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When I'm not here, you may find me wandering the pages below. (If I'm a regular visitor to your site and I've left your link off or mislinked to you, please let me know! And likewise, if you've blogrolled me, please check that my link is updated: thisroamanticlife.blogspot.com. The extra (a) makes all the difference!)

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For posts on frequently referenced topics, click the buttons to the right.

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Body: in sickness and in health

I won't lie; this body and I have had our issues with each other for many years. Body image -- sure. Physical and mental overextension -- comes with being a Type A kind of girl. I still struggle with these things, so they show up from time to time in my writing.

More recently, illness, pure but not simple, has added itself to the mix in a multi-system sort of way. And the challenges in figuring out exactly what's gone wrong are many. As problems have revealed themselves in the last few years, beginning with reactive hypoglycemia in late 2008, I've documented them here, partly to gain a little clarity on managing complex conditions but mostly to give voice to vulnerabilities I feel but don't normally share with anyone face to face. Better out than in, they say, right? (Oh yes, humor is one way I deal.)

The links below cover the different angles I've examined (and from which I've been examined) within that experience.

Travel: neither here nor there

When the person you're married to lives two time zones away, you log a fair number of frequent flier miles. And if you blog about commuter relationships, you log quite a few posts en route too.

Since we're no longer in separate places, I blog less often from airports. But we do travel -- together now! -- which is much more fun to write about. So in addition to thoughts on our years of commuting, the links below cover the places we've been as a pair and, in some cases, the adventures that have happened on the way.

Writing: the long and short of it

Why do I do it? Good question. Maybe it's not so much that I like to write but that I have to write, even when the words refuse to stick to the page. Believe me, I've tried doing other things like majoring in biochemistry (freshman fall, many semesters ago). Within a year, I'd switched to English with a concentration in creative writing and wasn't looking back.

After graduating, I taught English for a few years and then worked as an editor, which I still do freelance. In 2007, I applied and got into an MFA program at a place I like to call Little U. on the Prairie. I finished my degree in 2011 and have been balancing tutoring and writing on my own ever since.

The following links cover the writing I've done about writing: process, content, obstacles, you name it. It's not always pretty. But some part of me loves it, even when it's hard. And this is the result.

Heart: family and friends

I'd have a hard time explaining who I am without being able to talk about the family I grew up in as well as the people I've met beyond its bounds. But even with such context, it's not easy! In the simplest terms, I'm a first-generation Asian-American who has spent most of this life caught between cultures. That, of course, doesn't even begin to describe what I mean to, but there's my first stab at the heart of it all.

That's what this group of posts is reserved for -- heart. The essential parts of my life whose influences I carry with me, for better or worse. The links below cover what I've written as I've learned how these forces work within me, for me, against me, in spite of me. They anchor me even as they change me, and they keep life interesting.

Recommended reading

What do I do when there's too much on my mind and my words won't stick to the page? I escape into someone else's thoughts. Below is a collection of books and articles that have been sources of information, inspiration, and occasional insight for my own work.

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

The waiting game

Three days until D's here for another weekend. Hard to believe that it's been nearly three weeks since his last visit -- keeping busy has its perks, I guess.

I'm also waiting to hear back on some bloodwork I had done two weeks ago. Either teaching is the next fad diet or I'm shrinking for other reasons. Since coming back to Little U. on the Prairie, I've lost enough weight to make at least one pair of pants too loose to go without a belt and one skirt too dangerous to wear, period (would make class too interesting if that were to fall down in the middle of discussion). If it's just the demands of teaching -- and it's possible since this happened to me in New York too, though not to this degree -- then next semester will require a wholesale wardrobe change. I'll be teaching two sections instead of one. Yikes.

But yes, some answers from my local M.D. would be much appreciated. He's the old-school sort who has practiced privately in these parts for decades and has a staff of two (nurse, receptionist). So he processes all of his patients personally -- but also more slowly.

Sigh.

In other news, D has been playing around with our camera lately, and a few experiments have produced some pretty pictures. Here's one I especially love (downtown Seattle at sunset from the top of a skyscraper on the Eastside as the city lights are just beginning to come on). The space on the blog doesn't do it justice, but if you click on it, you can see it in a larger format:


Coincidentally, while reading W.G. Sebald's The Rings of Saturn for one of my classes this week, I came across a lovely passage that seemed written for that image. As translated from German by Michael Hulse, Sebald writes,
Combustion is the hidden principle behind every artefact we create. The making of a fish-hook, manufacture of a china cup, or production of a television programme, all depend on the same process of combustion. Like our bodies and like our desires, the machines we have devised are possessed of a heart which is slowly reduced to embers. From the earliest times, human civilization has been no more than a strange luminescence growing more intense by the hour, of which no one can say when it will begin to wane and when it will fade away. For the time being, our cities still shine through the night ...
I get shivers thinking about that, the ephemerality of it all. And yet, because time is so elastic, our moment in which we sputter into existence and then back out again stretches beyond our field of vision. We are sparks in slow-motion, blinded by our own flame.

I guess it's nice that we get to have such a concept as "tomorrow."

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Tuesday, September 23, 2008

The waiting game

Three days until D's here for another weekend. Hard to believe that it's been nearly three weeks since his last visit -- keeping busy has its perks, I guess.

I'm also waiting to hear back on some bloodwork I had done two weeks ago. Either teaching is the next fad diet or I'm shrinking for other reasons. Since coming back to Little U. on the Prairie, I've lost enough weight to make at least one pair of pants too loose to go without a belt and one skirt too dangerous to wear, period (would make class too interesting if that were to fall down in the middle of discussion). If it's just the demands of teaching -- and it's possible since this happened to me in New York too, though not to this degree -- then next semester will require a wholesale wardrobe change. I'll be teaching two sections instead of one. Yikes.

But yes, some answers from my local M.D. would be much appreciated. He's the old-school sort who has practiced privately in these parts for decades and has a staff of two (nurse, receptionist). So he processes all of his patients personally -- but also more slowly.

Sigh.

In other news, D has been playing around with our camera lately, and a few experiments have produced some pretty pictures. Here's one I especially love (downtown Seattle at sunset from the top of a skyscraper on the Eastside as the city lights are just beginning to come on). The space on the blog doesn't do it justice, but if you click on it, you can see it in a larger format:


Coincidentally, while reading W.G. Sebald's The Rings of Saturn for one of my classes this week, I came across a lovely passage that seemed written for that image. As translated from German by Michael Hulse, Sebald writes,
Combustion is the hidden principle behind every artefact we create. The making of a fish-hook, manufacture of a china cup, or production of a television programme, all depend on the same process of combustion. Like our bodies and like our desires, the machines we have devised are possessed of a heart which is slowly reduced to embers. From the earliest times, human civilization has been no more than a strange luminescence growing more intense by the hour, of which no one can say when it will begin to wane and when it will fade away. For the time being, our cities still shine through the night ...
I get shivers thinking about that, the ephemerality of it all. And yet, because time is so elastic, our moment in which we sputter into existence and then back out again stretches beyond our field of vision. We are sparks in slow-motion, blinded by our own flame.

I guess it's nice that we get to have such a concept as "tomorrow."

No comments: