 2019 Exemplars.
“Especially memorable in this candid energetic book is a sequence of poems (Section ll) ‘Davy & Me.’ They capture the mysterious rapture of comradeship that’s seldom been described better.”
Fave German Lesson, German with Jenny and Snoopy and Minou:
It was about a decade ago that I first came across Eric Barnes‘ work, when we both had novels with Unbridled Books– his was a dark comedy about high tech, Shimmer. Now I am delighted to learn about his latest, just out from Arcade Publishing: Above the Ether. It promises to be an exceptionally good read. Booklist says: “Barnes’ spare and chilling prose flows from one horrific scene to another without, surprisingly, alienating his readers, perhaps because the heart of his narrative ultimately reveals an abiding faith in the power of human compassion. A first-rate apocalyptic page-turner.”
A mesmerizing novel of unfolding dystopia amid the effects of climate change in a world very like our own, for readers of Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven and Margaret Atwood’s The Year of the Flood.
In this prequel to Eric Barnes’s acclaimed novel The City Where We Once Lived, six sets of characters move through a landscape and a country just beginning to show the signs of cataclysmic change. A father and his young children fleeing a tsunami after a massive earthquake in the Gulf. A woman and her husband punishing themselves without relent for the loss of both their sons to addiction, while wildfires slowly burn closer to their family home. A brilliant investor, assessing opportunity in the risk to crops, homes, cities, industries, and infrastructure, working in the silent comfort of her office sixty floors up in the scorching air. A doctor and his wife stuck in a refugee camp for immigrants somewhere in a southern desert. Two young men working the rides for a roadside carnival, one escaping a brutal past, the other a racist present. The manager of a chain of nondescript fast-food restaurants in a city ravaged by the relentless wind.
While every night the news alternates images of tsunami destruction with the baseball scores, the characters converge on a city where the forces of change have already broken—a city half abandoned, with one part left to be scavenged as the levee system protecting it slowly fails—until, in their vehicles on the highway that runs through it, they witness the approach of what looks to be just one more violent storm. ––Catalog copy for Above the Ether by Eric Barnes
C.M. MAYO: What inspired you do write Above the Ether?
ERIC BARNES: Above the Ether is the prequel to my previous novel, The City Where We Once Lived, but I wrote them out of order. In fact, the plots of the two books essentially happen simultaneously. But I didn’t have the idea for Above the Ether until I’d finished City.
The City Where We Once Lived is about a city that’s been abandoned and the few thousand people who have chose to live there. The city in that novel has been devastated not by a plague or some virus, but by bad decisions, inattention, abandonment. All animals have fled, all the plants and trees have died.
The main character in City assumes that everyone, everywhere lives with this sort of death of plants and animals. But toward the end of the novel, a new person comes to the city. And, very off-handedly, he tells the main character why he’s fled his home and come to this city.
The animals that left this place, they didn’t all just die. They went to other places. Like the city we are from. Huge packs of dogs. Feral cats. The failed efforts of the city to wipe them out with poison, so many dead animals that they had to leave carcasses in piles on corners and overflowing from dumpsters and still the animals roamed the street.
“What you have in rain,” the man’s friend is now saying, “others have in heat and drought. Rivers turned to creeks or dried up completely. Lakes emptied of water, now dead valleys or dry plains. Uncontrollable fires and not just in the forests. Whole neighborhoods destroyed on the edges of big cities. Hillsides that should have never been occupied, even before the drought began, finally the fires could not be stopped, so that now those hillside neighborhoods are turned black and white, burned flat to the ground, they look like the landscape of some moon.”
And so I started Above the Ether with that idea.
In neither City nor Above the Ether did I want to write a novel about a plague or virus wiping out humanity. I didn’t want to write about an apocalypse, though both books do feel apocalyptic.
Instead, I wanted to take mostly real, actual events and phenomenon and push them just slightly. In other words, what if Detroit had actually failed a decade ago? What if New Orleans never recovered from Katrina? What if the flooding in Thailand or Japan had happened in a country that felt the US? What if all the slow-motion environmental and societal problems – and disasters – that happen over years or decades were instead pressed together into one novel?
So the novels are very much fiction. But they are based mostly on things that have very clearly already happened.
C.M. MAYO: If a reader were to take away one sentence (or two or three) from this novel, which would you suggest, and why?
ERIC BARNES: I think it would be this passage:
A theater, nearly two hundred years old, is easily torn down. Rotted anyway. From the rainfall that poured for so many years through the gilded dome of a towering ceiling.
The musicians who had played there, the actors and actresses who once performed, the speeches long ago delivered, poetry read aloud, movies played. Funds were raised; during the war the stage was lined with beds.
Now gone.
Memories offer no protection. They are only a series of moments that happened in the past.
Above the Ether is very much about how people abuse and abandon places. Cities particularly, but places – such as theaters – within those cities or rural towns. Farmland. We abandon these places. It’s not about plagues and viruses. It’s about choices.
C.M. MAYO: Can you talk about which writers have been the most important influences for you?
ERIC BARNES: These days, I think the most influential writers on what I’m writing are some combination of Kurt Vonnegut, Cormac McCarthy and Annie Dillard. There are many others. But those are the ones I think of most often.
Vonnegut and his ability to bridge genres – from literary fiction to science-fiction to genres of his own creation – as well as mixing fictional and non-fictional elements so incredibly.
McCarthy’s Blood Meridian changed my whole perspective on reading and writing. The beauty of the writing, the unapologetic violence of the characters, the structure of the novel. It was otherworldly for me, in so many ways.
For the Time Being by Annie Dillard was another book that changed my whole sense of what could be written. The way she shifts time and moves through characters and combines narrative and poetic elements – all without being self-conscious or pretentious – was just amazing.
Then there were the short stories of Raymond Carver and Richard Ford, mostly because they wrote about the kind of people I knew growing up. In my early 20s, all I wanted to do was forget so many of the people I’d been around as a child. But the Carver and Ford short stories made me realize that actually what I wanted – and needed – to do was write about the people I knew growing up.
C.M. MAYO: Which writers are you reading now?
ERIC BARNES: I tend to read a lot of non-fiction, actually, especially narrative non-fiction about scientific issues. So I love David Quammen’s books about island bio-geography and the history of the discovery of evolution are fascinating to me.
C.M. MAYO: Your day job is news. Is this something you find helpful or challenging (or both) for you as a novelist?
ERIC BARNES: Helpful, mostly. The assimilation of so much information in a mostly objective way – that’s what I was after with Above the Ether. Honestly, although I didn’t intend to do this at the outset, much of Above the Ether is written in a non-fiction narrative style.
C.M. MAYO: You have been a productive creative writer for many years. How has the Digital Revolution affected your writing? Specifically, has it become more challenging to stay focused with the siren calls of email, texting, blogs, online newspapers and magazines, social media, and such? If so, do you have some tips and tricks you might be able to share?
ERIC BARNES: My advice is to turn it all off when you write. Phone. Email. Everything. I write on a computer, but have to be sure all the alerts and notifications are off. Not just emails and the Web, but even alerts about software updates and battery life. Everything. Even the word processor I use, I have it set up so all the toolbars and menus and everything else is hidden. I just want a blank white page on which I can type.
Otherwise, the distractions are deadly.
“My advice is to turn it all off when you write. Phone. Email. Everything.”
C.M. MAYO: Another question apropos of the Digital Revolution. At what point, if any, were you working on paper? Was working on paper necessary for you, or problematic?
ERIC BARNES: Early on, I wrote my first short stories on paper. But very soon I switched to writing on a computer – this big, clunky machine that weight 30 pounds and that I’d gotten from my mom’s office.
However, then and now, I constantly print out the pages I’ve written and read them on paper, editing them with a pencil. I edit that way almost exclusively. (On the computer, I edit only lightly.) So that means that, on the printed pages, I’m adding words, sentences, whole sections – most of which is written in the margins, but some of which I write on the back sides of printed pages. I even re-order whole chapters on paper (using a crazy-to-anyone-else numbering system I’ve used for years). This means that after a week or two of handwriting my edits, I’ll have many, many pages that I then have to re-type into the computer. But even that is a new chance to read and re-read what I’ve written (and re-written).
I will also often take the printed pages and lay them out side by side on a table or the floor. I like to look at and read whole chapters that way – 15 to 20 pages all laying side by side.
C.M. MAYO: If you could go back in time and give your 30 year-old self some writerly advice, what would be the standout piece?
ERIC BARNES: Wow. So many things. Most of which can’t (or shouldn’t) be shared publicly because they involve the business side of publishing.
One thing I will say: I’ve had six agents in my life. That’s way, way too many. A couple of them – my current agent very much topping the list – have been great. The others were awful. Not truthful, not transparent, no integrity. My 30-year-old self was far too happy just to have an agent. I should have been much more demanding of them and careful in who I trusted.
I will also say that at 30 years old, I’d finished three novels, but none had been published. It was maddening. But I kept at it. And I kept editing and re-writing. And, in some cases, I gave up on work I’d spent years writing. Which was necessary.
C.M. MAYO: What’s next for you as a writer?
ERIC BARNES: I’m mid-way through another novel, roughly taking place in the same world as Above the Ether and The City Where We Once Lived. Some of it’s actually pretty good. Some of it is really in need of more work.
But right now I’m focused on supporting Above the Ether. By the fall, I’ll be deep into that novel, trying to make it work the way it should.
This finds me deep into drafting an essay, or rather a biographical sketch of a most fascinating Texas oral historian… More news about that soon. Meanwhile, from the archives, recently migrated from the old blog platform to self-hosted WordPress here at www.madam-mayo.com:
Mexico has been very much on my mind these past days because I have been working on some translations of works by Mexican writers Agustín Cadena and Rose Mary Salum... more news about those soon… and also (not entirely a digression from the book in-progress about Far West Texas) I have been working on an essay about books in Mexico entitled “Dispatch from the Sister Republic.” >> CONTINUE READING
REST: My writing assistant demonstrates the concept. With snoring.
Do not be deceived! Rest, this cool-blue paperback featuring a beach chair, may look like your garden variety “self-helpie,” the sort of reading I think of as Airport-Bookshop-Fluffo. I confess to slumming in this genre when, on long flights, I feel almost brain-dead enough to sink to watching the in-flight movie or even… People Magazine. (….Nooooo!!!! Wylie Coyote scream wisps into the abyss…)
But seriously, Rest by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, a PhD in the history and sociology of science, is another level. To my surprise, I found myself reading Rest with a highlighter. And then I read it again. ASAP it will appear on the recommended reading list for my writing workshop.
The take home point is that, strange as this may sound, rest is a skill that can be cultivated. And, that for a richly creative and satisfying life, we need to treat rest as of equal importance to work itself.
Plus, Pang quotes Salvador Dalí, which I found enchantingly hilarious.
Say “Texas” and the images that pop into most people’s minds do not include literary figures and their oeuvres. But trust me, as one who has been working on a book about Far West for more years than I care to count, Texas has one helluva literary culture, a long-standing and prodigious production, yea verily flowing out as if by pumpjacks, and if not all, a head-swirling amount of it is finer than fine, and there are legions of readers who sincerely appreciate and celebrate it, as do I. Know this: Lonn Taylor and Don Graham, both of whom just passed away, were giants among Texas literati.
LONN TAYLOR(1940-2019)
From my Texas Bibliothek: A selection of many treasured works by Lonn Taylor.
Lonn Taylor was an historian who wrote about many things including cowboys and the American flag and every nook and cranny and corner of Texas, so it seemed, always with erudition, elegance, and heart. I had some correspondence with Taylor before I met him in Fort Davis– to which town in Far West Texas he had retired with his wife Dedie after a career as an historian at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC. In his book-cave of an office below the copper-red shadow Sleeping Lion Mountain, I interviewed him for the Marfa Mondays Podcasting Project (listen in any time). I was at once charmed, grateful, and mightily enlightened about multitudinous things Texan. Later I saw him and Dedie at the annual Center for Big Bend Studies conference, and over the next few years, many an email zinged back and forth. I am but one of many people who counted Lonn as a personal friend and a mentor, and I am saddened by his loss more than I can say.
Taylor’s works are a cultural treasure, a monument. And he was wondrously productive. However did he manage to write all these books and his Rambling Boy column for the Big Bend Sentinel, and keep up with what surely must have been a daily hurricane of email? I was just about to email him a congratulations on his latest book, Turning the Pages of Texas, when I got the news from Carmen Tafolla, President of the Texas Institute of Letters, that in an instant– a stroke on June 26– he was gone from this world.
Also from my Texas Bibliothek: Some essential works by film historian and literary critic Don Graham.
Just days before Lonn’s passing, on June 22, Don Graham also died of a stroke. I never met Graham, the renowned J. Frank Dobie Regents Professor of English at the University of Texas Austin, but I thought I would very soon, for I had been emailing with him about arranging a podcast interview on the latest of his many splendid books about Texas: Giant: Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, James Dean, Edna Ferber and the Making of a Legendary American Film.
I do not think it is possible to comprehend Texas as a cultural and political entity without taking into account the imaginal influences (and sometimes very weird echos) of fiction and films– and, in particular, the film based on Edna Ferber’s best-selling novel, Giant. And no one wrote about all of that, and Giant, more lucidly than Don Graham.
We have never met, but I feel as if we have. I think this is always true when one has read another’s such wonderful writing. But I did “meet” Diana Anhalt, in a matter of speaking, when years ago, she sent me a selection from her powerful and fascinating history / memoir of growing up in Mexico City, A Gathering of Fugitives: American Political Expatriates in Mexico 1948-1965. When, sometime later, I read the entirety of that beautifully written book itself–which I admiringly recommend to anyone with an interest in Mexico–I wrote to her, and we have kept in touch ever since. Apart from writing poetry and essay, we have this common: a lifetime, it seems, of living in Mexico City, and married to a Mexican. By the time we found each other’s work, however, Diana and her husband Mauricio had left “the endless city” for Atlanta, Georgia. (But ojalá, we will meet one day outside of cyberspace soon!)
Her latest, just out from Kelsay Books, is Walking Backward. From her publisher’s website, her author bio:
“Diana Anhalt left Mexico over nine years ago following close to a lifetime in that country but claims her writing sometimes digs in its heels and refuses to budge. She continues to write about Mexico. Many of her essays, short stories, and book reviews have appeared in both English and Spanish along with her book, A Gathering of Fugitives:American Political Expatriates in Mexico 1948-1965. Since she first arrived in Atlanta, two of her chapbooks, Second Skin, (Future Cycle Press), Lives of Straw, (Finishing Line Press), and one short collection, Because There Is No Return, (Passager Books), have been published. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in “Nimrod,” “Concho River Review,” “The Connecticut River Review,” “The Atlanta Review,” and “Spillway,” among many others. She believes this is the first time her work has started to lose its Mexican accent.” Source: Kelsay Books
Writes Dan Veach, founding editor of Atlanta Review, author of Elephant Water and Lunchboxes:
“The best way to visit any country is with someone who knows and loves it intimately. In Walking Backward, Diana Anhalt welcomes us graciously into the very heart of her family and her Mexico. With deep empathy and quiet courage, and always with a saving grace of humor, she shows us how to deal with love and loss, both on a personal and an artistic level.”
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C.M. MAYO:What inspired you to write Walking Backward?
DIANA ANHALT: I wanted to put together a collection—this is my fifth—which would include, for the first time, some of what I’d written following my husband’s death three years ago, but it couldn’t just be a book about death so I settled on including, as well, work focused on the family, on the past.
MISSING by Diana Anhalt
I walk my unwritten poems down La Reforma, stop to buy La Prensa, scan the Want Ads. Missing bilingual parrot Inglés/Español, answers to the name of Palomitas.
Se Busca María Felix look-alike for chachacha-ing on Saturday nights. Extraviado/Lost guitar case filled with woman’s shoes and toothpaste samples.
In Search Of instructions on how to read divining bones. Reward Offered for information leading to whereabouts of Gabi Escobedo, missing since September.
Attención Mauricio—You’ve been dead long enough. It’s time to come home.
C.M. MAYO:If a reader were to read one poem in this collection, which one would you suggest, and why?
DIANA ANHALT: The logical choice would be Walking Backward, the title poem and the first in the book. After Mauricio and I left Mexico and the home where we had lived for many years, I’d wake up in the middle of the night to go to the kitchen or the bathroom only to discover my feet walking in the direction they would have taken in my Mexican home, not here in Atlanta. The title’s suggestion of walking and residing in the past was what I was aiming for.
[SCROLL DOWN TO THE END OF THIS POST READ THE POEM, “WALKING BACKWARD”]
C.M. MAYO:Can you talk about which poets and writers have been the most important influences for you?
DIANA ANHALT: It’s changed, of course, over the years, but more recently I was very fortunate to belong to a group which worked closely with the head of the Georgia Tech poetry program, the late Tom Lux, who became a mentor and friend. Tom facilitated our interaction with the poets Ginger Murchinson and Laure Ann Bosselar. Richard Blanco and a number of wonderful poets in our Poetry Workshop and others writing here in Atlanta have also influenced my poetry. C.M. MAYO:Which poets / writers are you reading now?
DIANA ANHALT:Here: Poems for the Planet, a recent anthology, edited by poet Elizabeth Coleman, Jo Harjo, our new U.S. poet laureate, and Land of Fire by Mario Chard.I’ve also been reading Jennifer Clement’s Gun Love and Fatima Farheen Mirza’s A Place for Us.
C.M. MAYO:You have been a productive poet and writer for many years. How has the Digital Revolution affected your writing? Specifically, has it become more challenging to stay focused with the siren calls of email, texting, blogs, online newspapers and magazines, social media, and such? If so, do you have some tips and tricks you might be able to share?
DIANA ANHALT: You’ve expressed it well. It has been challenging to stay focused and I’m afraid that, as of now, I’m still incapable of using it fully to my advantage—I don’t use social media— but I do find the Internet extraordinarily helpful at times in establishing contacts, finding venues and staying in touch.
C.M. MAYO:Another question apropos of the Digital Revolution. At what point, if any, were you working on paper? Was working on paper necessary for you, or problematic?
DIANA ANHALT: I had always worked on paper but once I began to write on the computer I found the ability to make changes and save the many versions necessary in producing a poem very helpful. I still keep a notebook, transfer the notes to the computer, and do the actual writing on the computer. C.M. MAYO:What’s next for you as a writer / poet?
DIANA ANHALT: Now that Walking Backward is out I will continue to produce for our monthly poetry workshop meetings, send my work out, enter a contest or two but I do hope to get back and revise my now outdated computer files for A Gathering of Fugitives: American Political Expatriates in Mexico 1948-1965. (Although I must admit that I’ve been promising myself to do that for years. Still haven’t.)
Use ‘heel’ and ‘toe’ as verbs
WALKING BACKWARD By Diana Anhalt
Late each night I rose, woozy with sleep and my bare feet traveled blind—knew one room from the next through cracks in the wood, space between floorboards,
sensed their width, breadth, girth… For forty years I called that same place home— Left it, yet it resides in me. The feet are last to follow. They fumble the unfamiliar,
reject the waxed surface of a new life, are the last to forgive my leaving, long to return me to the old home—wet wash pinned to a line in the courtyard, scent of chili
and cilantro wafting from the kitchen. At night they lurch backwards into the past, tread the dream halls where faces linger in mirrors, Spanish echoes down corridors
into a past I thought I’d left behind— And there you are. You wait in the doorway, lean against the door frame and ask: Como te fue? How did it go? Red wine or white?
Walking Backward
Late each night you rose, woozy with sleep, the space your familiar, and your bare feet traveled it blind—knew one room from the next through cracks in the wood, space between floorboards, splinters, sensed their width, breadth girth.
For forty years you called the same place home— Leave it, yet it resides in you. The feet are last to follow. They fumble the unfamiliar, reject the waxed surface of a new life, are the last to forgive your leaving, long to return you to the old home—wet wash pinned to a line in the courtyard, scent of chili and cilantro wafting from the kitchen.
At night they lurch backwards into the past, tread dream halls where faces linger in mirrors, Spanish echoes down corridors into a past you thought you’d left behind—
And there you are. You wait in the doorway, lean against the door frame and ask: “Como te fue?” How did it go? Red wine or white?
They cleave to familiar roadways. The late night path between bed and bathroom. Your feet are the last to forgive you. The feet are the last to forgive your leaving murky Leading you down a hall you left behind. (no longer there) You alongside
(forgive)
(home) in the cracks between boards. (where your Spanish song)
(And when you leave) The feet are the last to forgive your leaving home
Footsteps lurk in the past. My feet tread the past. Your feet are the last to forgive you. (to forgive your wandering.) You abandon your past
My feet still know a past when…. Tide erases footsteps on the sand.
Bare feet, it’s time to get used to this, this unknown space, a floor less friendly, rougher on your soles, less familiar with your tread, colder, tile not wood
The tug of familiar surfaces
Today after a deep sleep my feet walk me Toward the door I left behind down a hallway I left behind. No longer there.
Xxxxxxxxxxxx Late each night you rise, woozy with sleep,the space your familiar, and your bare feet travel it blind—tread those same midnight floorboards sense their width, breadth girth, know one room from another through cracks in the wood, They tread the past.
Lingered behind in the familiar Who thought to warn them? I forgot to warn them.(you)
Late at night, woozy with (from) sleep I forget to tread the slippery smoothness of new floors (I forget and tread the old floors) through hallways silenced by sleep, dizzy with sleep
Foothold, heel and toe My body owns (keeps, retains) the compass, (encompasses) Maps (traces) the floors I left behind. My footsteps tread past.
retrace ones steps (If you) live in the same place for 40 years. (Call one place home) tread the same midnight floorboards That place resides in you. (When) You rise at night, the floor is your familiar and your bare feet travel it—feel it’s width, breadth girth, Know one space from another by the cracks in the wood, a shaky floorboard,
(After years treading the same midnight floorboards)
Today, late at night, woozy with (from) sleep
After years of treading darkened halls feet knewthose floors and follow them. They seek the familiar groundwork of the past, late to discover it’s disappeared. (no longer there.)
I argue with my feet (An argument with my feet) Earlier notes
I walk away from forty years of my life
Awakened to darkness, late at night my feet refuse to travel, walk the dark, down the hall you left behind Remind me that I never thought to tell them:
For forty years you call the same place home and each night, woozy with sleep, your feet tread those same midnight floorboards until
My feet still remember a past when
your feet tread those same midnight floorboards until that place resides in you
Awakened from a deep Nudged into the past Nudge words into meaning
When I left I forgot to tell (warn) my feet. They stayed Behind entrenched in the familiar streets of home
Go through the process of leaving
I forgot to tell you. (them) (warn them) When I left I forgot to tell (warn) my feet. they linger behind
Behind
Highways, biways. At home on bicycle pedals. My feet, unlike the rest of me, refuse to take the lead (to follow my lead) Highways, biways. At home on bicycle pedals. My feet, unlike the rest of me, refuse to take the lead (to follow my lead) When I rise from bed late at night in this new place fuzzy (heavy) with sleep Feet speak a language of their own
The scurry, scrape against the floor New territory (territorial)
I try to reason with my feet.
Abandon home after forty years, last to follow are the feet. They fumble the unfamiliar, reject the waxed surface of new floors. (newness)
They reject the slippery smoothness of new floors They forget to tread the slippery smoothness of new floors And fumble in the unfamiliar (I forget and tread the old floors) through hallways silenced by sleep, dizzy with sleep When you abandon (leave) home after 60 years. the feet are the last to follow. Mine, at home in the past, learned (memorized) the floors—width, breadth, girth Today, in this new place, they move (walk) (grope) backwards into (retrieving) the past late at night, woozy with sleep, reject the slippery smoothness of new floors forget to tread the slippery smoothness of new floors fumble with the unfamiliar The late night path (track another word-meaning destination?) between bed and bathroom. You abandon your past
Nope, that is not Francisco I. Madero, pictured right, but J.J. Kilpatrick, subject of Lonn Taylor’s fascinating article in this same issue of the Journal of Big Bend Studies, vol. 29, 2017.
For those rusty on their borderlands and Mexican history, Francisco I. Madero was the leader of Mexico’s 1910 revolution– the first major revolution of the 20th century– and President of Mexico from 1911-1913. This was not only a transformative episode for Mexico, but also for Texas.
My book, Metaphysical Odyssey into the Mexican Revolution: Francisco I. Madero and His Secret Book, Spiritist Manual, came out in 2014 (also in Spanish, translated by Agustín Cadena as Odisea metafísica hacia la Revolución Mexicana, Francisco I. Madero y su libro secreto, Manual espírita, from Literal Publishing.) So far so good: it has been cited already in a number of scholarly works about Madero and the Revolution.
Yes indeed, Metaphysical Odyssey is a peculiar title. In the article, I explain why I chose it and why, much as readers groan about it, I would not change it.
> Read the paper here. (I had posted an earlier only partially edited PDF at this link; in case you’ve already seen it, as of today, June 17, 2019, it has been updated.) And you can order a copy of the actual printed article with all photos, and of the complete issue from the Center for Big Bend Studies here.
A few of the photos, not in the PDF:
The first and definitively not secret book. This shows my copy of a third edition of the book that launched the Mexican Revolution: Francisco I. Madero’s La sucesión presidencial en 1910 [The Presidential Succession in 1910]. This third edition is from 1911. The first edition is dated 1908 and went into circulation in early 1909. Photo: C.M. Mayo.Advertisement in Helios, October 1911, for the just-published Manual espírita by Bhîma, that is, Francisco I. Madero. Photo: C.M. Mayo.The title page of my copy of a first edition of Madero’s Manual espírita of 1911. Note that it is stamped “Cortesia del Gral. Ramón F. Iturbe [Courtesy of General Ramón F. Iturbe]. Photo: C.M. Mayo.Frontispiece and title page of my copy of the 1906 Spanish translation of Léon Denis’ Aprés le mort, translated from the French by Ignacio Mariscal and sponsored by Francisco Madero and his son, Francisco I. Madero. Photograph by C.M. Mayo.My copy of the cover of the rare circa 1924 Barcelona edition of Manual espírita. Photo by C.M. Mayo.
#
SPECIAL NOTE
Undoubtedly scholars, novelists and screenwriters will be producing works about Francisco I. Madero and the Mexican Revolution until Kingdom Come (or, perhaps I should say, the Reemergence of Atlantis); because I am a literary writer who roams over a wide variety of subjects, I do not intend to keep up with them all. That said, I regret that I could not cite in my article the book by Mexican historian Beatriz Gutiérrez Müller, Dos Revolucionarios a la sombra de Madero: A historia de Solón Argüello Escobar y Rogelio Fernández Güell(Mexico: Ariel, 2016), which I recommend as crucial for any bibliography on Madero, his Spiritism, the history of metaphysical religion in Mexico, and the Mexican Revolution itself. Gutíerrez Müller’s work should also be of special interest for anyone interested in current Mexican politics, for the prologue is by the author’s husband, now president of Mexico, Andrés López Obrador. This video on his YouTube channel shows the president and first lady discussing her book.
My writing assistant presents the lap desk. He likes the lap desk. It means we all sit together on the sofa.
As far as the need for equipment goes, writing is not like casting bronze sculpture. All you need is a pencil and paper–any scrap will do. The formidable challenge most writers face is managing their attentional focus, that is to say, their ability to actually sit down and, ahem, actually write.
Sheer willpower isn’t the only thing needed, however. Habits, even tiny habits, can help enormously. Here’s where some writerly material tools can be useful… perhaps. I say “perhaps” because what works for one writer may not necessarily work for another.
What do I mean by “writerly material tools”? Well, you could have a special pencil and make a ritual of sharpening your special pencil– so there you have a pencil, and you have a pencil sharpener. Not a budget buster. If you don’t know what to do with your money, why, you could go gung-ho for such writerly material tools as a gold-plated typewriter with your name engraved in curlicues or, say, some rococo-rama iteration of George Bernard Shaw’s rotating writing shed.
What works for me? Sometimes I write with a pencil and paper but generally I am at my desk with my laptop or, perchance, my typewriter. But for a spell each and every morning I also use a lap desk, which enables me to turn my office sofa– a big sloppy boat of a sofa with two pugs inevitably snoring through their post-breakfast siestas– into another workspace.
A lap desk has its limits, obviously: It holds the laptop, or a pencil and paper, that’s it. But for certain writing endeavors, it enables me to remove myself to a different working space, as needed, and so clear my mind, the better to focus on the task at-hand.
If you want to try using a lap desk you don’t necessarily need to buy one. A cookie pan balanced over a pillow would work just as well.
Where in your house is there a comfortable spot to sit where you don’t normally? Maybe that could be the place you take your lap desk every morning, or every evening, instead of, say, scrolling through the news or social media feeds on the smartphone, or plunking yourself in front that bigger screen.
What for? Well, do you feel stuck with your novel? Or memoir? Might you try flexing your creative mojo with 10 minutes of writing exercises? Or 15 minutes of journaling?
Some writers claim that it helps to do their financial paperwork in a different place than their creative work– so you could try doing one at your lap desk, the other at your regular desk, or kitchen table, or library carrel– or wherever it is for you.
There are of course infinite ways to slice & dice & spice one’s writing time and routines. Again, what works for one writer may or may not for another.
My point is, my experience has been that it helps to corral a convenient alternative writing place for a specific time and specific writerly purpose, and a lap desk, bingo, turns any number of places into possibilities, from the bed to the sofa to the floor to the balcony, the garden….
