We all are marked by some chance encounter, some happenstance in our lives, some bit of good luck or misfortune, a missed opportunity or a fleeting glimpse, some salvation through the kind-hearted actions of others. We might even argue that a good portion of our literary inspiration probably comes from witnessing some unplanned moment with an unusual outcome. Volume 2 of the Motif Anthology Series represents many of those random occasions. Motif 2: Come What May, An Anthology of Writings about Chance is brimming with the best short fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, and song lyrics that speak to the theme of chance. 136 writers provide their literary notions on this motif, a theme tied together with the elusive twines of accident, coincidence, fluke, prospect, and mystery.

Motif 2: Come What May is published by MotesBooks (Louisville, Ky) and is the second anthology in the annual series. Motif 1: Writing by Ear, An Anthology of Writings about Music was published in 2009. Both anthologies are available directly from the publisher. To order: http://www.motesbooks.com/motif.html

To submit to their next anthology on the theme WORK:  http://motesbooks.com/MOTIF-Call-For-Submissions.html

Featuring my poem “Over Here, Over There,” first published in Drash Northwest Mosaic. My poem was inspired by poet Jayson Iwen. His work and essay on the form Zajal was published in the same journal of Knock as a poem of mine—read his interview. Intrigued with the 12th Century Arabic folk song tradition Zajal, an interactive call and response form usually with music, I wrote my poem using this form loosely as a guide. The poem, in columns, can be read separately and as one. I read “Over Here, Over There” as three poems, each individual column, then across.

Available for $9.95 from Bobo Strategy, 2506 N Clark #287, Chicago, IL 60614 or at Amazon

Many are writing daily poems, but I’ve decided to read, in fact I’m giving myself the goal to read one book a day!

Not that I’ll be able to keep this up the full 30 days in April. I start an Emily Dickinson class on Saturday and that is going to skew my determination. But, I’ll be reading Emily Dickinson and her letters. So one way or another this is going to be a full blast poetry month.

As of today, I am on schedule reading a book a day.

April 1st: Ceremony for the Choking Ghost by Karen Finneyfrock just released! An excellent book to start a marathon with. Karen is a local slam poet who has won national competitions. I get to see her live in Seattle and feel her power, this is a courageous woman.

April 2nd: Live For A Living by Buddy Wakefield, another phenomenal local slam poet. His book has not only poetry, but journal entries. Rare, nearly unheard of. We get an inside scoop on what one of those ten-day silent meditation retreats are like, plus a bonus journal entry about his slam experience at San Quentin prison.

April 3rd: Baiting the Void by Penelope Scambly Schott, a poet in Portland. Her book A is for Anne, won the Oregon Book Award in 2008. This book covers that territory of vast emptiness that we face in a lifetime. It is a potent read, you’ll find yourself swimming in deep waters.

April 4th: A Guest in All Your Houses by Peter Ludwin, another local poet who is a wide traveler. Like a cowboy poet, he spreads news and history through the land. This first book is a lyric beauty with strong imagery from the SW, West & Mexico, full of colorful characters & richly textured.

April 5th: Breaking The Map by Kim-An Lieberman, this is a gem with fanciful, delightful poems, full of cross cultural references & what it’s like growing up part Vietnamese part American. I love her mythic view of the world. She takes serious and makes it magical, in some cases surreal.

April 6th: Shells by Craig Arnold, who has tragically passed on. This was a 1999 Yale Series of Younger Poets selected by W.S. Merwin. For me, his book resonated with Penelope’s book, there is much beauty of ocean shells, seafood, mollusks, recipes, but also many poems that reference death. He has poems dedicated to two young men who died tragically young.

April 6th and the rest of the month to go. Tomorrows book is selected. By accident I am reading female/male/female/male, etc…. decided to keep the pattern. With so many books waiting to be read all I have to do is scan my shelves to find the next book. At least till Emily interrupts me. I’m logging notes on Goodreads about each of my reads. I’m doing status reports on Facebook, and as usual poetic explorations on Twitter. Please feel free to find me.

See you again soon.

“Follow your inner moonlight; don’t hide the madness.” Ginsberg

Come celebrate the life & poetry of great American poet Allen Ginsberg and help SPLAB raise funds to continue their work. Read a poem by Allen Ginsberg, or one of your own. Eat & drink too much coffee. Bring a short poem for the Lightning Round. Write drunken exquisite corpses. See Band of Poets. Flirt with Saintly Motorcyclists. Express yr angst with music.

When:   Saturday, April 3, 2010

Time:   8:00pm

Place:  Empire Espresso (Columbia City) 3829 S Edmunds, Seattle, WA

View Map, see the Calendar

This performance certifies me an honorary member in Band of Poets.

Joule serves a combination of French & Korean food on their regular menu. Joule is one of the most innovative restaurants in Seattle and this series gives them the opportunity to be even more creative!

This Sunday was their Chinese New Year dinner, which I had the good fortune to attend. I’ve learned that this is the year of the metal Tiger and metal is considered silver, or white, so it is the year of the white Tiger, which comes only every 60 years.

In honor of the Year of the “white” Tiger they served a 7 course meal that exemplified the wishes for the new year:

Crispy spring roll, hearts of palm & taro for “gold bar”

A chilled noodle, shitake mushroom for “longevity”

Rice cake soup with oxtail dumplings for “getting one year older, and that’s a good thing!”

Sauteed escarold, grilled shrimp, xo for “luck”

Grilled chicken confit, chili, ginger for “unity”

Grilled banana leaf wrapped rice, gingko, woodear mushrooms for “treasure”

Fortune cookie, blood orange ice cream for “fortune.”

And I had a blood orange, basil bush drink based in vinegar. The whole meal made me swoon.

I know all these wishes from the food are instilled in my body fortifying me for the year of the Tiger!

These family style winter comfort food dinners, served Sundays from 3 to 9 pm, prix fix at the cost of $25/person (*will vary on some dates); $10 per child, will continue through March 28th. February 28 is Seattle’s best*; March 7 is Southern blues; March 14th is Maine story; March 21st is Izakaya Joule; March 28th is Spring in CA.

And if you can’t make this series go for their regular dinner menu other nights. But make a reservation because they fill up and even run out of food!

Happy “white” Tiger year!

(picture credit and facts about white tigers)

Jan Johnson works on a continual process of restoring the building and has photos to show before and after; it still functions as a hotel upstairs, and at street level there is a large restored two-room teahouse full of the neighborhoods’ history. Photos from city archives line the walls, locals come in and sign the photos they find themselves in as children, or when they find their ancestors. They give exact addresses. A map is being put together of the neighborhood through time.

The basement has trunks that are full of belongings left behind by Japanese Americans who were sent to internment camps during WWII. Given two days to pack a suitcase of belongings to take with them, they asked the first owner of the hotel if he would store their trunks. When Jan learned about the trunks she would not let them be thrown away, instead she has made it possible for them to be exhibited. Thirty-seven trunks have toured to Ellis Island Immigrant Museum, the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, and the William Breman Jewish Heritage Museum in Atlanta. There is now a hole in the floor covered with glass so you can look downstairs to see the trunks. The ones that went to exhibits are still in bubble wrap.

Also, one of the only remaining Japanese bathhouses is in the basement. On the tour Jan takes people down to see it with the only remaining key for the door. When asked why it has not been fixed up and reopened, her answer was simple, “Money.” Jan has worked to support the renovations. She now has support of many organizations, including the University of Washington. She proudly shows us projects students have taken on. One professor at the UW gives his students extra credit for work they do for the Panama Hotel.

In the front windows of the teahouse are large Kines, which were used to make mochi. Of course, she found them in the basement. The last issue of the Japanese newspaper, which stopped its publication by order of the American government, hangs framed in the front of the teahouse. She read to us the editorial written for the final issue.

At the beginning of the tour Jan asked whether we were there because of the book. What book? Turns out Jamie Ford wrote a novel, Hotel at the Corner of Bitter & Sweet, a love story set in 1942 to 1986, which is bringing more attention to the Panama Hotel. The main character searches the trunks to find links to his first love.

Being a tea drinker the Panama Hotel is one of my favorite teahouses in Seattle. It is a great getaway. A place to sit in a couch, a comfy chair, or at a table with a pot of tea and a good book, or on a computer since they have WiFi available. Many writers have made use of this space including Tom Robbins. The hotel even has a ‘Writer’s Suite’ available. A group can easily gather in the adjoining room to the cafe where there is one long wooden table.

The menu has a wide selection of teas including Hojicha Lattes among other specialties such as Rishi Teas. Their teas from around the globe include selections from Japan, China, Sri Lanka, India, Egypt, Thailand, and the Pacific Northwest. They have coffee as well, sandwiches, and traditional Japanese sweets that include mochi treats and green tea shortbread. Jan mentioned that the vegetables in the sandwiches are from the local markets. With further research I learned the mochi treats come from a local Japanese Chef Chika Tokara at Tokara Japanese Confectionery in Greenwood.

I encourage you to visit this teahouse and learn some of the history from what was once a thriving “Japan Town.” In 1938 it had a population of 8,500. Call them to find out when the next tour is scheduled. The cost, $11, is well worth it, and far better than any history course I took in school. It is a living history where the people in the community are participants. The value is tangible, when you walk in you’ll see and feel how the Panama Teahouse is alive.

Introducing a restaurant I experienced while visiting Atlanta: The Iberian Pig

Their Tapas menu features one of the most prized hams on the planet: Jamon Iberico from the black footed Iberian pigs Native to Spain. There is a grade up, the same pigs fed solely on acorns. When I asked the waiter about the top grade, he told me that they don’t sell the that one because no one can afford it! The Iberian ham melted on my tongue, no grizzle, not salty. This is indeed close to heaven for a ham lover.

The  hams many are most familiar with are Jamon Serrano also from Spain, but from the Landrace breed or white footed pigs. The French have Jamon Bayonne and the Italians have Prosciutto. As always, I’ve learned there is much to learn.

On their huge menu the starter section is Charcuteria, this is where you find the speciality hams including a 24 month aged version of Jamon Serrano, and a cured pork loin: Lomo Embuchado. There is also a Quesos or cheese menu, from these two sections you can combine three for sampling at a reduced price. An ounce of Jamon Iberico cost $14, but in the combination it is priced at $10. Well worth the splurge. An ounce goes a long way.

In the Wise Woman Tradition cured meats & sausages are important because they contain the many floras that our system needs.

Every Tapas we ordered sang with flavor. From the Platos, or Main Plates Menu, we ordered the slow cooked Lamb Baby Back Ribs, they fell off the bone and melted in our mouths. Our meal was satisfying and the price lower than expected for such amazing food.

They listed their sourcing for meats, they use organic farms that feed their animals grains, focusing on sustainable farming. Their food is organic and local with traditional cured meats. They also post their Going Green Initiative on their menu.

Tonight I could not sleep. I was writing writing in my wired mind without a page or a devise to capture the many words flooding me.

Writing as passion. Writing as capturing what is alive inside. Finding a thread in the air and following it through the nervous system. Like William Stafford did early mornings. Well, it’s early morning. Writing to find out what we mean. Writing to make sense. Writing to connect to others. Writing as inquiry.

What do you write? People ask writers. For me there are constant journal notes: dreams, quotes, scenes, lists, notations of this or that. Poetry that forms in sketches. Fiction that struggles onto the page with it’s many details and stories that want editing. Demands an editor like a hungry child demands food.

And, this writer loves hand-to-page writing on large pads. My mantra, hand-to-page. This writer believes that writing, and art comes directly from our nervous system. A quake that runs through us. Have you looked around this website? It is a nervous system that is flooded, spilling. So in the journal are the formations of the hand, some call drawings, some call doodles. Virginia Woolf had drawings in the corners of her pages. We draw, we write, they are connected. We breathe and that too is connected to our writing, our art. For ten years I led run Muse To Write Circles. Hand-to-page exploration with movement. There is no such thing as writer’s block. Really.

So what does it mean to blog? I’m figuring that out here now. Blogging intimidates me. To write on a page that goes public instantly. When I first heard the term it sounded strange. It is not the privacy of a journal. To blog. What does that mean? Why would anyone blog? In a writer’s group years ago I was told to blog. I was sat down at a desk and shown how to start a site. I wasn’t ready. Am I ready now? Now that I have this website/blog and another blog and sites that have blogs I can easily use. We are in a blog fever.

Blog Fever has me up hours into the night writing writing. Am I ready for this? Must be.

In blogging there is the voyeurism. Being watched in one’s creativity. Certainly an audience is wanted by a writer. The writing is written to be read. Appreciated. Improved. Or perhaps to incite insight or knowledge or curiosity. Here an observer reads the blog influences the writer, hence a public. For this writer, a leap, to put words onto a blog.

One of my favorite quotes from Marina Tsvetaeva:

I had waited for the Pathfinder my whole life long, my whole, huge, seven-year old life.

It was the thing that waits for us at every turn of the road and of the corridor, that comes out from behind every clump in the forest and every corner of the street:  the miracle into which the child and poet walk without thinking as if walking home, that one and only walk homeward that we have, for which we give up—all our family homes!

—Marina Tsvetaeva, A Captive Spirit:  Selected Prose, edited and translated by J. Marin King (Ann Arbor, Mich.:  Ardis, 1980), p. 372

This resonates with me about my starting to blog. I’ve been path seeking, walking and seeing, since an early time always away from my family home. To blog is the next step in this journey. But this quote goes deeper than blogging as a step in my life, it is about the quintessential step into the core of the self through a universal connection.

To finish I return to one of my all time favorite poets to share a poem about poems & writing. Enjoy and good morning.

An Introduction to Some Poems

Look:  no one ever promised for sure

that we would sing. We have decided

to moan. In a strange dance that

we don’t understand until we do it, we

have to carry on.

Just as in sleep you have to dream

the exact dream to round out your life,

So we have to live that dream into stories

and hold them close to you, close at the

edge we share, to be right.

We find it an awful thing to meet people,

serious or not, who have turned into vacant

effective people, so far lost that they

won’t believe their own feelings

enough to follow them out.

The authentic is a line from one thing

along to the next; it intersects us.

Strangely, it relates to what works,

but it is not quite the same. It never

serves for revenge,

Or profit, or fame; it holds

together something more than the world,

this line. And we are your wavery

efforts at following it:  Are you coming?

Good:  Now is the time.

William Stafford, Someday Maybe, 1973

If you are a movie lover you will appreciate this blog.

My friend Lana started it around the holidays and has already covered: It’s A Wonderful Life, Wings of Desire, The Family Man, and Gattaca. Lana uses wonderful black and white photos to make her site a work of art.

Enjoy and Happy New Year!

In my musings I wonder what I will write, what I have already written, to help civilization.

And a poem by Samuel Beckett:

Ever tried.

Ever failed.

No matter.

Try again.

Fail again.

Fail better.

A poem to help writers keep writing in times when it seems hopeless.