clockwise from bottom left: eggs from Black Copper Maran, Olive Egger, Ameraucana, Gold Sex Link, and Silver Lace Wyandotte
I posted a tour of Hobbiton Farm in April when the garden was in second gear, all power and acceleration of potential; it was a time of year when I put seedlings in-ground, and the plantings were well underway, past the danger of being eaten whole by slugs and birds, but still very near the beginning of their growth. All was a promise. All was hope. All was a fresh new green.
I’d dare say that July and August are peak garden months. For many, July and August are the best time of year in a foodscape. So much to pick and eat. The leaves are dark green. The tomatoes are bright red and yellow and purple. So much at full ripeness. All the hard work from Winter ensuring soil health and the care we take in planting and nurturing in Spring show up right around now. So in some way, I see it as a time when my mistakes are also highlighted.
This year has been an atypical one, even if every year the garden is different. Some years, the cucumbers do fantastic while the peppers barely have fruit. Other years, the cucumbers don’t fruit at all. This year, the romano beans fruited early and withered by mid-July. I’ve been picking tomatoes since July 4th, right around the time I filmed this tour. I’ve never picked tomatoes this early!
My partner said I ought to give you another tour. So in a pandemic house dress and in full ajumma mode, we recorded the garden in early July. I give you another tour of Hobbiton Farm.
The first clip is of the patio (which right now houses two feral cats adjusting into their new role as barn cats / garden cats). It’s kind of unruly out there! Also, for the first time, it looks like we get to harvest jujube dates!
The biggest difference is that the plants have grown and branched and leafed out. The meadow area, for instance, is replete with cosmos now.
The second clip includes the fruit trees and flower garden portion of the garden. Lots of stone fruit. Lots of netting over the stone fruit, because the squirrels KNOW.
The vegetable garden is unruly, wild, and prolific! This is ALWAYS the part of the garden where my ambition bites me; I get so excited I ALWAYS overplant. LOLz. Here, you see calendula and garlic and asparagus and tomatoes and cucumbers and squash and beans and kalettes SQUISHED together, companion planting be damned. The jeolla-do mustard, at peak in the April video, has long gone to seed.
Oh hello, chickens. Since this was recorded, the flocks integrated. They get along great! And it’s awesome to have them all under one roof. Brad the Rooster won’t leave the younger hens alone; but this way, the ratio is such that he doesn’t pick the hens’ backs bald.
Down at the bottom of the farm are the Tiny House, the hugelkultur bed, and the apiary. I’ll have to give yet another tour soon because since this was filmed in early July, a squirrel gnawed off the head of this mammoth sunflower (which I planted as a salute to Ukraine). Also, I cleaned up the apiary of its old boxes. In sum, things have changed in the last few weeks, even. There’s nothing like watching a video of yourself and the garden to spur you into cleaning up!
It’s April in Berkeley. We have a head start on most of the country when it comes to Spring. (Don’t resent us too much—our summers never get hot enough to reliably produce tomatoes or peppers, and watermelon is impossible. One time I tried to grow watermelon, and I harvested ONE. It was about 3 inches in diameter. It was not SUPPOSED to be 3 inches in diameter. It did not taste good, either). The magnolias finished blooming last month. The snow peas are finishing up production. The lettuce threatens to bolt. And the tomatoes have just gone into the ground.
I spent this winter replenishing the soil in the garden and started two more hugelkultur beds. For months, the garden looked unpicturesque: mostly brown dirt and piles of compost. But this month, things have taken a turn and the garden has become—green and lush. This is the time of year I wish I could do tours of the urban farm. I hate it when I give tours in late Fall or Winter when everything is either overgrown or browning or worse, barren. It’s like being photographed five minutes after you’ve woken up, hair unbrushed with sleep still in your eyes.
So for prosperity, I thought I’d give a video tour of my urban farm, as it is.
The first clip is the patio area, which is where I keep my janky greenhouse and plant starts. This is also where the berry garden resides; when my daughter was (more) wee, she loved putting things in her mouth. She also loved picking berries. So I planted a berry garden for her. There are blueberries, raspberries, black raspberries, tayberries, blackberries, and more surrounding this patio.
The second clip focuses on the “woodland area” of the farm, just off the patio. Here is where I’ve planted begonias, yerba buena, and yerba mate, as well as elderberries.
This is all en route to the main part of the garden, which resides on a hillside that sheds to a creek. The first part of the main part is the flower and fruit tree area. The soil here is still mostly clay, which is why there aren’t many vegetables planted here. I’m working on remediating the soil in this fruit tree area. (The soil doesn’t seem to bother the trees, which produce tons of fruit each year—the pluerry particularly).
Then we hit the main vegetable area, which is looking great these days. I just put the tomato starts in the ground. The Florida weave is up, too. (Out of all the ways to trellis tomatoes, I prefer this method most—although the downside is that I can’t hop between rows after it’s in). There’s also asparagus and other vegetables like beans and cucumbers and squash.
I took another clip of the vegetable area from the other direction. There’s jeolla do mustard and a glimpse of the hugelkultur bed below. You can hear Brad the Rooster crowing away in this clip.
And since Brad the Rooster is calling, we’re going straight towards him where the chicken coops reside. Here you can see Brad the Rooster with the fully grown Black Copper Maran and Black Ameraucana hens. Also, his very very abused daughter, a cross between him (Black Copper Maran) and a Black Ameraucana hen—produces olive eggs. And yes, it’s kind of gross, but she is his “favorite.” And apparently, in chicken land, this is acceptable?
In a separate coop are the gold sex-link and Silver Lace Wyandotte pullets, otherwise known as “teenage hens.” They’re having a good old time these days outdoors and discovering dust bathing, which if humans practiced it, would be the opposite of clean. In Chicken World, however, this is how they keep clean and practice hygiene.
From the chicken coop area, we start again in the tomato area—and you get a glimpse of glass that fell out of a window! (Yes, I swept and vacuumed that up with a wet-dry vac right after this video). We head towards the beehives. It’s a little busy with the bees these days; I split a hive to get a backup queen and keep mites under control (by giving the bees a brood break), so there are five hives total. Forgive the mess. I need to dispose of those old deep hive boxes. (I don’t use deep boxes anymore—they’re too heavy for me—a full box of brood and/or honey can weigh over 50 pounds!).
And finally, a look at the farm from the bottom of the hill by the tiny house. You can see where the beehives and hugelkultur bed are in relation to the rest of the garden. The entire farm is south facing, albeit surrounded by oak trees, which are protected by Berkeley ordinances, so there are very few “full sun” spots—it’s mostly partial side.
So there you have it. My urban farm. It’s not particularly huge. There are more impressive urban farms out there. But this is where I get solace these days. I go out into the garden first thing every day to do my “chores,” which are unlike most chores, a pleasure to execute. There’s still a lot to do, like cut back vines—which reminds me, the passionfruit vines need better trellising up there. See how the “chores” never end?
But these days, when I think of the one joy I do each day to give myself peace and joy and hope, it’s to plant. While harvesting can be fun, it’s not where I derive the most satisfaction—it’s the planting and cultivating that gratify me most.
What do you do each day to give yourself joy and self-care?
A number of years ago, my dear friend LH came over to visit for a few days. This was before the pandemic when casual overnight visits were a Normal Thing. At one point, between our usual hilarious exchanges, she mentioned the ghost in the guest room.
Ah, a ghost?
Yes, he said. And went on to explain the appearance of this ghost. She was young, though not a child. White. Agitated but not violent. And, LH added, from a long time ago, probably someone who lived about one hundred years back. Do you know, she asked, who it might be?
No, I did not know who she might be. No, we did not question at all the possibility of a ghost in the house, either. Firstly, because LH is an amazing witch and I believed her. And secondly, because we’d kind of sensed it. That corner of the house has–let’s say–a different kind of vibe. It’s not as sunny. It always feels a little “hollow.” The other people in my household shy away from the room. Because I really LIKE ghosts, I regularly write in that room.
Just a normal breakfast conversation at our house. The conversation segued. The visit went on. Many jokes were told. Good meals were had. Hugs exchanged.
After LH left, I began researching the previous inhabitants of this house, of which in its one hundred-year history, I am the fourth owner. I met the third owners (of course, during the sale). And the neighbors like to talk about the house’s second owners–to such an extent that I feel like I’ve met them, too. The initial owners? That was more of a mystery.
We were handed a parcel of archival paperwork when we moved in. Some of these papers were on very thin vellum, typewritten, yellowed with age, the architect’s notes for the house. I took the brittle pages out from storage and thumbed through them, each page turn crackling like a spark, looking for the client’s name. And there it was: Maurice Ennis.
And thus began a casual research journey; research that happened on impulse throughout the years.
I learned that there were initially three children in this house, a girl and two twin boys, born in the early 1900s. I learned the name of the girl who grew up and attended Bryn Mawr, then returned to Northern California where she got busted for having a speakeasy in her barn and serving alcohol to minors in the 1950s. In some accounts, it was spun as if Carolyn merely threw a kegger for her children. And in others, I could read between the lines describing who it was she served: her eighteen-year-old son, underaged girls, and adult male acquaintances. Questionable. Notorious. That said, at death, she was described as a socialite. For reals, there was a debutante picture of her.
I forwarded a screenshot of Carolyn’s Bryn Mawr picture to LH.
That’s her! she said.
So the ghost now had a name. But why did she haunt this house in the form of her Bryn Mawr self?
And for years, I didn’t dig further.
We had made peace with the ghost. I wasn’t sure why she was here, only that she was. It seemed like a moot point to question the intentions of a ghost.
But one boring weekend, I thought about Carolyn’s twin brothers, Oliver and David. Who were they? And why didn’t they haunt the house? Why only Carolyn?
A google search told me David grew up to be an attorney and had a son he named after himself. That son, too, became an attorney. The trail ends.
Oliver, the other twin, married three times and managed an insurance brokerage. He had three children. One of his children was a daughter named Lisa.
And Lisa. Married Dick Carlson. And had a son. Named Tucker.
TUCKER CARLSON HAS BEEN REBELLING AGAINST HIS MOTHER ALL THIS TIME, YO.
Dick Carlson (who himself had been abandoned by a mother), was a single parent for several years to Tucker and Buckley. Carlson married a Swanson heiress and then Tucker was sent off to boarding school (like so many stepmoms threaten to do in black comedy but in his case, really happened). Tucker has gone on record that he wants nothing to do with his birth mother (though when his mother Lisa died leaving him $1 in her will, he suddenly did pay attention to her by suing the estate).
Damn, this house is kind of a busy intersection. Of what? A ghost. Past drama. Current drama. Family drama. And TUCKER CARLSON ENERGY. DAMMIT.
Also now I wonder if the woman haunting this house is Tucker Carlson’s mother, Lisa.
Meanwhile, my own ancestry has a much different vector than that of Tucker. My mother was born to wealthy landowners in Pyongyang, before the Korean War. Her family fled to Seoul after the Korean War began when it was clear that they would be persecuted. They went in two groups–the older children walked with my grandfather in the wintertime when the rivers were frozen and walkable. The younger children (my infant mother included), traveled by boat with my grandmother where they were all reunited in Seoul. My mother’s family had a decidedly different life after the war, but they made do. All the children were educated. And my mother, the youngest child, went to Seoul National University where she earned a nursing degree, with plans to study further in the United States.
My father was born in the countryside of what is now South Korea in Chungcheongnam-do. He was never rich. He was the second of five children who survived infancy. His older brother was in the Japanese Resistance; my father’s biggest memory about the end of the War was his brother coming back home after being released from political prison. But not for long; his brother, a well-known socialist and activist, defected to North Korea. And so my father’s family was persecuted under the dictatorship of Park Chung-hee. My father kept his head low, graduating with a very practical and not-political-at-all engineering degree from Seoul National University so as not to attract the attention of the KCIA, with the intention of continuing his studies in the United States. And the added benefit of avoiding KCIA surveillance.
Then my dad got a glimpse of my mom’s older sister. And asked her on a date. That sister, my third auntie, demurred and instead introduced him to my mother. Three months later, they were married. My mom to this day says, “If I had known what a leftist your dad was at the time, I would never have married him!”
They moved to New York City. Gave up on their studies after a few years and started a family instead. Had two children.
Yada yada yada I eventually came to live in Berkeley. Married a man of Israeli descent I met in college. Bought this house.
When I first stepped into the place I now call home, I knew it had never known anyone like me. I was certainly the first BIPOC in the neighborhood. It took five years for the neighbors to say hello to me. I’d been so hazed by my prior neighborhood that I didn’t mind the cold shoulder; I preferred it to the active complaints and bullying I’d experienced for three straight years.
Before leaving, LH told me a little about how to improve relationships with ghosts. The ghost, said my friend, needed to be acknowledged. My daughter and I addressed Carolyn, left flowers in the room, beautified the surroundings. Carolyn calmed. In my research too, I’ve been acknowledging the history of this house. It is a long-delayed meet-and-greet. And I hope it will in return, accept me. (That is a life theme for me for sure).
I thought, mistakenly, that I would be met with silence by an inanimate object. My partner who came to live with me a number of years ago has always said this house is never silent. It’s constantly creaking and sighing, he told me. This is, he said, an ACTIVE house.
Every time I throw out a question, I get an answer. It just isn’t the answer to the question I ask.
James Kyung-Jin Lee has a book called Pedagogies of Woundedness: Illness, Memoir, and the Ends of the Model Minority. Published in January 2022 by Temple University Press, Lee examines the question, “What happens when illness betrays Asian American fantasies of indefinite progress?” discussing the model minority myth and its erasure as reflected in “illness memoirs.” Which, as he points out, is a relatively new category within Asian American literature. Pedagogies of Woundedness is an academic narrative and one that highlights a new perspective on how Asian American illness memoirs have come to join the larger genre of Asian American literature. Why didn’t they exist previously? And what does it mean when “the model minority” shows its vulnerability?
Lee establishes the model minority myth early on, opening on Julie Yip-Williams’ 2019 memoir, The Unwinding of the Miracle, involving her terminal cancer diagnosis. “All this seems so incredible and new,” he says, “as if Asian Americans have started dying only recently, in large part because they’ve long been expected to be harbingers of nothing less than the good American life, showing the rest of the United States how it ought to be done” (p. 4). On the same day in 2019, too, Graywolf published Esmé Weijun Wang’s The Collected Schizophrenias. Of this fact, Lee states, “It was as if, in an instant, scales fell from the eyes of U.S. publishers and readers alike: if as a collective, Americans demanded of their Asian American colleagues lives of exceptional mobility and affirmation of the U.S. cultural project, then perhaps…Asian America could also provide a pedagogy to optimize this narrative…Asian Americans can you teach us how to die well?”
LOL.
In his survey of Asian American illness memoirs, Lee writes, “In 2017, Christine Hyung-Oak Lee published her memoir Tell Me Everything You Don’t Remember: The Stroke That Changed My Lifewith Ecco, the first time in U.S. history that a major trade press published a work of nonfiction by an Asian American whose narrative was primarily occupied by illness” (p. 96).
When my 2014 BuzzFeed essay about my stroke went viral, I was barely cognizant that Asian Americans hadn’t yet pierced the American psyche with regard to illness and to Lee’s point, fallibility. I had simply written about something that happened to me and my path navigating a damaged brain. I was stunned by its reception. Editors wanted to publish such a narrative; my schedule was filled with editor and agent calls for three straight weeks. It was assumed that America was ready, based on the data; I don’t think any of us had at the top of our minds that Asian American illness memoirs were not yet a Thing. I engaged my dream agent (and made some agent and editor friends along the way), and ended up with a book deal. I temporarily ditched my novel-in-progress and wrote a memoir called Tell Me Everything You Don’t Remember based on the essay. I wrote furiously for a year.
Dear Reader: at a point in writing my memoir, I wondered whether to even center my Asian American identity in the narrative. Yes. This was a conscious decision I had to make. My editors thankfully tacitly understood who I was and how I was raised and my cultural context were key components to how I experienced brain damage. Sadly, I felt like I was taking a risk by doing this so explicitly; even though I had no idea I was the first, the only illness memoirs of which I was aware were written by white writers who didn’t have to make explicit their cultural context. Sadly, I was indeed taking a risk.
Yes, in the book reviews, there were folks who asked why I included my Asian American upbringing at all within my illness memoir.
My memoir was published in February 2017, in the wake of Trump’s inauguration, and I blamed many publishing headwinds on that guy (I still do). But there was, I now realize, another headwind: being the first. This was the beginning of a new neighborhood. And there were not yet any neighbors.
Speaking of neighbors: there can be a partnership between scholars and creative writers, one that writers often ignore. Scholarly writing is where I learn most about my own work and the ways in which readers interpret the messages I have sent, whether unconsciously or consciously. And to learn whether my writing has broken new ground as the scholar themself forges new territory.
Some of my most satisfying writing was in the academic term papers I wrote during my MFA–I still have fond memories of writing my term paper on golem imagery in Frankenstein and Great Expectations (Estella is a golem!). Literary writers who attended higher education institutions have if they’ve taken any non-STEM courses at all, likely produced academic writing. And literary writers who attended secondary education institutions most likely wrote academic essays. In this way, many of us have dipped our toes in scholarly work. And it is where, at least in my case, my writing began.
In an undergrad Asian American Studies class, my professor (who is part of the Asian American literary canon and who I won’t name because I am about to criticize him) said, “You should write it. Don’t be a scholar and just study it.” He made clear his opinion that creative writing was superior to scholarship. At the time, what he said was inspiring–I mean, I was nineteen years old and supposed to be premed and didn’t want to go to med school and my secret dream was to become an author, so please give me a break. But I didn’t realize it was at the sacrifice of scholarship. And that this kind of hierarchical perspective isn’t healthy whatsoever, because a literary writer needs readers. And the most thoughtful readers are often scholars.
I’ve never said no to a teacher who teaches my book in class and invites me as a guest speaker. In fact, one of my very favorite things to do as a writer is to zoom into a class. It is an honor to meet students whose academic insights into my writing often surpass those of book reviewers, especially those who question why I bring up being Asian American at all in a…(wait for it) memoir. I’m delighted when I read blog posts by students, those in Professor Lee’s classes included, who’ve read my book. It is good medicine, especially when I need correction or when in the long slog of writing my next book I question whether or not I should continue to write at all.
Scholars are our good neighbors for myriad reasons. And James Kyung-Jin Lee’s Pedagogies of Woundedness is an excellent partner to the burgeoning field of Asian American illness memoirs. May it be an influence as well.
Wintertime is generally a time of rest for me as an urban farmer. It’s when I let the garden go wild and fallow so it can replenish itself. The chickens lay a lot less when daylight hours wane; my morning chores become the singular task of feeding them. The beehives, too, are closed for the winter, because air temperatures are too low to safely do inspections. Bees keep their hives at ninety-five degrees to protect their brood (which they lay year-round in California), and even when they don’t have brood (in colder climes), you do not want to chill them.
But there are years when wintertime requires vigilance. It’s time to help the soil replenish when I’ve planted crops known to be particularly hungry, like corn. That is when I spend a portion of the winter rotating compost into the beds or when I build a hugelkultur bed. And this past drought year, the bees suffered due to lack of forage. They never built up the honey reserves to get them through the winter, even though I did not harvest any honey in consideration of their stores.
I knew that I would have to feed my hives all winter.
A few years ago, one of my hives starved. It was a hive placed on Sonoma Mountain in a rural area that was not easy to access on a regular basis. I didn’t do the last check before wintertime, and by the time I visited, the temperatures were so low that I couldn’t inspect. I also didn’t have my infrared camera then, so I couldn’t do a cursory check to see a heat map that would indicate where the bees were in relation to their honey. In the springtime, I approached the hive. From a distance, I saw no bees at the entrance. I knew it would be bad news.
When I opened up the hive, there was stillness and silence. All the bees were dead. I inspected thoroughly, trying to diagnose cause of death, with the intention of learning from my mistakes. There was dead brood. There was empty comb around the immediate circumference of the brood; they’d eaten that honey. A pile of dead bees lay on the bottom screen. At the perimeter of the hive there was capped honey.
In the differential diagnosis of a dead colony, we always consider varroa mites and disease, a common cause of what is called colony collapse disorder. But there was no mite guano in the comb. There were too many dead bees on the bottom board within the hive. The mite count had been low, too.
It became clear that the bees starved. Which hurt my heart.
They had, in the coldness, eaten the honey in the immediate perimeter of the brood. But the rest of the honey was too far away for them to eat without chilling the colony. You see, bees spend the winter clustering together. They detach their wings and buzz their bodies to create heat. They take turns being at the edges of the cluster and rotating to the center. It is paramount that they keep the hive warm and will not break the cluster to eat or forage. If the hive is distressed, the cluster becomes smaller. And as it becomes smaller, it becomes harder to keep warm and there are fewer foragers to collect any nectar. And if the honey within the hive is far away, they cannot reach it as a result.
It is important to keep plenty of honey stores for the winter but also to position them close to where they will cluster. It is important, too, I learned, to confirm this before cold weather. And it is important, if they do not have enough honey stores (about a box of frames for a colony that has two boxes of brood), to ensure that they have food throughout the winter and that it is accessible to them. If there isn’t enough honey, you have to feed them sugar water (in areas where it will not freeze), fondant (in areas where temperatures are freezing), or winter pollen patty.
Never again would I allow a hive to starve. And never again would I keep a hive where I couldn’t access it on a regular basis.
In my backyard, I have four hives of varying robustness this winter. Two of my hives, which I’ve named Minas Tirith and Blue Nun, have two boxes of brood and an additional empty box on top, partially full with honey. The other two are tiny; Edoras and Fangorn are one box of brood, with just a couple frames of honey. On dry days, the bees fly out to forage. But as the weather gets colder, fewer bees are able to do so.
On dry days, I go out in a bee suit (the bees are especially cranky and defensive on cold days), and open up the lids. I place winter pollen patties (which unlike summer pollen patties have less protein (which encourages brood rearing) and more sugar (for quick sustenance)) on the top frames as quickly as I can before I close the hive.
I’m preoccupied this winter by the health of my bees. Of not letting them starve. Of seeing them through the winter. This is bee management, intervention to help the colonies.
It has been a hard year for so many. The climate is changing. The icebergs are melting. But my bees will be okay.
My friends, too, have fed me through the years. Have seen me through hard seasons. But so long as we have each other and take care of each other, we will be okay.
This is how my writing begins–my brain sends up an image that I then dissect into various components and layers with corresponding narratives. I’ll demonstrate with a photograph as posted above. Here is a written description of the above photograph: a picture of cars and a cameraphone reflected in the rear view mirror of a car–the photo also includes the frame of the rearview mirror and the front windshield and what lies ahead. Tl;dr a kind of selfie.
One way to structure the above photo:
the past (the cars in the rear view),
the present (the cameraphone),
and the future (the road ahead) all in one picture.
Now what?
The past: Writing is a complicated brain process that involves taking memories and sorting them into an understandable order, optimally one that complicates and deepens meaning. In the wake of my stroke, I would often begin stories with such an image and then–it was like a cliff. What was the next scene? My card deck had missing cards. I had a fifteen-minute short term memory and retrieving the next module of a narrative was impossible. It was then that I realized that this is how I construct a story even if I’m not sure if this is how all others construct narrative.
Knowing how a thing works is part of the work.
The present: It is the end of 2021. I didn’t publish a single thing this year. It has been awhile since I had a year in which I had zero published work. There was–a lot to navigate in the world and in my personal life, and publishing got pushed to the bottom of the stack. I’d like to say I’m the kind of writer who would write and publish under threat of illness and death, but I have found that I am not such a writer. Listen: I’m just glad I’m alive.
But. I’m pivoting back to a regular writing practice. Yes, I am under deadline. Yes, I am behind schedule. But I’ve decided to really understand what it is I need to write, because 2021 did not provide these necessities to me. And so I’m taking inventory.
The other day, I was on a particularly long drive, during which I listened to music. I don’t often listen to music as a primary activity, and I found myself breaking out in song. The music was making me feel joy and grief and hope as I orchestrated a playlist. I manipulated my own feelings, too, switching from dance music (Martin Solveig & Dragonette’s Hello, Call Your Girlfriend by Robyn) to nostalgic 80s music (Bonnie Tyler’s Total Eclipse of the Heart, OMD’s If You Leave, Pet Shop Boy’s It’s a Sin) to music I affiliate with beloveds in my life (Dusty Springfield’s You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me, Both Sides Now by Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon’s Let the River Run). I thought about how music brings me into a moment, how music unlocks my feelings. And how I was having feelings for the first time in awhile.
I thought about how I do listen to music to begin writing. I often need music to unlock my emotions.
And then I realized, I lived in a dissociative state for most of the year–in this case, feeling detached more than a disorder. I spent most of 2021 on the ceiling of every room I’ve occupied while playing Bee Swarm Simulator or Animal Crossing New Horizons, watching myself live my actions, much like the narrator of a story is separate from the character. Sure, I feel my feelings, but it’s often asynchronous, at a much later time when I feel safe and rewind happenings in my mind and then allow myself to process my emotions. I am very aware that this isn’t healthy behavior and it stems from earlier trauma. And over the years, I’ve had to do less and less of this as I’ve worked on feeling more as I have feelings–save for 2021, which also gave my OCD and germ phobia a deep purpose, bringing these disorders back to life.
So as I sit back down to write, I have to acknowledge what it is that has changed. That writing is not the same this year as it was, say in 2019, at least for me. There are more psychic obstacles to navigate. A little more work to let myself unravel. And as a result, to hold the unravelled threads and then weave them into story.
The future: What do I need to write? I often write the best in crisis, when everything in my life is falling apart and there is no place to run, and no choice but to let my dam burst. But this isn’t sustainable. And it sure doesn’t lend itself to a consistent writing practice.
Also writing is the place where I do process. And without writing, I am not a well person, even if writing is the hardest activity purely because it forces me to confront myself and the world and all the intersections between and around. Just as in the picture, how do all the parts work together? What am I trying to say? I often don’t know before I begin–only that there is an important vision I want to communicate, with narratives that eventually emerge to complicate that very vision.
I know something works when the picture evolves into one that moves, and when the picture itself becomes woven into something else. I often wonder, for instance, if Rothko’s color block paintings have another painting underneath. Did he paint something horrific underneath and then cover it with rich red squares trimmed in black edging? Is that why his paintings haunt me? Has the original vision receded into another narrative? His work is spare and unadorned–yet when I stare at them, they take me to a very detailed place of emotion.
Red on Maroon Mural, Section 3 1959 by Mark Rothko
For instance, Mark Rothko’s Seagram Murals. (Segue: Mark Rothko was commissioned to make these murals for a fancy restaurant. He was so disgusted about painting something for a restaurant full of rich patrons dining on expensive food with his work as decor that he intended his murals to sicken them–he is my kind of DGAF). I first saw them at the Tate Modern a number of years ago. I have never forgotten the emotional experience of viewing them in person; they reminded me of double-edged safety razors and furthermore, they make me feel the tension of holding one in my hand. Knowing how Rothko died only concretizes this feeling for me. What–I wonder, is underneath? Is that hidden picture the structure of the story he tells?
I realize, too, that the title of this post is about safety. But it is also about risk and disregarding safety. Double-edged safety razors might have been safer than its predecessor–but the blades alone are full of risk. Maybe we can never truly be safe and safety can only be an approximation.
I am not safe when I write. I am throwing myself into the wind. I am letting myself break down. I am breaking down visions. And then putting them back together, intertwined.
To do so requires a wild freedom, the kind of wildness that crises afford me, when the rules have been erased, my foundation crushed, and the walls completely ruined. It requires a kind of self absorption that motherhood doesn’t always afford me. But maybe this year I will create a room into which I enter to write and create. Maybe a locked door will be the very thing that enables wildness. Or maybe I will break rules and make demands.
We are all cycling through stages of grief in this pandemic. And we linger in the place with which we are all familiar. For some of us, it’s anger or depression or denial (hey there churches, still doing in-person worship!) or bargaining. It’s going to be a long road to acceptance.
We’re also going toward the familiar. For me, that’s kimchi. Suddenly, I HAVE TO HAVE KIMCHI IN THE HOUSE AT ALL TIMES. I’ve made many batches since this began (which also tells you WE ARE EATING KIMCHI AT ALL TIMES).
Lots of you have requested my mother’s kimchi recipe. So I’ll share it here, instead of emailing the same thing umpteen times. It can be adjusted–and where it can, I’ve indicated in the notes. I’ve used this kimchi recipe as a base for both radish and cabbage kimchi.
FYI, I am basically DGAF these days. So I don’t do fancy kimchi. I do “mak-kimchi,” which is cabbage chopped up in advance of pickling. Sometimes, I mix up radish AND cabbage together. Whatever. It tastes really good and reminds me of safety.
INGREDIENTS:
IF you opt to use napa cabbage in this recipe, you need to start this step at LEAST 6 hours prior: Take a big head of napa cabbage, slice it into quarters. Then chop. Then put the cabbage in a big bowl, and add about 1/2 cup of salt. Toss. And leave for at least 3 hours (preferably closer to 6), before proceeding with the directions. I often do a mix of both napa cabbage and daikon radish (BUT DON’T PRE-SALT the RADISH, ONLY PRE-SALT CABBAGE)–just scale the rest of the ingredients to match. By the end, your napa cabbage should be nice and wilted like so:
wilted
(before it wilts–see the contrast?)
2 daikon radish, chopped into 1-inch cubes (or 2-inch cubes or 3-inch cubes, whatever)
1/4 cup rice flour and approximately 1/2 cup water (basically, a 1:2 ratio) —some people don’t add this, but I do. This is the thing that aids the lactic acid fermentation and is one of the key components to that awesome “fizzy” nature of A+ kimchi
1-2 Tablespoons of “gochu garu” (Korean red pepper flakes) —your mileage may vary on this. you can probably add more if you like your kimchi spicier/redder
1/2 cup sugar ——okay, the real measurement is “a small handful”
1 bunch chopped scallions —sometimes I don’t have enough scallions on hand, in which case, I just add like 1-2 sliced scallions. whatever. but it does need to be in there.
2 Tablespoons salted shrimp —okay. in my recipes, this is a MUST. But if you don’t have salted shrimp (the kind you get from korean stores, so I mean fresh salted baby shrimp) on hand, I’ve seen people use fish sauce, and I think that’s a fine substitute. This addition of a fish/seafood source is the OTHER key component in aiding lactic acid fermentation and makes the kimchi AWESOME FIZZY. There is, yes, vegan kimchi. Props to vegans. I guess you could add more salt in its place if you decide to opt out of this ingredient. But I would at least add fish sauce.
Salt to taste —if I add enough salted shrimp (or you add enough fish sauce), I usually don’t have to add salt. Also, if I’m making cabbage kimchi version of this…then I definitely don’t need to add salt.
12 cloves garlic, crushed —the “exact measurement” is this is A BIG OLD HANDFUL of GARLIC. this is absolutely necessary. Sorry Not Sorry.
DIRECTIONS:
IF YOU ARE USING NAPA CABBAGE, do this first: Rinse the salted napa cabbage well. Drain. (You may want to rinse again–the cabbage will be VERY salty–and if you don’t rinse, it will be inedible). Squeeze out excess water if you can. Then proceed.
Put the cubed radish (or above pre-prepped cabbage, or if you’re doing a medley, both radish + pre-salted cabbage) in a large mixing bowl. Sprinkle the gochu garu (red hot pepper flakes) on the radish until the radish are just covered with the flakes. Let rest while you do the next steps.
While radish is “resting,” bring 1/2 cup water to simmer in a small saucepan and add 1/4 cup rice flour and mix until it makes a paste. Let the flour mixture cool.
Add the small handful of sugar and toss into the radish/cabbage mixture with your HANDS until well mixed. Add the rice paste, scallions, garlic, salted shrimp and toss with your hands until mixed.
yah, i know. the rice paste reminds you of something, too.
Taste. It won’t be exactly the same as “ripe” kimchi–but taste for balance of flavors. DEFINITELY shouldn’t be sweet. definitely should be salty but not TOO salty.
Add 2-6 tablespoons of salt, as necessary (the mixture should not be incredibly salty–if you’re using pre-salted cabbage, you likely won’t need to add salt).
Put into an airtight container and leave out for 24 hours at room temperature until fermented. I like to use mason jars and then “burp” them every 12 hours or so. You’ll hear the fizz! When the fizzing stops being so intense, that’s when I put it in the fridge. Most people just leave out at room temp for a day and then stick it in the fridge for further ripening over the next 3 weeks or so. But if you leave it out at room temp until it stops fizzing (about 3 days), then it gets really close to being ready to eat right away.
Kimchi jars, fermenting. The ones in the back are “white kimchi” for my child. I make a mean batch of that, too. I usually put the jars on a shelf above my stove where it’s warmer. YMMV.
Also–feel free to do variations. You can increase or decrease the hot pepper. And you can substitute daikon radish with watermelon radish or purple daikon (and bonus: the colors). Or add cauliflower. Or sub out napa cabbage for kale.
If you just want a letter of recommendation–and not necessarily a good one, you don’t have to read this post. Go ahead and ask your professor/ instructor for a letter of recommendation any which way you’d like, and–don’t worry about it.
But if you want to ask your teacher to write you a letter of recommendation that thoughtfully details your strengths and underlines strong emotional support for whatever it is you’re applying, then read on…
Your instructor, bottom line, does NOT want to write you a bad letter of recommendation. The thing that frustrates an instructor most of all is not being given the resources to write you an excellent letter of recommendation. We WANT to see you succeed, and we do not want to let you down–but we also need certain things to enable us to do our best for you.
So here is a list of resources to provide (and when to provide them) to professors.
In your initial letter:
Offer enough time to write an excellent letter: Provide the deadline and give at least 3-4 weeks leeway, if not more. If you don’t give at least 3-4 weeks advance notice, your teacher may not be able to write you a letter in time (especially since letter writing season tends to overlap with “grading lots of papers and turning in final grades” season or the precarious, “we aren’t checking our email because we are on vacation” season or the very possible “I am also writing X other letters of recommendation”). Or worse, your letter will be very rushed and lukewarm. Again, if you don’t care about the quality of your letter or you don’t care that your teacher now has a dent on their head from bashing their head against their desk, then you can disregard this point.
Ask in person, if possible. But if you cannot ask in person, ask via email. And always be very polite and respectful. You’d think this was a no brainer, but–you’d be surprised at the number of flippant “Hi can you write me a letter of recommendation for blah blah?” emails professors do receive.
Do not officially submit your professor’s name to the institution until you receive a yes from the professor. OMG, yes, this happens. The institutions DO automatically email the letter writer, sometimes immediately. And it’s weird for a letter writer to see a request from a letter via XX university / XX fellowship before receiving a personal request to which they’ve haven’t yet agreed.
Why it is you believe they are the person who should write your recommendation letter: Who doesn’t like being buttered up? And also, what an excellent way to model what you’d like for your instructor to write on your behalf! Also, it helps your letter writer understand what value they can add to your application. For example, telling your instructor that they were the person who has seen you through the entire draft of your manuscript and can attest to your growth–is insightful and helpful. Another example might be that this instructor might have taught you after a particularly challenging time in your life and that they are witness to your resilience as a writer (and this instructor may not previously know the importance of their timing in your education).
A promise to provide supplemental materials should the professor say yes: these materials should be ready to go (i.e., application materials–and even if they’re not ready, have a general summary ready to go).
If your professor says yes, please provide the following:
Your application materials, along with your writing sample (or statement of purpose) for an MFA program/writing fellowship/writing residency / Ph.D. program: You want to help your letter writer feel informed about your application and overall preparation. And also, it’s nice for your letter writer to know what it is you’ve written so that they can write a letter that supports your stated strengths and/or adds to what you’ve already written.
What you would like for your letter writer to highlight in your letter of recommendation: Make it easy for your letter writer to write a recommendation–it helps to know where it is we should start. Giving your letter writer every foothold onto how you should be represented is helpful to both you and your recommender.
Provide necessary administrative details: Gone are the days (I hope I hope I hope) when letters had to be sent via snail mail. But if an institution requires snail-mailed letters, please provide a self-addressed-stamped-envelope.
Provide necessary logistical details: Most letters are sent electronically these days–whether via submittable or a dossier service like Interfolio. Specify to your letter writer from where requests will come or should be sent. Sometimes automatic email requests get lost in spam or a subfolder, so it will only help your recommender to know for what to look in their email. That you have researched and understand these details only adds to the strength of your candidacy, too.
If your professor balks or says they can’t:
Be gracious and say thank you anyway.
Contact your backup letter writers.
Just as students don’t get compensated for writing an application–neither do educators. It isn’t part of our job description and we certainly aren’t compensated for writing letters–but of course, we do it because we love our students and want you to succeed. So when you write your request, make sure to be as respectful and professional as you can, even if this is the professor with whom you’ve had beers after MFA workshop. Trust me, the professor will understand and appreciate your erring on the side of formality and politeness when it comes to a letter of recommendation request.
In sum: a wonderful student (whose initials are S.F.), once said to me, “One should put the same amount of care into a request as the care they request be put into a letter of recommendation.“
BOOM.
via GIPHY
Right? You want your professor to write a professional, respectful, and compassionate letter stating your strengths to whichever institution you apply. So you want to emulate that tone when you request your letter.
Also–don’t forget to say thank you. A simple thank you note or small gift suffices after the fact. Or if you haven’t bought your professor’s book, now might be the time? Let us know the outcome of your application (remember, we’re rooting for you) even if unsuccessful–honestly, writing a letter of recommendation is like sending a wish out into the world, and we have a vested interest in what happens, too. And if you find yourself no longer needing the letter, let us know asap.
I hope this helps you on your journey. And here’s to many excellent letters of recommendation for you and positive application outcomes!
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