An NEA fellow, a storyteller, a multi-disciplinary artist, and an ethnomusicologist. Please join us for a fascinating evening as Karen Palmer, Traci Akemi Kato-kiriyama, Cara Lopez Lee, and W F Umi Hsu present their work on Thurs, March 22nd, 7:30pm, at Women’s Center for Creative Work! #wccwhealthcare
Mark your calendars! Please join us for a chain of Los Angeles literary luminaries: Dana Johnson, Désirée Zamorano, Bonnie S. Kaplan, and Ryka Aoki, at the Women’s Center for Creative Work on Thursday, December 7@7:30pm, 2017. Each of our writers has chosen a reader who, in turn, has chosen the next reader.
I use channeling to help my writing. to write. i ask questions to get deeper into subjects. instead, let me enter the imaginal space. a child playing. does a child ask questions to go deeper into a subject. yes, maybe, at least some of the time. but not by design, by play. a star is a magical being in the sky, not an ancient object which has been interpreted as the same shape by countless cultures throughout history. a child in play would not care about that. a talking alligator walking out of a swamp for instance, or a dancing cat. much more of fascination. and these are not parlor tricks. what does it mean to travel a light year? would i need shoes since gravity is optional. the alligator is wearing hobnail boots so i was wondering. the dancing cat, what would that look like now? do children ask these kinds of questions or do they watch the show unfold.
A talk by Nina Rota
Video and images by Ameeta Nanji and Nina Rota
Edited by Kate Johnson
A presentation about working with refugees on Lesvos Island during the month of January 2016. A discussion with images and video showing the overwhelming number of refugees, the organization of the different refugee groups on the island, the act of welcoming refugees to Europe, how global warming contributes to the refugee crisis, and how you can help. For more information, please contact Nina Rota.
Thank you so much to Ameeta Nanji, Kate Johnson and Michael Masucci at EZTV, and Alison Terry-Evans who runs the organization Dirty Girls of Lesvos Island. Please consider donating to this amazing organization.
My braided essay about working with refugees in Greece and the death of my oldest and dearest friend appears on eunoia.com. Thank you to Ian Chung for hosting this essay.
it has always been so and will always be so. i was never born and will never die. there is no such thing as a beginning, there is no such thing as an ending. and my name will remain as it is forever.
there are different sized infinities. to an ant, the yard is an infinity. to a child, the house is an infinity. to a serpent the amazon is an infinity. therefore, i may be wrong. there may be a beginning and, possibly, an end, but it is so far beyond my perception that it may as well not exist. and so i will sleep as blisslessly as possible into the unknown until the monster floats to the surface and bites me again and i am faced with annihilation. usually, though, all it takes is a gift. i turn round, smile, and give the big baby a gift, and we are all good until the next time.
ball bearings. he used to hold ball bearings in his hand then doze off until he let go of the bearings and they clattered to the floor waking him up. does that mean he remained in a diffuse state of mind? does that mean he reached the twilight between the focused tunnel vision mind and the broad diffuse open mind – the one where problems are solved in our absence? and if it is the latter, how did he stay there? what is the trick for staying there because that is what i really need. and is that what happens when you don’t look at the screen when writing. no, that is the editor, only the inner editor. the one who scribbles lines through entire sections of my manuscript. and how well does it know me if it takes out those parts most important to me. how much is that, i mean, maybe it is correct. maybe i am mistaken, again, and it sees what i want to write. that what it has left is what is under the the pond i built when i didn’t know. is it because i am blind or is it because i am showing more than i imagine. i hope it is the last of these two.
consciousness, no punctuation, a wild horse who, for some reason, raises one foreleg higher than the other but looks absolutely beautiful in her movement gliding across the plains of the clues. but here is where i get off track, here is where i begin to try. surrealists can be fascists right? and by the way, drop the need to come to an ending. i guarantee surrealists could give a shit about endings, about tying everything up. and here i am off on a thought again and i can see how thoughts interfere with writing. slowing down helps so much. i speed up whenever i’m in the throes of a thought and that derails my journey. trump’s hair. it’s on fire at times and other times it’s a sand castle waiting to be washed away but that will not happen. you cannot catch something which is not a solid body, you can only trace its decay.
Actually, I think the bot should have three eyes with one as a bindi. Definitely silicone if you can’t buy some real skin somewhere. I suppose it could serve to get rid of my ant infestation if it had a bunch of insectoid legs. I am currently sitting in a cafe because, even though they say they can, whenever an exterminator turns up they always recommend the toxic stuff instead of the environmental stuff so I can’t go home for a minimum of four hours. No prob, I’ll go to a sports bar (can the bot have a tv for a third eye?) and watch Peyton Manning play. Though suddenly, meaning since the end of last season, he can’t hit the broadside of a barn. I suppose it doesn’t help that he can’t feel his fingertips sincehe had those four neck surgeries but then he did win an MVP w/o his fingertips so this must be another passing in my life and an important one. I need a new sports hero. Or maybe I don’t, but there will be grieving I assure you.
Image credit: Willam vanRiper
https://www.behance.net/gallery/29670391/Embrace-of-the-Serpent
yes yes yes to paddling down the amazon river and wading in through a maze of vines and bugs and, now and then, a panther, and looking into the panther’s eyes and then you wake up from the dream and light is streaming out of your eyes and so you cannot see, but you are thrilled, it is such a magnificent experience, and how many people ever, in their entire set of lifetimes, have this experience? is this yet another way in which you are privileged or does this mean that some tiny bit of spirituality remains from the ancient tribal practices which are guaranteed to be gone by the time you die? you will never know, i most certainly do not know, but you will follow this path further until, one day, you die, and i am left certain, absolutely certain, that you barely missed the passage from this place to the next, you welcomed it, wanted it, knew that it would happen, and that brings me some small bit of peace because i miss you so desperately.
