Thursday, March 31, 2005

S.O.S.

So, I have a very wise friend who always tells me that if you let the universe know what you want, and make room in your life for the universe to be able to send it to you, that eventually, the universe will find a way. So, I'm trying this.

I don't want to work at the job I have anymore. So, I'm sending out there this message: I have a long resume full of editing/writing/researching experience. I'm good at what I do. I'm looking for work. If anyone out there is reading this and knows of people who are seeking help with any kind of writing/editing project, please feel free to steer them my way.

And now, back to my other job.


Thank you in advance.
Oh, they can contact me at lorraine_berry at yahoo.

Sunday, March 20, 2005

Distractions

So, my poor personal blog is getting neglected because I've been asked to post on CultureKitchen, which I consider a big honour. I've also been posting alot at DailyKos, and perhaps most important of all, I've been working on the novel. But I will try to post something interesting here soon.

Go Huskies!! University of Washington men's bball team has made it to the Sweet 16!

Wednesday, March 16, 2005

Fuck your SUV

Maybe you can drive your oversized, gas-guzzling status symbol that FUCKING FLIPS in the snow, up to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and show your children all that pristine wilderness that is now being drilled so you can continue to drive your behemoth. And while you're there, why don't you meditate on the 1500+ dead in Iraq who have died for that same thing you insist on driving.

But, if you want to do something more productive about the vote on ANWR today, here's a damn good idea.

I have to go scream into a pillow now.

Tuesday, March 15, 2005

Stregas in Michigan

I posted this on DailyKos today. Don't read it if reading about right-wing nutjob bigots is going to blow your day.

Sunday, March 13, 2005

Moyers on the Rapture

Bill Moyers is turning into the social conscience of our age. This article in the NYRB is well worth a read. It seems prescient given that the idiot in Wisconsin was a member of an end-time church. He must have thought he was giving Jesus a little help with the Rapture business.

The children of authors

My friend, Karen Novak, who writes remarkable books about difficult subjects, referred me to this article about being a writer and having our children read what we write. Even as fiction writers, we're aware that what we're writing is not "us," but it's amazing how many people will read a manuscript or a book and start trying to identify the parts of the novel that are autobiographical.

Imagine, though, having your child read what you've written. In my manuscript, there is graphic sex and the wrestling with the power of the erotic, a discussion of politics, my character's non-belief in God and her incredibly blasphemous denunciations. I don't have a problem with any of it. All of these subjects have been discussed with my older daughter, so I don't think any of it would come as a surprise. I'm not so sure what the neighbors may think. But then again, if I don't get the novel finished, no one will ever know.

So I guess this means I'm going back to work.

Saturday, March 12, 2005

Productive Week

I wrote 70 pages this week. My brain is toast, but the novel is now on the downward slope.
More when I can think straight.

Monday, March 07, 2005

Going Away

I'm taking my computer and going to a motel for several days to work on the novel. Daily life is full of distractions--some sweeet and some not-so-sweet, and I have to find some quiet. I guess it's also a spiritual retreat in that alone, I'll either find my voice or spend a lot of time eating M&Ms.
So, I won't have access to e-mail or the Internet. Should be an interesting experience. I'm not even planning on reading a newspaper.
If the Rapture comes while I'm gone, I'm sure most of my friends will still be here when I get back, but maybe the rest of us can get on with building a peaceful, just world.

Thursday, March 03, 2005

Presence

Rumi (translated by Coleman Barks)

Soul, Heart, and Body One Morning

There's a morning where presence comes over you,
and you sing like a rooster in your earth-colored shape.

Your heart hears and, no longer frantic, begins
to dance. At that moment soul
reaches total emptiness. Your heart becomes Mary,

miraculously pregnant, and body, like a two-day old
Jesus says wisdom words. Now the heart
turns to light, and the body picks up the tempo.

Where Shamsi Tabriz walks, the footprints
are musical notes and holes you fall through into space.

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened. Don't open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.

Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing
there is a field. I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.

Ideas, language, even the phrase 'each other',
doesn't make any sense.

Wednesday, March 02, 2005

On being called a whore

When one posts about the body and the body politic and one happens to be a woman, I guess it was to be expected that someone would call me a hooker. And that others would jump on the bandwagon and make their own comments about my being shallow for arguing that bodies matter. Expected. But it still hurt. Which I guess was the point. Telling women they are whores for speaking their mind is about as old as time, I guess. I tell myself I should be proud to join the sisterhood, and I am, but there's a certain wound I feel today.

If anything, it has given me fuel for my novel writing. After all, if in 2005, I still can't claim myself as a sexually desiring subject without being labeled with sexual epithets, certainly my character from a hundred years ago would have faced the same thing.

I'm not going to provide links to where this has happened. I don't want to give those who set out to wound me with any more ammunition. And I'm trying to forget that people I have trusted have treated my sexual being as suspect. That wound is too raw to even talk about right now, but it hurt more than I can say.

Why can't we live in a world where we respect each other as human beings? I know it's a stupid, rhetorical question. I do. But tonight, I want to claim my self as a woman and my self as a human in the same breath, and it frustrates me, no, saddens me, that somehow, there are still way too many people in this world who cannot accept the humanity--in all its glory--of women.