balanced on the edge

Every burned book enlightens the world. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Censorship both repels and fascinates me as a phenomenon, because it attacks from so many angles. In the US the evangelical far right is often the source of book banning, or the boycotting of certain movies because of the ideas portrayed, often concerning sexuality. A few years ago there was even a big uproar over the Harry Potter series.

I asked one of my high school students, who had told me her pastor forbade the children from reading the Harry Potter books, “what about The Lord of the Rings? That’s a work of fantasy and magic.”

“Oh, he says it’s alright to read a book if it’s a classic.” The pastor was deferring his authority to an unseen literary board, but I let the subject go. There’s no arguing with people whose ideas are based on faulty logic.

There is pressure to censor one’s thoughts and words from the far left, or from advocacy watchdogs. Most comedians or satirists feel the wrath from different groups from time to time. For example, a scene in Tropic Thunder, in which the character played by Robert Downey Jr. tells the Ben Stiller character he shouldn’t have “gone full retard,” received negative attention from advocates for people with Down Syndrome. I understand their viewpoint, that the wording in the film promoted negative stereotypes and was extremely disrespectful, but I also wonder, should the filmmakers not have included the scene because of the perceived insult? They were building a character and a plot point in that scene, as well as satirizing actors who take themselves and their roles too seriously.

In his essay, The Censor in the Mirror, novelist and poet Ha Jin writes about how the Chinese Propaganda Department shapes the themes writers produce in China. Chinese writers stop themselves from exploring taboo themes from the outset (such as the Tienanmen Square massacre) because they know their work will either not be published, or will invite punishment from the authorities.

In most western countries we enjoy freedom of speech, and even take this freedom for granted. But even though we ostensibly have the right to say whatever we want to, there are subtle forces that keep writers from expressing their thoughts. There are editorial and consumer tastes – sometimes we succumb to peer pressure, either in the form of editors who are uncomfortable with our ideas, or critics who might have misunderstood our intentions.

Sometimes it’s a fear of what family members will say about us. There’s a certain sense of decorum we want to maintain among our friends and relations that can inhibit us from revealing our deepest truths. In my own case, I think I censor myself most often because I’m shielding myself from the darker thoughts that contribute to the person I am. There’s a certain place in my thinking where I stop myself, more than likely because of societal conditioning and upbringing. This is why free-writing is so important to the process of writing for me.

I’d be interested to know if and how you censor your writing, and why. Leave me a comment!

I’ll admit it, one reason why I’m reading Team of Rivals is because Barack Obama read it. What can I say? I love Barack. I’d marry him if I could. Sorry, Michelle, but you’re probably used to it, right?

A year ago my friend had seen the tome on my bookcase, and asked me if I liked it, and I had to admit the thought of reading it hadn’t crossed my mind. My father had dropped the book off at my house, thinking my son might like it, but it remained on the shelf collecting dust. When I saw CNN use the caption, ‘team of rivals’ to describe Barack Obama’s emerging cabinet, I figured I’d bite the bullet. I had to find out why this particular history book appealed to Obama.

After fifty pages into the story of Abraham Lincoln and the four other politicians who were his rivals I thought, wait a minute, are you really going to finish this thing? I mean, it’s straight history, over 900 pages, and you don’t read history. It’s a subject that tends to repeat itself, you know?

But Doris Kearns Goodwin, who won a Pulitzer Prize for this volume, has compiled a compelling story of these five men, their friends and their wives during the years leading up to Lincoln’s presidency. Yes, I’ve found many similarities between Obama’s campaign for president and Lincoln’s, and I’m learning about the benefits of keeping friends close and enemies, or rivals, closer, but what interests me the most are the letters Kearns Goodwin uses to illustrate the relationships between the characters, and to reveal the social mores of the time.

Some of you might know about Lincoln’s relationship with hottie Joshua Speed, a wealthy young man who befriended a penniless Lincoln in the beginning of his career in Springfield Illinois. The two shared the same bed for four years, sleeping in Jacob’s room above his place of business.

The words they and many other men used to describe their longing for each other when apart sound like the most of torrid love letters. And it seems that this type of close bond between men was very common. Kearns Goodwin says there is no evidence to suggest that these relationships were sexual, that it was a sanctioned form of pair bonding for educated men, who developed strong ties of romantic love without the ensuing touch twenty-first century inhabitants enjoy or practice.

It’s hard to say what the truth about those relationships really was. Are humans so different now than we were 150 years ago? I prefer to think that people back then expressed love in a variety of ways, with the person who happened to be nearby, much as we do today. I know my opinion isn’t based on fact, but then I also know I’d make a terrible historian.

The following might be a poem, or a story, I’m not sure which. I wrote the piece first in Spanish, and then translated it into English. Something about the narrative reminded me of one of my favorite South American authors, Horacio Quiroga, so I wrote it first in Spanish.

Please listen, if you have time. It took me almost an hour to figure out how to upload the darn file! But now I know how. That’s how it is when we have to teach ourselves, a lot of trial and error.

A poetry workshop leader said recently that she didn’t think it was fair to use symbols from dreams in poems. The symbolism is too personal, too obscure to be understood. But to me, the image of the water seemed universal. Who hasn’t dreamed of dark water, or being swept up by giant waves? And the neighbor is more than likely myself, seen as the other.

Tell me what you think. Is it fair to use dream imagery in poems?

noche de la laguna/night of the lagoon (audio)

Noche de la laguna

Anoche soñé que una inundación
subió hasta el segundo piso de mi casa.
Todos salimos a las terrazas
para averiguar por qué el aire sabía a ranas.

Era de noche, y la luna se reflejaba
en un espejo oscuro de agua.
Me inliné sobre el balcón, pensando
¿cómo voy a escaparme?

En los jardines las coronas de los árboles
se asomaban de la laguna como enormes
caras de hombres frondosos. Desde su terraza
mi vecina de al lado se clavó los ojos

en los míos y me dijo, sin sonido,
como sólo ocurre en los sueños,
– No fui yo. No me eches la culpa.
Tenía razón, la pobre. Siempre le culpaba

por todo. Volteé la cabeza, fastidiada.
Esta vez me empeñé en no bañarme.
Me acordé de las otras veces cuando sí
nadé en los ríos sombríos, atiborrados

de cocodrilos de color azabache,
o cuando me encaré con un muro
de olas que me tragó y me tiró
hasta las profundidades.

Volví al interior de la casa, y cerré la puerta –
por esta vez una solución sencilla se me ocurrió
antes de despertarme.

***

Night of the lagoon

Last night I dreamed that a flood
rose to the second floor of my house.
We all went out to our back porches
to find out why the air smelled like frogs.

It was nighttime, and the moon was reflected
in a dark mirror of water.
I leaned over the balcony, thinking
how am I going to escape?

In backyards crowns of trees
rose from the lagoon like giant
faces of leafy men. From her porch
my next door neighbor fixed her eyes

on mine and told me, without sound,
as it happens only in dreams,
“It wasn’t me. Don’t blame me.”
She was right, poor thing, I always blamed

her for everything. I turned away, annoyed.
This time I was determined not to bathe.
I remembered the other times when
I did swim in dark rivers teeming

with jet-colored crocodiles,
or when I faced a wall of waves
that swallowed me and threw me
to the depths.

I went back inside and closed the door –
for once a simple solution occurred to me
before I woke up.