Night is Falling in Santiago

I chose this picture, though it has nothing to do with Santiago. It does have a lot to do with being willing to venture to unfamiliar places both without and within. Thank you, Mother Eve, for taking the first bite to a realized life.

We have been in Chile for just over a day. I'm sitting in an upstairs lobby of La Caja Roja, a hostel full of mostly young people from all over the world. Loud music is blasting from downstairs. Voices of guests eating their dinners on the patio blend in, along with clinking plates and laughter. Here, it doesn't feel I'm half a world away from winter, where the bells of my school ring, and my commute is driving up a mountain road. The Germanic orderliness that the United States possesses isn't found in Chile.

Bill and I stayed at this hostel for two of the weeks we spent here in July, so coming back felt like coming home in many ways. Out on the streets of the city, though, walking among the blankets spread full of bolsas and zapatos for sell, the crazy traffic, having a poor mother sing a song for some pesos to feed her baby, the reality that I have made a commitment to a strange new life is impossible to ignore.

Ice cream is a real highlight. It's simply wonderful, very similar to gelato. Most of the pastries, on the other hand, are heavy and unappealing-- which is a good thing because I have a weakness for them. I'd rather spend my dessert calories on the helados.

Took a trip to Vina del Mar today to rent a house that we found out about back home. Outside of Santiago, it becomes desert-like, similar to the few un-watered parts of southern California that remain. We passed chapparal and chemise, vineyards in the Casablanca Valley, slums on Valparaiso's hills.

Chile is a poor country with an expanding "middle class," however you might define it, and the wealthy whose homes could be anywhere in tonier areas of the states. Our new house is where a purse being snatched won't be out of the question, but that's probably the worst of worries. I wish my work clothes had deeper pockets to hide my i.d. and what little money I'll carry. I'll travel by bus or taxi to St. Margaret's, which has a gate models on Buckingham Palace, teaching girls who go home to fine houses, mas rica que mi casa.

I've stepped out of the "garden," of what I have always known, into a world where more knowledge and experience will be gained.

I need to work on my book, but so much nicer right now to put my thoughts here.

Tags: chile, hungry, la casa roja, teaching in foreign countries, vina del mar

Threshold Guardians

According to the Hero's Cycle, heroes need to pass through obstacles that guardians place before them in order to prove the heroes' worthiness to enter into the special world where the story will unfold. Guardians can be other characters, circumstances, or objects (locked windows). I feel that Bill and I are passing through our share of these guardians. To be cliched (as I am using Joseph Campbell's ideas here), we're "following our bliss" in our preparations to move to Chile. Daily we're coming up against a variety of guardians, but somehow a mixture of sheer willpower and serendipity are helping to dissolve them.
Some of these have been:

Reducing a household to four suitcases and a dufflebag full of bedding.
Luckily, we're not horders and have less to get rid of than most people. We're leaving some things: photos, some books, a few of my winter clothes as we'll be living in late summer in just a few days. It feels wonderful to let go. There are no family things on my side and only a few on Bill's, so this has been a blessing.

Dogs
The hardest part has been deciding what to do with our dogs. We can't take them now because we don't really know if this is going to work. Will we stay in Chile a few months or the rest of our lives?

We were going to have Lily, our 90 percent Ausie and 10 percent mystery dog, be our Chile dog at first. Then, we decided not to bring any of them. Then all of them. Then . . . We found a wonderful organization called We Care Animal Rescue in St. Helena, California. Through them, Lily found a home with a wonderful couple in the Sacramento area. As traumatic as it was for us to say good bye, Lily was won over by a chicken sandwich. She hopped in her new mom's car and off she went. She's happy. Got her teeth cleaned. Playing lots of fetch and going on oodles of walks.

Lily was a thirty pound whirlwind that kept Dazie wound up and puppy-like for six years. There was an amazing transformation from the very first day. Dazie came into her own and wasn't as fidgety, not even wiggling when I tried to brush her. So . . . we said, "Let's keep Wiley and her!" Friends tried her out on a sleepover to see how she'd do until we figured out how to do this, but on a walk in the hills above Upper Lake she got away.

I was taking Wiley to Petaluma for a potential foster mom to meet him when another guardian came my way. My wallet was stolen before I got there, so I had to return home to cancel things out. I got the message about Dazie. I left Wiley with some food because I hadn't fed him that morning (he gets car sick)and drove the hour to Upper Lake. We spent hours looking for her. She'd run off the road up a hill that was full of chemise, coyotes who'd come out at night, and that led into a wilderness area. I called and called her name at the spot she disappeared. She didn't answer. She could have been anywhere in rugged terrain. Bill was stuck in an elevator during this time (did someone say Mercury Retrograde?) and when he got home, he brought Wiley who only had to bark once for Dazie to answer. She was at the same spot I had yelled for her, but dog-to-dog communication won her over. Bill and Kenn then had to climb the mountain, though, and Kenn had to use all his forest service training to get through the brush. She wouldn't budge when he found her. She weighs 60 pounds and he dragged her through about ten feet of the chemise with her pissing and . . . you get the picture. Once she saw Wiley, she got up and trotted down the mountain with him.

We contacted We Care again for Dazie because we decided the move would be too much for her. The next day heard from a wonderful woman in Yountville (Napa Valley). We took Dazie to her house yesterday. She now lives on a 48 acre vineyard in a 5,000 square foot house full of comfy pillows and gourmet food cooked just for her. She'll eat plenty of fruits, vegetable, New York steak cut just right, and gourmet doggy biscuits. She'll also be taken out to a restaurant that gives the diners plates for their dogs, and back at home has a bidet for her very own to be able to drink fresh flowing water. I'd have felt guilty NOT to let her live there. I've always thought that our dogs had it nice. It's been boot camp for them in comparison! Though she did break our hearts. The two nights she was with us, she climbed into a suitcase to sleep.

What is wonderful is that both of the new families will let us know how Dazie and Lily are doing. We even have an invitation to stay in Dazie's paradise when we're in northern California. And through Dazie's little adventure, the people who were going to take her are now taking Wiley until we can figure out things. He is now the official Chile dog in residence.

However, contacting airline customer service to figure this out has turned out to be the most formidable of the guards at the "gate". I ended up screaming I WANT TO TALK TO SOMEONE HUMAN! When we got the humans, it was still difficult. We're still not sure what to do.

Car
No one wanted a Corolla with a stick shift even though we were offering under blue book. What about gas economy????? We were amazed. We dropped the price to way under blue book, and a woman from Willits called us. She was thrilled that our car even had old fashioned roll up windows. We've sold it at the last minute.

House in Cobb
The first people to look at our house are making an offer. HOWEVER, whether their offer is something we'll accept is another matter. We're free here, though, because through a conversation at the Mountain High Coffee Shop, serendipity allowed us to find a renter we can trust if the house hasn't sold by the time the listing runs out.

Home in Chile
Another conversation, at the Cafe Vasquez in Lakeport this time, has given us a fully furnished house to rent (with washer and dryer) in Vina Del Mar, twenty minutes by bus from where I'll work at St. Margaret's.

Work Visa
Last hurdle. By the time we got the documents we need, it was too late to process the visa up here. It will take the FBI four months to process my "rap sheet." Ah, let's see . . . there was a ticket on my way to church a few years ago for going a few miles over the speed limit. That must be what is holding things up. So, we're hoping we can process what we need to do once we're in Santiago. I only have a few days before I begin work, but not being anxious about this is a good lesson for me. If it doesn't happen, our journey may take off on a different path as happens in many good stories.

HUNGRY
Sales have been "quiet" according to my editor. Which means if things remain the same, the book I'm halfway through writing won't be wanted. I worry about the effect of being in Chile will have on my writing career. A friend suggested I blog on my webpage as Deborah in Chile, which I think is brilliant . . . the country's name allowing for a lot of puns with eating. I just hope I have time to do this. Anyway, I just have to believe that bliss and prayer and as much attention as I can put into promoting the book from down south will work.

I haved managed to sneak in a couple school visits through all of this: Lu Sutton School in Novato, where I saw again how much kids connect with the book. Also, another presentation on the Mendocino Coast at Horicon School in Annapolis, and the Four-Eyed Frog Book Store in Gualala. Grandmother Pig's Butt, my alter ego, is still training recruits for the great invasion of Earth, complete with an alien make over of a very brave volunteer. I hope she can somehow keep the training going in Chile.

You're It!

You're It!

I’ve been tagged by Janet Riehl:
http://riehlife.com/

I’m tagging:
Norman Benson, forensic expert and author
http://timberbeastheartwood.blogspot.com/
Kim Baccellia , author
http://kbaccellia.livejournal.com/

Kris Bordessa, author

http://greatsolutions.blogspot.com

1. How long have you been blogging?
I wrote my first blog post six months ago. I’m not focusing just on children’s literature, or teaching, or particular themes or issues. In a way, I guess I feel it’s more of an online diary. I’ve written about my book HUNGRY and trying to promote it, but my blog also covered my trip to Chile, reflections on lost family members, and whatever seems to be on my mind at the time I feel I like writing an entry. In the future, I hope to do a separate blog of meditations that I’ve written on the Major Arcana keys using a Christian interpretation of the Qabala. When I transferred computers, this was the one file that I lost. I’ve hadn’t had the time or the willingness to type over the meditations, but I figure they'll be a time I’ll just work on this project for a few weeks. I have an idea to do a painting or drawing for each meditation, but I rather doubt I’ll be this productive.

2. What inspired you to start a blog and who are your mentors?
Basically getting word out about my book inspired me. After creating my website, I found I enjoy working on web related things. I am very grateful to Janet Riehl’s wonderful listening ear, her explanations, and encouragement that allowed me to get started. I’m thinking especially of a walk we took last spring when I barely knew what a blog was. Another mentor is Norm Benson who showed me blogspot about the same time.

3. Are you trying to make money online, or just doing it for fun?
The hope is that my writing, Hungry, specifically, will be of enough interest for people to read my blog. I’ve never thought of money making online. I just hope that my book will sell enough copies that HarperCollins will want me to write another one, and if the blog helps with that, terrific!

4. What 3 things do you struggle with online?
I don’t know if I can separate this into three separate things. I get overwhelmed. Wonderful sites like Book Lust and Jacketflap have SO much information. I was recently sent an article about podcast that I haven’t read because I'm not in a place for a learning curve. It’s hard to take time to make connections. When I sit at my computer, I want to spend most of the time writing. I also don't want to spend my life on the computer.

5. What 3 things do you love about being online?
Email. I don’t really like using the phone, but I do love getting emails! Also, I appreciate how much easier the Internet has made the work of being a writer become. I used to feel isolated as a writer living in a small community. I feel the worldwide community now provides a sense of connectedness that, even ten years ago, I couldn’t imagine. Making friends with people I haven't met has been important, as well as having the ability to express my creativity and to get feedback about it worldwide.

Call to Adventure

This is our phone, the one we use the most because we can actually hear people on it. We use our push button phone only when we need to. Bill found this in a shed at his mother's house about thirty years ago. Who knows how long it had been in there?

A friend's daughter wanted to call her dad one day and after she picked up the receiver she just stared at it, not knowing what to do. I realized that it's probably the equivalent to the pictures I saw of hand crank phones when I was a kid. I wish we could take this beauty with us!

I've been offered a job at St. Margaret's British School for Girls in Concon, Chile. A part of my day will be spent teaching high school English! Because the academic year in Chile starts in March, I'm hoping to leave my current job by mid-January and be in Chile sometime in early February.

Bill is working very hard to make our house look like a million dollars (we wish) to be ready for possible buyers. I'm trying to find a qualified teacher to finish out my contract year. We need homes for two of our dogs. We're bringing Lily, our oldest and most adaptable as our Chili dog. Our hearts are breaking over the other two. Dazie, though, will be happier in another home without the other two dogs bothering her. For some reason she offers a type of alure to both Willy and Lily. They never leave her alone! Willy is everyone's boyfriend. He's affectionate and goofy and totally loving (a quality Lily doesn't always possess).

We could be there a year, but we could also be there the rest of our lives (with trips home, of course.) We'll be living by the sea in a climate similar to Santa Barbara's. Vina Del Mar, a tourist destination, is only a few miles south and offers plenty of shopping opportunities if we need them and great food. Valparaiso is half an hour farther south and is a wonderfully atmospheric bohemian sort of place.

I have a dream of an ex-pat community of friends in Concon! We hope to receive many visitors over the years.

Life in Tentacles

The moment finally came! Signing a copy of HUNGRY at Cobb Mountain's very own coffee shop and bookstore, The Bookkeeper. Bill made pistachio Home Worlder cookies, with five tentacles rather than six, but who's counting! Pipecleaner tentacles were made with googly eyes. There were green alien Italian sodas to drink and a t-shirt giveaway.

My good friend and writing partner, Mary, helped in my presentation as Commander Pggsbtk, (otherwise known as Deborah's grandmother Pig's Butt). Mary and I did a "spit and greet," and she ably assisted applying Pggsbtk's beauty secret to transform Tom, one of the Bookkeeper's visitor's, into an alien. There were wonderful screams of pain from the bathroom as the beauty secret did its job. Norm, Mary's husband, made a certificate for the kids that said they were officially part of the invasion force and were not to be eaten.

Since then Mary helped me at an assembly at school in which a sixth grader named Tristan outdid Tom with his screams from the back of the stage. He was very brave as he went out on his mission to terrorize Earthlings with his new alien face. One of the pleasures of all of this is being a teacher and a writer. The kids at school have been genuinely excited for me.

I signed books at Funtopia last weekend as a fund raiser for Minnie Cannon's sixth grade science camp. Over 200 dollars was raised!

My family, community, friends, collegues, and church (even Episcopalians can appreciate hungry aliens) have been so supportive. All I can say is a humble thank you to everyone who have made the last two weeks so memorable.

Book Day

I wish I could include my second graders in this picture, but I'm not sure if their parents would want their picture on the internet.

By the way, that's Serjio's arm, and Starfall, the best reading site on the Internet on the monitor behind me. Everybody at school, every teacher, aide, and student signed the banner.

As a celebration, two teachers at my school decorated my room after I left late on October 1st. They ended up calling my husband to get me out of there.

On the morning of the 2nd, I wasn't really thinking about HUNGRY as much as I was feeling overwhelmed by teaching: the needs the kids have and the expectations put on schools. I'm working with a very bright 4th grade reading group who are below grade level for a variety of causes: reading disabilities, second languages, difficulty focusing, and, for a few, home issues.

I love this group. They're good thinkers and sweet kids, but they need me to go slow. They need repetition and lots and lots of practice on skills. I'm a believer in using data to inform instruction, and I'm not against standards. I just want the expectations to be reasonable. When I was in fourth grade, I didn't have to write a summary on bonsai (a release writing prompt for the 4th grade state writing test). My parents wouldn't have known bonsia from bubble gum. Thinking back on the type of 4th grader I was, I wonder if I could have easily describe the art of growing bonsai. I'm sure my lack of background knowledge would have reflected in my writing performance.

I'm not saying, don't teach kids how to write! But what this group needs more than anything else is to get a good solid understanding of SENTENCE construction, which we work on daily. I want them to write decent paragraphs by the end of 4th grade (which they are still shaky about the details-- like not starting each sentence on a new line), and if all of them succeed I'll be doing the happy teacher dance. But I'm concerned for March when they have to take the test, that as far as they'll come as writers may not be far enough.

So, October 2nd, I got to school feeling heavy and worried and grumpy. Gail Marshall said she needed something from my room and hung around as I dawdled getting my lunch into the refrigerator in the teachers' room and then spent more time running off work for later in the day. On the way across the quad to my room, we talked about how as a teacher one can work 24/7, and it's still wouldn't be enough to do everything. We talked about how it was only October and that we were already tired.

I unlocked my door and was met with a banner, flowers, balloons, and silly string. Oh, there was chocolate. Lots of it. Gail had come with me to see my reaction. I'm still smiling as I write this, almost two weeks later. The surprise went straight to my heart and burst open the dark crystal of frustration that had gotten lodged there. Thank you, Gail. (And Brandy, her partner in chocolate.)

Dog Days (A Belated Remembrance)

I wanted to write this entry earlier in the month, but I've finally got started on STARVED and didn't want anything to get in the way. Writing seems to be coming FINALLY, and the story that's emerging feels right.

I wrote five pages in less than forty minutes yesterday, so this encourages me that the rest of the story will be accessible once school starts. My goal is to have fifty pages done by the end of Labor Day weekend. My husband's going to Burning Man, so it's just me and the dogs and whatever lesson plans I need to do. I'm picturing long days and nights at the computer. We'll see . . . I really want STARVED to be done by early 2008.

The Dog Days, though . . .(I've tried for fifteen minutes to get spaces for paragraphs above and below here, so this blog is just going to be IMPERFECT!)

I thought the Dog Days were from August 3rd to August 11th, but I just Googled them and it said they start July 3rd. No matter. Sirius, the Dog Star, rises with the sun at dawn, ushering in the hottest days of the year.

This period has a personal connection. In 1978, my father died on August 3rd. I used to go into a depression at the end of July, coming back out just in time for school to start up again. After years went by, I finally saw the relationship between the depression and his death and had an aha! The dark period of the year that grew with the heat hasn't been as dark since.

I wrote the poem below just about this time, and when I was done, I realized healing had finally happened. I included it now for my dad, Les Eason, who would be 101 on August 30th.

Stars Falling in August

Daddy, the stars fell when you died, skidding across

the night like chips pealed from chrome,

carried by burnished wind across the sky.
The creosote was drunk in the dry desert air.

And though I wasn’t there,

I’ve imagined how you flew from your soul,
leaving your daughters like thistles blown over the chaparral,
our breath thin as the stems of the palo verde

that grew stunted in the yard.

The house filled up with uncles. My boyfriend and I slept

on a cot out back. As we made love, the stars

became silver nighthawks, fish tails swimming

through the blinding air.

I was numb like the space between stars

that are too stable, refusing to stray from the safety

of their paths. I didn’t feel the meteors
of broken glass falling to earth in silent breaths.

Daddy, thousands of stars have tumbled since then,
streaking through the heat of a hundred nights.

Each second they have been in the sky,

these variegated strands of burning air.
have burned open the portion in me that closed
more than twenty years ago.

Now nights stay sober
save for the drink of starlight and the odor
of yarrow and summer grass.

but the sky will never be shorn
Of star flakes nor the earth of burning sand.

The stars fell when you died.
You were carried by the wind luminous across the sky.

My sister, Gwyn, died three years ago on August 9th. The picture above must have been taken not too long before I was born. She was seven and a half years older than I was. I idolized her and could never understand why she didn't want me hanging out with her and her girlfriends when she was twelve or thirteen. Gwyn was cool in high school, turning into a blond beauty (is that blonde beauty?), had boyfriends, did dangerous things like ride motorcycles and go to parties, things that I wouldn't have dreamt of doing when my turn came as a teenager. She was the rebel, and so I didn't need to be. She was also a real hippie. I told some of the fifth and sixth graders that I had a sister who was a hippie a couple of years ago, and I couldn't believe how fascinated they were. They asked questions right up to recess. Gwyn gave birth to my two nieces: Angela and Nicolette. Had a volatile marriage. Injuries. Back surgury. Diabetes. Hepitites which was probably from a blood transfusion when her youngest daughter was born. She died at 55.

I remember by sister defending me, holding me during our parents' frequent fights, grabbing my best friend, Rhonda, and I by the scruffs of our necks when we were five and marching us to apologize for terrorizing a three year old girl with our rubber knives while pretending to be pirates. By the time I was 12, she no longer lived at home. In many ways we were strangers, but in the last few years we finally bonded like real sisters. I couldn't cry when she died. Perhaps it was because of the pain she had been in. It may have been because I knew what was happening for a year after reading Internet posting of woman after woman who found out about hepatites years after giving birth. Strangely, I wrote HUNGRY during the year she died, a funny novel in a time I wasn't laughing much. This poem came in a rush one day a couple of months before she left us:

Heaven

Madonna is all dolled up. Her glittery eyes

look down at the baby resting in her henna hands.

The Queen of Heaven’s ready for Mardi Gras.

The graveyard stones slant below
her sparkling gaze, too quiet for a party,

too white, too gray.

In the other picture, four dancing girls

do what they can to divert barbarian hoards,

spears full tilt as they rush in for attack.

The girls dream of feet free on desert sand,

far from the soft red carpet of the harem’s floor,
far from the bad manners of these sweaty men.

In the morning, I look through my scratched lens
and sit with Andrew as he drinks chocolate milk.
Must I meditate on death with this child at my desk?
On the decal of the shuffle skeleton on the car I passed?
The white rose so quietly growing on the vine?

My sister drowns in a hospital room.

In her morphine dreams,
divas dance on the walls.

From chairs by her bed, little black boys
speak to her of heaven. I pray her rose unfurling.

Her petals.
Her wings ribbed with glittery adornments.

I think of deserts carpeted with red flowers,

the mosaic spots on butterflies,

girls with bare feet spinning,

All things transforming
and unfolding. I write HEAVEN in my book

and underline it twice.

The Dog Days have passed, but I finally have stopped my business to acknowledge both Daddy and Gwyn's passing. This entry I write for them, but mostly for me.