People, Places, Suburban Spaces

A couple days ago "Mad Melancholic Feminista wrote "Is It Suburban Spaces that Create the Problem?" a reflection on suburbia and community, wondering whether suburbs stifle diversity because they are designed for individualistic social isolation.

Why are suburbs more homogeneous?

It is true that in the US people live in enclaves, and the white flight from the cities made sububrs pretty homogeneous. But now that this trend is in reversal, and the wealthy are moving back into cities, moving poorer residents (usually people of color) out, will this continue to be the case?

But The Economist featured an interesting article last week, in contrast, describing Cerritos, California as a model of diversity, although it is "bland, car-oriented and suburban," precisely the sort of neighborhood where homogeneity is expected. The reason: upward social mobility, and middle class aspiration.

Is social isolation a function of geography, and physical space? Or is something else going on? Is diversity, or the lack thereof, determined by economic factors? The physical proximity of all kinds of people does not mean that you will encounter other cultures; walking through the city you pass by people from all over the world, but does this make a person more tolerant, appreciative of other cultures? Cities seem to segment themselves into enclaves as well.

In Miami, which is a car-dependent city, this kind of separation is definitely true.

Surely reliance on cars has something to do with it - get in the car, arrive at destination, spend time with friends at destination, get back in car, go home. But does walking along a busy city street have the same effect, especially a city where it's not customary to talk with strangers?

Public transportation has the same effect, curiously. It is easy to idealize shared space. Yes, the straphanger next to you in a city is more likely to be different from you, than your suburban neighbor. But is this an experience of cultural diversity? When you get off the metro car, at your stop, even if it is in a certain neighborhood where you are more likely to get off alongside veiled women, and young Middle Eastern men who wear their hair cut close - you walk away, to your destination.

Pinkos in the Grove

This evening I went to a gathering in Coconut Grove, in a townhouse just off Grand Avenue.

First of all, I was fifteen minutes late. Way too early around here! I've got to relearn Caribbean time.

One person who came this evening was very upset; he had been pulled over by the police and searched, legs spread hands on the car, the whole deal, just like on TV. During their search they asked him a series of questions, including whether or not he had any communist propaganda, ending with "are you a terrorist sympathizer." Yes, you heard me, they asked if he was carrying any communist propaganda. Apparently we live in 1982 and the biggest threat facing the nation is hidden copies of the Communist Manifesto.

Gary (not his real name), is a student at FIU, the public university. White, early twenties, the cops pulled him over with flashing sirens, just off highway US-1 in The Grove, where the housing projects are. He explained to me that his age and skin color were probably the reason he got pulled over, as Coconut Grove is where UM students go to buy drugs. FIU is the public university, UM the exorbitantly expensive private institution in the city. Needless to say, predictably enough, the projects are visibly black neighborhoods.

To his credit, he did not go on about how hard it is to be a white male in America today, minorities get everything and we get treated so unjustly wah, wah, wah. I have little patience for that jeremiad. He was upset and felt like he had been unfairly targeted, as anyone would have in his position, but he did not take that absurd narcissistic train of thought.

Aside from the ridiculousness of the commie-bastard question, his experience became the topic of conversation this evening, and we wondered about the concept of probable cause. His taillight was broken, and that was the reason they stated for pulling him over. They also told him that there was a report of a similar car in the neighborhood buying drugs, but as his car is quite unusual, plastered with bumper stickers of musicians and environmental causes, he was doubtful.

The narrative is written, it seems, in the skin color of the young person behind the wheel. Well off college kids cruising for drugs, who statistics demonstate are more likely to get away with it if they are caught, black drug vendors who are more likely, especially if they are male, to end up behind bars.

Nuances of Identity: I Feel the Need to Explain

In Miami, I am conscious of the question 'where are you from' just as much as I was in Brussels. I hate it, I wish I had a concise answer.

Last Saturday I was the bartender at a 50th birthday party for a family friend; a Trinidadian woman whose friends and family included someone I went to school with way back when. I bumped into someone from school! More than ever Miami feels like the small island, I keep bumping into people who know me! This is not a surprise, this city is Caribbean after all. Once, visiting Brooklyn with my family as a teenager, we saw our next door neighbor walking on the street to the corner store as though we were home. The diaspora is an interesting thing, it doesn't feel abstract at all. But, because the question is confusing for me, I've ended up here via several detours (and am not sure where I will call home, ultimately), I don't really consider myself a part of the community of Trinidadians abroad as easily as my parents do, with their 100% pure island accents.

As a recent posts indicate, I do think way too much about the little things, and my accent is one of those little things that turns out to be really big.

A woman who looked vaguely familiar walked up to the bar on Saturday night, and asked me to make her a drink. She called me by name, the way that Trinidadians pronounce it. She knew me, she said, and joked about the way I talk now 'so you American now, or what?' This isn't the way I pronounce it, and the accent she knew me with, at school on the island, isn't the accent I speak with anymore. Partly because I've been in different places and, sure, perhaps subconsciously it was a choice to ease up on the 100% Caribbean accent. I could overthink myself into paralysis, wondering if I suffer from ethnic inferiority complexes, if I lack cultural pride, if I should or shouldn't represent...

How to explain that I talk the way I do because I evolve and change as I move, and the person she knew in Trinidad is not the person I was and will be for all time.

That's the thing about moving around a lot, I think about things that are just taken for granted, identity just is what it is for people who are from somewhere and have moved somewhere else. Perhaps I make too much of the details in between, but leaving them out feels like leaving out an important part of who I am.

Really, this is just a conversation opener, I could say anything, I can choose what to say, what bits of information to highlight and to omit. Where the facts are simple to explain in two seconds - "I'm from (insert city here) and I moved to Miami last year," or "I'm Caribbean, I live here now" are answers to an easy question.

It's me, I make a simple smalltalk question entirely too complicated.

Coconut Grove

I went out to Coconut Grove last weekend, and it was a good time. We went out to Cocowalk, where the bars and clubs are. Cocowalk on a Friday night, it felt like a frat party on speed. Intense, neon lit, pervasive smell of beer, stiflingly hot – check.

In Coconut Grove the high priced boutiques and the chain stores coexist; here the upscale feature more prominently than in your average mall.

Which makes the housing projects, just a few blocks away, all the more surprising. Or disturbing, I’m not sure what the word is.

In Coconut Grove these contradictions sit right next to each other. But the projects here, the signs of poverty, aren’t like in other cities. As Dave Chappelle described it, “gun store, gun store, liquor store, gun store” – it’s not like that. Rather, it’s just a few low housing blocks, people sitting outside, the only pedestrians the people who live there. It felt desolate, and I definitely wanted to keep moving.

Funnily enough, the desolate feeling did not leave passing through the expensive neighborhoods, I didn’t want to be there either. The expensive houses were beautiful to look at, but the neighborhood was not inviting either. The wealthy houses here are not as uber secured as they are in Latin America, with barbed wire, high walls, thorny bushes. As a child, I thought all houses were supposed to have broken glass at the top of their walls.

It is commonplace now to say that Miami is a third world city, and it is true that the spectacularly rich and the very poor are very visible. Further out from the main drag, in suburban anywhere, this isn't as true, that shizoid split feels very true there in Coconut Grove.

Miami is revamping its image, attracting investment and experiencing a real estate boom (it will be interesting to see what happens, given the shuddering markets at the moment). It is not entirely bad, the energy of change. What is frightening is the extent of the chasm between the very wealthy and the poor, as the city gentrifies.

This shift in the city of Miami feels like a bipolar upswing, full of wild, exuberant contradictions. It's not entirely bad, that energy. While it does have a dark side, it feels creative.

Slicing Peaches

I learned a good way to slice peaches last year.

I can't really remember what I did before, I think I used to cut them in half and try to get the pit out from the middle, after which I would slick the halves into wedges. Oh the barbarous uncouth of those times!

I learned how from a woman named Laina.

Laina is a professional chef who lives in Amsterdam, who joined the Brussels team as the caterer for Serve the City. I volunteered for kitchen duty because I was desperately seeking a job during the week that would keep me hidden, safely behind the scenes but still involved with people. Serve the City was a big gathering, lots of people, and I tend to hide in those settings, not because I dislike human contact, but because I get so worked up and worried. Having something to do with my hands, working alongside, eases that strain. And it was good to spend my time in that basement kitchen, at Holy Trinity, I enjoyed the cameraderie, the conversation during the busyness and the methodical work to do with my hands when conversation waned.

Laina is California beautiful, a woman whose friendly eyes and magical hands belie a nearly fierce intensity. Although that intensity shines through strong blue eyes, her demeanor is not off putting. I tend to get hypersensitive around hard people. Her colorful arm tattoos, Irish crosses in the style of illuminated manuscripts are unequivocally cool.

Flash forward to here. I’m slicing a peach for my nephew, putting the pieces in his little bowl, remembering how and where I learned to slice them this way.

I really enjoy slicing fruit, cutting them into pieces, freezing grapes and sucking on them like hard candy. Making a big bowl of fruit for myself is one of my favorite things to do, slicing the pieces and mixing the colors.

It does fill me up, the immediacy of both here and there, in these early stages of transition. Everything is evocative, like the first days and weeks after a breakup. That song, that shade of color, a smell or a metro ticket in my wallet. I threw a lot out, but I still have bits of paper that are written in French and Dutch, from a place where Parc/Park and Arts-Loi/Kunst-Wet was my everyday. Just two weeks ago I was walking on cobblestones, taking the metro and the tram everywhere, and now I'm driving to the supermarket. Both places feel present tense. A peach here is that time I sliced those peaches there, but I don't want to be distracted from here now, especially not while I am surrounded by people I love. That is a waste of time. Literally a waste of time, dwelling too much in the past flushes the present moment down the toilet, and time passes, it passes while you hover in between, neither here nor there when here could be good.

The hum of activity in my head is a constant, less like a rhythm section and more like a heckler in the audience at the moment, but always there nevertheless. And I'm constantly narrating my life, so that I'm aware that I'm navigating through grief and a sense of loss. In transition, I'm straddling two worlds, constantly narrating them both, and the narrator says that is a waste of time. Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, and all that. I am not eager to leave the other world behind, part of me is afraid to let it go too quickly because I fear that that would mean it didn't really happen. I am afraid that the memories will take on a hazy, dreamlike quality. That other life, the one across the ocean that's well and truly finished, is living parallel in me here at the same time that I feel and see and think everything so brightly in the Miami sun.

But, when I think about it more, that parallel life, those memories, are not really alive. That life is a dead thing, a plucked fruit. Fruit rots in the sun, you know, says the narrator. It smells good and I want to hold it here with me, I fear that it will be gone forever if I eat it.

Zeitgeist and the Long Tail

Yesterday, on the Philosopher's Playground, some of the bigger kids were playing. It looked really good. I'll eventually work up the courage to ask if I can go play too.

SteveG reflected on the effect that the fantastically popular Harry Potter series might have on intellectual culture, on the voice and posture of a future generation, and it sparked a thoughtful and discussion.

SteveG wrote:

I have no doubt that what The Hitchhikers' Guide is for my generation and the one that followed, Harry Potter will be for the next. J. K. Rowling's style will help shape the next generation of thinkers and popular writers. I don't know if the Harry Potter books, because they reach beyond geek culture to the mainstream, will have the same galvanizing effect upon the subset of youngsters taken to reading and thinking more deeply than is expected (or rewarded) by their peers. So I wonder what the ultimate effects will be.

But doubt that I Rowling’s sensibility will have as broad and deep an impact on a generation as Adams’ voice.

I doubt whether the ‘feel’ of Rowling’s work will have any ultimate effect at all – not because it might fail to implant itself solidly in geek culture. In fact, the opposite is quite sure to be true. But, unless future Larry Davids and Conan O’Briens and professors translate that ethos into the everyday, I don’t think it will embed itself into the voice of that generation.

Warning: A very unscientific set of generalizations about trends and the way popular culture flows are about to follow. If you are an expert, please avert your eyes from my amateurish attempts at playing Malcolm Gladwell.

I don't think that Rowling's sensibility will stick, in the way that Douglas Adams' has, for two reasons:
1. The Long Tail
2. Harry Potter isn’t comedy

Each time a new book is released, Harry Potter hits hard and fast, immediately topping bestseller lists. But, I think that while it is a commercial success and (I will argue) an artistic masterpiece, as only a few wildly popular works of art can be, I don’t imagine that the voice and tone of Harry Potter will stick, in the way that the Hitchhiker’s Guide trilogy has.

A trend loses its appeal on the edge of mainstream culture, once it nudges over into mainstream. And because of the way we buy now, post Amazon, it does not seem likely that a Rowling-esque self-expression will define a generation the way Douglas Adams has. The Long Tail, coined by Chris Anderson, in 2004, describes the high volume of items at the low end of demand on sites like Amazon.com and iTunes. At the high end of demand, bestsellers like Harry Potter are everywhere. And because the books are so popular, it is unlikely that this innovative body of work will firmly entrench itself in the heart of hipness.

SteveG calls himself “a late adopter, generally coming to the party long after the pop buffet is closed and the cultural keg is kicked.” Well, imagine this intensified, several times over, by the fragmentation in popular culture now, post Amazon. The idea that you are on to something hip, something that the mainstream suburban culture isn't on to, that makes it appealing. I think the Hitchhiker's Guide remains just enough on the edge, even though we've 'all' read it. Partly, also, because of its sardonic tone.

And because of the Long Tail, the obscure can edge its way into first place, most popular, without ever achieving the ubiquity of Harry Potter. So a singer can become far too cool for those in the know, already rejected by the time I hear of them.

It is irrelevant which is the better writer, I think. And how’s this for a hypothesis on the second point: Comedy travels better than seriousness.

Yes, your anxious author is, ironically, quite obsessed with stand up comedy. And it is a well known fact that she spends entirely too much time dreaming of the writers’ rooms at Scrubs and 30 Rock.

But think about it – we quote jokes from movies, and we share fabulous lines from a book that we loved. When those in the know were quoting the hippest latest lines to one another, they spoke poetry. Chatting with neighbors over the fence or in a million conversations a day with my sister on the cell phone, we tell stories intending to make each other laugh. Comedy is inherently social, but a good book is solitary. We participate together in drama, we watch a play or enjoy a movie next to each other and discuss it. We don’t read eloquent passages to each other, we tend to sit and read the wonderful words ourselves. And yeah, there’s that speech from ‘When Harry Met Sally’ that many, many of us who would dare to admit it can quote word for word.

But we repeat and imitate jokes.

Of course, this is not a conversation about quality. This is simply a hypothesis about trends. And, because Douglas Adams is a ‘thing’ a group that someone can identify with, that’s just one more reason why Adams has depth. The social aspect of this book gives it staying power. Comedy is more social, and the ease with which it bears repetition makes it glue that can bind a group together.

All this to say, I think that the subversive hipness of Douglas Adams has staying power that Rowling’s tone and voice can’t have, because of its genre. “Jolly cynicism,” as SteveG calls it, travels well. As does lite fare, evident in the above example.

Maybe it’s the difference between universal and ubiquitous pop culture (things). (Having fun playing with the words, couldn’t help myself). Ultimately, the effects of Rowling’s universality will play out like light filtered through a million tiny different lenses, unless the ‘feel’ and tone of Harry Potter weaves its way into everyday language and a generation’s posture.

The fascinating discussion that followed on SteveG’s page considered the differences between Adams and Rowling, and SteveG wondered:

…I wonder if this is an effect of the same sociological shift that guided the move from Hitchhikers' to Potter, a sense that the times are more serious…Does the move indicate something interesting in a shift in the larger Zeitgeist?

In terms of trends, comedy is more seaworthy than seriousness, because of its social dimension. Explaining why Jon Stewart has had such a far reaching impact on my times, as I have watched public political discourse shift in my time.

That's enough forecasting and crystal ball gazing. It’s up to the Gettysburg College Philosophy Department shorties, who will hear tales of a world before iTunes from their elders, to tell us themselves. We'll see.

Accent Anxiety

In Miami, I am conscious of the question 'where are you from' just as much as I was in Brussels. But here, because there are so many Caribbean people around, I feel self conscious in a different way. I hate this question, first of all, because I wish I had a concise answer. It's such a simple, small question, small talk really. And I am sure that no one cares about the answer as much as I do, when they ask anything I say will do. Why do I care so much about getting it 'right?'

Identity is yet another area that causes me some anxiety (surprise, surprise) and I enter into a strange curlicue of awkwardness that my smile and simple answer hide. Am I being a 'bad' Caribbean person if I don't speak in a Caribbean accent as thick as my parents'? And if I don't define myself solely as being 'from' the place where I was born am I denying my 'true' identity or somehow failling my heritage?

Accent is an identity marker, telling as much about economic class, background, education and place in society as much as a t-shirt with bold print would.

And I fear that my accent gives me away, describes me as 'other', in every single setting, even among Caribbeans. Because I'm constantly in transition, and don't have a background where I am 'from' one place, unfortunately I'm too aware of this than any normal person should be.

I think that these worries are as much about the state of being in transition, as much as about dislocation. Because the dislocated person is at least on a journey to making the new place home. Or, a dislocated person is in a new place, longing for home, missing home, trying to establish a new home.

This narrative is a different slant from the story of immigrant arrival, it is what we in expat circles call a 'Third Culture,' and I am certainly more comfortable among people who understand that. It's my own anxieties that I transmit onto Caribbean people, I realize, a sort of guilt that I'm not authentic enough, or that I come across as a snob.

If I could write a story about this, I wonder if it would be more about the search for a place to call home, or about learning to make peace with the anxieties of transition? I mean, am I longing for a sense of place, or will this drifting feeling follow me until I learn the art of being in transition.

On Creativity, Continued

A few more questions, inspired by The Midnight Disease (Flaherty, 2004):

If we know now that the drive to create literature is embodied, at least to some degree, how does that change our consideration of novelty and value?

If the drive to write is neural, does the person who writes and writes and writes become a good writer because they are engaging in the indispensable aspect of any craft: developing skill through practice. In other words, do the mildly mentally ill have the upper hand?

If the drive to write comes from the limbic system, and creativity is associated with the temporal lobe, along with hemispheric interaction - does that detract from its innovativeness? Does it change the way we feel about art, as if we learned a lover was keeping a secret, and now we rethink the entire relationship?


Consider the following:
"...a useful definition of creative work is that it includes a combination of novelty and value. Creativity requires novelty because tried-and-true solutions are not creative, even if they are ingenious and useful. And creative works must be valuable (useful or illuminating to at least some members of the populations) because a work that is merely odd is not creative. This two-pronged definition of creativity also provides an explanation of why the creative can lie close to the insane (unusual but valueless behavior.)"
The definition of creative work as novel and valuable captures the societal aspect of what gets called creative work. Creativity is not the property of a work in isolation: novelty and value have to be defined in relation to a social context. When I use a lever and fulcrum to move a rock in my garden, I don't get the creativity points that I would if I were Cro-Magnon. Sometimes the social context is not clear, however. Who sould judge whether a work such as Finnegans Wake is creative? The general public is neither skilled nor interested enough, whereas specialists in a field are sometimes so invested in the status quo that they resist innovation. The role of social context in determining value also underlies the process whereby the geniuses of one generation are the hacks of hte next, whereas people dismissed as mad a rehabilitated as geniuses. p. 51

Ugly Words: Stand Up 20 Years Later

Last night I caught Eddie Murphy's Raw, which first aired in 1987. A longtime fan of Eddie Murphy, this is the first time I've seen this show. I do remember Eddie in the 80s, when my parents were really into the Beverly Hills Cops movies, and I have since developed a taste for his work on SNL. I was too young to watch Raw, but was aware of Eddie's repuation for a potty mouth.

Now, on the other side of profanity, I have to say that it felt dated. Able to tune out the f-bomb, it felt like a diatribe that I am sure was shocking in 1987, but fell flat. Outrageousness is one(weaker) side of humor after all. Without cleverness, the shock value rings hollow to someone who does not fear the four letter word.

Here's an interesting tidbit: Raw had the dubious honor of tallying the most incidences of the word "fuck" ever in a feature length film, surpassing Scarface. And the movie that broke that record, in 1990, was Goodfellas. In an ironic twist, that battle of the bleeps, mirrors one bit in Raw, when Eddie riffs on the effect that Rocky had on Italian Americans, puffing them up with pride to fight everyone they met on the way out of the theater.

There are some genuinely funny moments, a few laughs here and there. All in all, Raw wasn't bad, it just is far from good stand up.

The outrageous, profane, controversial word today is the 'n-word'; black comedians use it, without much meaning attached. In fact, there is one Dave Chappelle bit that I really like, the grape drink bit, where the black guy says to his white friend "nigga, what the fuck is juice?!!?"

I do hope I never become desensetised to the 'n-word'; it does screech onto my consciousness, I really hate it. That's one of only two words in English that I will not use. As a lover of language and literature, I don't fear language, because ugly, negative words are useful for describing the ugly and the negative.

A few thoughts: I wonder if someone who isn't as sensitive as I am about ethnicity feels about the f-word the same way as I do about the n-word. Where a person doesn't identify race or gender, what's the worst word, for someone who imagines themselves in the false neutral of white universality? Because 'cunt' hurts pretty bad, for women.

That's the other one, by the way.

As for the n-word, although I do not ever use it, I can discuss its use in a detached way. I realize that my visceral repulsion is not universal. Cedric the Entertainer used it as a filler, a stopgap like 'yeah' or 'like.' By the way, both Dave Chappelle and Richard Pryor famously went through conversion experiences after they visited Africa. I do feel that the word carries greater weight, a greater ugliness, in the diaspora, than it does in the bubble of urban American blackness, because life, for those of African descent, is generally weightier and uglier.

All of this is not to say that profanity drives out humour. They are not mutually exclusive. Having said that though, the one does not compensate for the other. If a joke is not funny, no amount of scandalousness will make it so. It will be outrageous and shocking, but not funny. Funny comes from word play, wit, surprise. In a sense, the swear words are incidental. Hence, the grape drink joke is hilarious, n-word or not.

Finally, speaking of dated - that suit! Awful, just awful. Again, edginess for its time that did not age well.

There is a hilarious bit in Scrubs where JD, the main character and narrator, has money and so he buys something he always wanted - that suit. Fun pop culture intertextuality.

More on Creativity and The Brain

My sketchy overview of the subject matter leaves out so much, I realize. I don't know that I said emphatically enough that this is not the answer to the question of how writers create, or what accounts for genius. Flaherty keeps that perspective throughout her book, and her love of literature is never far from her clinical appraisal.

Unfortunately, I didn't do a very good job of striking that balance. Flaherty is a talented writer and delves into the neuroscientific without stripping away the wonder and mystery of art; in fact, I have a newfound respect for Dostoevsky and marvel even more at his capacity to create.

Dostoevsky famously suffered from epilepsy, and van Gogh, well, you know. But their prodigious ouptput and other symptoms indicate this kind of activity in the temporal lobe, activity that scientists can see in epileptics today using their fancy schmancy equipment.

Understanding how the activity and interaction in different areas of the brain affects creativity is fascinating, and stimulates wonder, it doesn't stifle beauty or dispel mystery. That beautiful words and moving stories are derived, in part, from temporal lobe activity, that he the drive to put pen to paper was stimulated in his limbic system - none of these fully account for skill and insight. The craft of weaving plot, character and setting are indispensable, and then there's just that mysterious something.

Full Frontal

Hypergraphia (n.): the overwhelming compulsion to write.

Hypergraphia is an overwhelming, insatiable, compulsion, a manifestation of mania. Your anxious author came across this word on the way to Miami from Brussels, during an unforeseen stay in London. A brief mention in a magazine caught my attention and I was immediately intrigued, so I checked out The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer’s Block and the Creative Brain,” by Alice Weaver Flaherty. A Harvard neurobiologist, Flaherty experienced two postpartum episodes of hypergraphia.

I tore through this book in a couple days (hyperlexia?) and fell into the deep end. Impressionable as a first year medical student or your average internet self diagnoser, I first latched on to this idea because I thought that hypergraphia described me. The urge to write is overwhelming, and I do persist quite singularly.
I have always been that way, finding the compulsion to write so strong that I can't think of anything else unless I write it down. I don't share my work, I've been afraid and stuck for a long, long time.

However, I have since learned that writer’s block, the opposite of hypergraphia, also looks different biologically. The stifled compulsion to write is associated with the frontal lobe, while the temporal lobes, beside the ear, are associated with hypergraphia and other manic experiences. The insatiability and compulsiveness of hypergraphia are a push from the limbic system, the primitive part of the brain associated with our basic ‘drives.’ Although writer’s block does display inflexibility and compulsion, “the strangled muteness of Broca’s aphasia, the inflexibility of preserveration, and the task specificity and stress dependence of writer’s cramp – all frontal lobe neurological disorders.” The frontal lobe is biology of the id, the way I get tangled up in should. It is the neurology of the mind fuck.

A layperson’s interest in psychology and the history of ideas about creativity add another dimension to this personal journey. This is in the same vein as my attraction to Erica Jong’s words about the muse, and reflections from writers like my friend Mad Melancholic Feminista.

“Task specificity and stress dependence,” to use Flaherty’s words, look like this: I try to write, I overthink each word and I’m convinced that what I have to say is stupid. I can’t not write, I need to write, I feel stress because I can’t write, and, unable to concentrate on or fully attend to anything else, said elevated stress level makes it impossible to write, although I feel that I have to write.

The push, the fixation, the inability to write, are partly neurological. That would account for the sweaty palms. But even if a psychotropic cure were available, I would not suddenly begin producing reams and reams of writing, as there is so much more involved. If I were to medically ‘unlock’ the barrier, I would still be unskilled, out of practice, and undisciplined if all I did was wait for the muse to visit.

However exciting it might be to locate which part of the brain (mal)functions when we are visited by the muse or when the muse withholds, these areas of the brain are associated with creativity, not their source. The temporal and frontal lobes, the limbic system, or interactions of these, even if we did figure it out in exact proportions, do not give rise to creativity, I feel quite comfortable pursuing this train of thought because there is so much more involved in the creation of art than the fortunes of biology.

Medical language is just sufficiently depersonalizing, and fascinating enough to give me something to write about. Because writing, and continuing to write, is the only way to get through writer’s block, that much I have learned.

And creativity is mysterious, an amalgam of the compulsion to write, the belief that one has something to say, and genius. As much skill as it is an inborn gift. No two incidences are the same, whether a Jack Torrance (The Shining) or Dostoevsky. Does this mean that the bad writers should be medicated? God, I hope not!

I feel comfortable considering creativity from this perspective, it does not even begin to demystify the creative process, or change anything about the hard work and discipline I need to develop skill. Cognitive behavioral therapy, anyone?

When I feel inspired, is it compulsion? And if the compulsion to create is a sign of illness, should I find a 'cure' for it, as I would any other malady?

What I do know for sure is that writing is a fundamental need. Especially in difficult moments, the words curl around and into me like the smell of coffee. They wake me up at night, the words, and I can’t concentrate on anything else until I get them down on paper. But something kicks in, the should and the not good enough, the inability to concentrate, the perfectionism. And the sweaty palms.

Still, even so, I must write. But what matters most, I think, is which one wins out. Fortunately, that is up to me, and I can choose to persist and keep hitting the wall, choosing to write every day, choosing the terror and euphoria of creating, rather than sitting on the sidelines. No matter what the outcome, the act of writing liberates me from the prison of my own inhibitions. And I suspect those aren't merely a matter of my frontal lobe.

More on this pen name

Ma, or Ma Effie, as we called her, was a small framed, honey colored spitfire of a woman. Effie Jones was a food vendor on Coffee Street in San Fernando, Trinidad, in the 1940s and 50s. She was a working woman, a Sojourner Truth woman, a Zora Neale Hurston woman. She was well known in San Fernando; when I talk to older people in Trinidad they remember buying food and sweets from her, and her sharp tongue. History, economics and sociology books tell me that this woman's personality developed as a protective mantle, to weather and raise children in the unjust world that meant black women were 'de mule uh de world' (from Their Eyes Were Watching God). I understand how her environment and her time shaped her into the hard woman that she was.

Which makes her relentlessness and strength impressive, albeit sad. I tend to fold and buckle under in fear, and my hope, for myself, is that I will learn some of her strength and persistence. However, I want to be compassionate and open to others as well. I feel her in me; in a difficult moment I get numb inside and refuse to allow people to get close to me. I feel myself shut down, and refuse opennes, to lash out or sit down and close up when the going gets tough. That is how I know she lives in me.

If I could turn that inheritance upside down, and take on the parts that are strong, without allowing them to alienate me from others - that is the Effie I want to be.

I speak her name to inhabit her skin,

I write this name to subvert the lies

I so foolishly believed

I do not pretend to lionize Effie; I am dismayed by the story of her refusal to send her daughter, my grandmother Sybil, to secondary school, in order to save money. This was not uncommon at the time, but thinking of my grandmother, who read To Kill a Mockingbird along with me in school, it breaks my heart.

Still, I want to invoke her, to inhabit my skin better and to speak out loud. To use my voice, instead of silencing myself in fearfulness. Among the many, many things that I waste time worrying over, my skin color causes significant distress.

Now, for anyone who knows me, or my dashiki-wearing parents - well, that is the dirtiest secret of all. But, if I am going to be Effie, I will not fear the truth. In fact, to say that is the beginning of its denial. Already, it's not true anymore.

Resurfacing, in Miami

I'm back, after six months in Brussels.

Newly arrived, I'm in a reflective mood, considering my time in Brussels. I spent that time on staff with the Well and Serve the City. I chose to be immersed in a community that follows Jesus, not because of faith, but because of friendship. Stuck for quite some time before that, I wanted to throw myself into new life, to turn outward, to be less self absorbed and withdrawn. I try not to think about the verdict on how successful I was in this. In these first few days back I'm focusing on appreciation for the opportunity, and gratitude for three years in Europe.

I've spent quite some time agonizing over belief, and faith, and doubt. Whether I should have been 100% sure before I got involved, and whether it is disingenuous to be affiliated (however tangentially) with a religious tradition about which I have serious reservations.

I've thought about it, and thought about it. And I've decided that it doesn't matter.

I don't think it matters all that much whether I believe, how much I believe, and if I get belief right before I jump in and commit myself to friends who I have grown to love and people in my life who I have come to think of as my people.

I didn't and don't feel 'called,' especially not as a missionary. I have way too much cultural and personal baggage to even call myself a Christian, and I don't feel like a particulalrly religious person; faith is not a feeling for me. I've thought about this a lot. And the only answer I can come up with is that it was still good to jump in to new life, to turn outward, because living more outside of my own head can only be a good thing.

So, putting the doubts aside, I allowed myself to prioritize friendship for a while, and the lessons I needed to learn in Brussels. Which meant that I didn't write all that much.

Saying farewell to Brussels, where I breathed deep and lived toward others instead of wrapped up in myself, means that now I have more time to write. Writing about Brussels will internalize what I saw and thought and felt and did.

I let this blog slide while I was there, mostly because writing, while it is my first love, is frightening. True, I was very busy, engaging in new experiences, developing friendships, and working for a cause that gave me purpose, in a city that I love. But to say I find writing difficult would be quite the understatement. I get cold clammy hands, I immediately regret what I've written, I'm convinced that I have nothing to say, not political or insightful or beautiful enough...I want to write, but I let the demons win.

Because it's taking so much to overcome this massive, absurd writer's block, for the moment I either spend my time writing or with people. I can't do both, it seems.

Last night, catching up, I saw that my friend and teacher wrote Can an Academic Researcher Enjoy Her Life, noting that the full time pursuit of research, writing, publishing, does seem to take us away from relationships.

I'm not naive, the tortured artist thing is not a good colour on me at all. When I withdraw into my crawl space life keeps happening, friendships fall away. For the moment I need to throw all my energy into liftoff, getting off (or out from under) the ground. But if I spend all my time writing, I fear I will become some sort of squinty, socially inept mole. So what to do?

These are my dreams. The desire to write, to pursue further study is good. As in, self-actualization good. However, it is entirely too easy to hide behind closed doors and sublimate academically, sitting on the sidelines.

But still, I write. These first words are tentative, unsure of what this blog is going to be. I have so many interests: politics, psychology, the arts and cultural movements, that I am not quite sure how to frame it. But, instead of waiting, it's important that I write.

Why did I put fearfulness on and wear it so closely to my skin? I really regret that.

But still, I write. On to this new adventure.