Words on Walls

Today’s trips to several archeological sites around the trip of Israel consisted of a series of fairly exciting underground adventures.  At the sites of Ben Guvrin/Maresha as well as Tel Beer Sheeva, we ended up trekking many dozens of feet under ground, into various cisterns and storage areas hewn into the stone.  I particularly loved the dovecotes, with their walls peppered with small hollowed out niches as well as the tomb that we saw at Beer Sheeva, not unlike the dovecotes with its own intricately carved out spaces.  The focus of today’s site visits, as well as the lecture, was largely on daily life in the ancient world.  As one of my classmates pointed out, these sites had far fewer tourists than other sites that we’d previously visited, particularly those with strong political or religious significance, like Masada or the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.  Our class TA, Ben Gordon, pointed out that it’s far easier to get a well-funded excavation when it’s likely that the artifacts that you will find will prove politically or religiously relevant to contemporary people.

Interestingly, sites like Ben Guvrin and Beer Sheeva are actually essential to our understanding of religious texts like the Bible, even though the sites don’t always pertain directly to biblical figures.  For example, as we discussed during our lecture today, these archaeological sites allow us to catch a more thorough glimpse into the lives of women during the historical periods depicted in the Hebrew Bible.  By excavating their living spaces, we can see that they likely held prominent, valued positions in society and actively countered our current stereotypes about the “unseen, unheard” women of the Hebrew Bible.

The practice of archaeology, as Dr. Meyers mentioned today, relies heavily on the interpretation of artifacts, not only their recovery.  In this respect, the discovery of a prized household item, like a spool or a comb proves just as significant as a flashy bronze stature for a scholar trying to piece together the past.

Just got back from a wonderful night of celebration in Bethlehem as we welcome the New Year.  What fun to spend non-academic time with my classmates and professors.  Happy New Year!

The Dovecotes at Maresha

A View From The Top of a Hill at Maresha

A Reconstructed Mural of a Three-Headed Dog Inside a Tomb at Maresha

Beer Sheeva

We hopped on the bus first thing in the morning today.  We had spent the past two days exploring various locations in Jerusalem and it was time to venture outside of the city.  The principal site for the the day was the fortress of Masada, located next to the Dead Sea.  Our professors, Eric and Carol Myers, had worked on the Masada excavations during the 1960s under the guidance of Israeli archaeologist and former military commander Yigael Yadin.  Masada is a popular tourist destination today and our cable car to the top of the plateau was full to bursting.  After a slightly alarming glide to the top, we emerged onto an expansive flat landscape with several magnificent structures, partially in ruins and partially reconstructed.  Before we began our tour of the site, we stopped for a conversation on the possible political agendas of the Masada excavation.  In brief, the “Masada myth”, claiming the the Jewish rebels living in the fortress around 70 AD committed a mass suicide to avoid capture by the Roman army who besieged them.  Several statements made by Yadin during the period of excavation—also a time of war for the young state of Israel—indicate a support for the myth that goes beyond the facts present in the artefacts uncovered.  Our class began to explore the ethics of using historical narrative, particularly in the context of supporting a Zionist agenda in Israel.  After about an hour, we decided that it was probably good to go actually take a look at the artifacts and structures that we had come to see and spent the next hour and a half or so exploring the remains of Masada.  I loved King Herod’s place especially, with its beautiful mosaics and columns.  Nevertheless, it’s difficult to imagine wanting to live in a palace in a place as deserted as Masada.  The landscape is fairly bleak, although the view of the Dead Sea is breathtaking.

We spent the afternoon floating in the Dead Sea, which was a pretty visceral experience.  The rocks were sharp and many were quite salt-encrusted.  Californian that I am, I jumped right into the water and marvelled at its warmth in contrast to the frigid Pacific Ocean to which I’m so accustomed.  It was such a fun experience, although a little chilly climbing back up the hill to the bus.  On the way back to The Rosary Sisters Hostel, we were able to stop to see Qumran, the site of the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls.  The cave in which the scrolls were stumbled upon in the 1950s is small and unassuming, making me wonder what other archaeological treasures are waiting to be uncovered in the Israeli landscape.

View from the Bus

Overlooking Jerusalem

Camel!!

Looking up at Masada

Looking Up At Masada from the Lower Part of Herod's Palace

Frescos and Columns at Herod's Palace

In the Dead Sea!!

Floating!

The Cave Where the Dead Sea Scroll Was Discovered

Today was our first full day in Jerusalem and I’m starting to better see how the pieces of the puzzle—places, ideas, events—fit together.  We began the day with a visit to the Temple Mount, retracing many of our steps yesterday from our hostel (the Rosary Sisters) through the Armenian Quarter and the Jewish Quarter.  As we made our way up the ramp leading up to the Temple Mount, we were able to catch a glance of the Western Wall, which we visited yesterday. Today, though, instead of the relative quiet of yesterday, the Western Wall resonated with the celebration of a Bar Mitzvah.  Even as the historical landmarks of Jerusalem endure from age to age, the stories and events acted out around them, near them, and in them shift day by day and moment by moment.

Because the Temple Mount is controlled, in name, by Jordanian kings, we were told to have our passports ready as the space that we would enter upon climbing the ramp would not technically be the state of Israel.  It turned out that even though we had to go through security, passports were not necessary.  In fact, the Israeli soldiers that we’d seen throughout the same city had posts on the Temple Mount as well, further confusing in my mind what exactly the Temple Mount represented and which people groups could lay claim to it.  Regardless, the mood was decidedly different from the celebratory atmosphere of the Western Wall below.  Muslim groups sat in circles on plastic chairs or walls in clumps under trees and next to fountains, holding what appeared to be animated conversations and teaching moments.  The focal point of the Temple Mount is, of course, the Dome of the Rock, located on the Mount’s highest point.  The Dome of the Rock is the third holiest place in Islam, after Mecca and Medina, built in AD 688 to commemorate Muhammad’s Ascension into heaven after his night journey to Jerusalem.  However, the Dome of the Rock is a holy place for Jews and Christians as well.  While not recognizing the ascension of Muhammad, Jews hold the place dear because it was believed to be a former location of the temple and Christians recognize that the mosaic decorations are the imperial jewels of Byzantine rulers and the ornaments worn by New Testament figures, reminding them that “the spoils of have gone to the victor”, the Muslims, according to Murphy-O’Connor’s Oxford Archeological Guide to the Holy Land(86).  Although these other two faith groups are apparently heavily invested in the Temple Mount space, from our short visit there, it became clear that the area and the structures on it indicate only the Muslim interest in the holy space.

One of our other excursions for the day to Hezekiah’s tunnel, an excavation overseen by the conservative Jewish group, ELAD, in a formerly Palestinian area and then to the Hebrew Museum of Jerusalem, also reminded me of the ways in which Israelis and Palestinians commemorate their histories and choose to accept or reject the ways in which their pasts intertwine.  For example, according to Dr. Meyers, at the Hezekiah excavation in the City of David, ELAD has used underhanded methods to acquire property that has historically belonged to the Palestinians.  This situation represented yet another way in which the inhabitants of Israel struggle to negotiate ownership of place.

Even after only two days in Jerusalem, the logistical difficulties of shared holy spaces are becoming increasingly clear, from the stories of bickering among the six Christian groups who share in the maintenance of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre to the conflict incited by the Dome of the Rock built on top of the Jewish Temple to the humanitarian issues presented by the displaced Palestinian families who lived on top of the area in the City of David that ELAD was determined to excavate.  Like the rest of my classmates, I am only just beginning to touch the surface in my understanding of how archeological sites and holy spaces create conflict for the various religious and ethnic groups represented by inhabitants of Israel.  Jerusalem is multi-layered, with holy sites built one on top of the other.  The city is also multi-faceted; convictions about the archaeological decisions range wildly, colored by everything from Zionist ideology to orthodox Jewish faith to evangelical Christian piety.  As Uzi Baram mentions in his article, “Appropriating the Past: Heritage, Tourism, and Archaeology”, Israel can no longer afford to let a Zionist agenda dictate its archaeological policy.  In fact, Baram argues that Israel should strive for a post-nationalist approach to archaeology, rethinking “how to represent itself to its citizens and to external audiences” (323).  I’m looking forward to more fully grasping what may lie in wait for Israel as the nation strives to address the heated conflict over archaeology and holy spaces and reimagine itself in a post-national context, taking into account the desires of tourists, scholars, Israeli citizens and long-time residents of the nation.

Seminar in a Sculpture Garden

Palestinian Neighborhood Across from the Excavation of Hezekiah's TunnelOn Top of the Temple Mount

The Dome of the Rock

Hannah and Me Wait to Climb the Ramp to the Temple Mount

Today has been one of the longest days of my life, I think.  In about ten minutes, I will finally be able to lay down in a bed for a full night’s sleep.  This has been a long time coming.  I left San Francisco on the 26th of December at around 10pm, arriving in Newark to meet up with my group the next morning.

After a layover of 9 hours, my classmates and I go through a second layer of security before boarding our plane for Tel Aviv.  After chatting with Reena, an Isaeli-American student attending seminary in Jerusalem, I settle in for the ten hour flight, sleeping on and off and getting to know my classmates better.

Customs is extremely fast in Tel Aviv airport.  In fact, I’m convinced that we haven’t yet gone through customs when I notice I’m standing right by the exit to the airport.  We step outside into the mild Israeli winter and begin to take in our surroundings.  Several of the members of my group have never been out of the United States before and the rest of us love noting their excitement.  Even for those of us who’ve spent extended time outside of the United States, Israel is fascinating.  The landscape leaving the Tel-Aviv airport is flat and clean, and we hum along the newly-constructed highway while listening to the introductions and explanations given by our tour guide, Gabbi, a friend of the Meyers.  Gabbi throws in jokes from time to time, welcoming us to his country and telling us how wonderful of an experience this will be for us.  He then proceeds to pass out hats reading “Sindbad Tours”, his touring company, maps of the Holy Land, and dates from his second home in Jericho. Later at the bus station as we wait for students to finish up transactions with money changers, Gabbi will offer us heaps of clementines, also from his home in Jericho.  He explains that many Israelis grow their own produce, and as we whir past groves of olive trees he describes how olives and olive oil in particular contribute greatly to the livelihood of many families.  The produce is fresh and flavorful, but different from anything I’ve tasted in the states in an unidentifiable kind of way.

After putting our baggage away in the Holy Sisters Convent in West Jerusalem and scrubbing away some of the dirt of travel, we emerge again, excited and unsure of exactly what the afternoon will hold.  The coming hours are a whirlwind of trekking through the Old City of Jerusalem.  We visit the Church of the Holy Sepluchre (an amazing mish-mash of a holy place), the Wailing Wall (some Orthodox Jewish men sang chants from the men’s section, celebrating the approach of a marriage), and the Garden Tomb (a possible location of Golgotha and the tomb where Jesus was buried).  The city bustles around us and we wind our way through colorful markets selling everything from scarves to soap to souvenirs.  At some points we have trouble staying together, and I have a couple of mishaps as I fight my way through the crowd, accidently bumping the barrel of an Israeli soldier’s gun on my camera lens and then narrowly avoiding being run over by a cart.  There are less tourists than I expect here; this makes sense because December is in the off-season for pilgrimages, but it still surprises me.  We run into an African group several times who seems to have had a special fabric printed to make entire outfits for themselves for this trip.  We, the Americans, with our large cameras and fitted jeans stand out around every turn of the streets.  This is something we’ll have to embrace, I think.

A Possible Site of Golgotha, According to the Tour Guide at the Garden Tomb

Looking Down on the Southern Temple Wall on Muslim Ruins

Walking through the City Streets

A Reconstructed Wall, Still Displaying the Markings Used To Put It Back Together

The Notice Outside of the Garden Tomb... A Bit Mixed-Up!

Part of the City Wall

The Dome of the Rock, From Afar

A couple of weeks ago, one of my thesis advisors, Dr. Sumathi Ramaswamy, brought to my attention the work of Zarina Hashmi.  Hashmi is a printmaker who works with maps and speaks to the concept of home.  I love the way that she takes maps out of their traditional contexts as images in books and on the internet, created to help users navigate their surroundings, and presents them in such a way that they stand beautifully on their own.  My particular favorite of the three that I share below is the map with the Arabic script behind it (Travels with Rani, 2008). As I begin to think about how to put together an exhibit of my work this year, I want to return to this piece and play with the possibility of juxtaposing text and image.  Depending on what text I’m working with, I may incorporate maps as images.  In particular, the poem “After Abyei” comes to mind as one that could be especially enhanced by the incorporation of maps.

These images are from the Luhring Augustine Gallery webpage. (http://www.luhringaugustine.com/artists/zarina-hashmi)

This week, I was struck once again by the chaos of writing first drafts.  For me, first drafts of poems have always been full of scribbles and arrows and substituted words.  I’ve learned to try my best not to stress about the quality of writing coming out when I first set words down on paper;  instead, I concentrate on identifying the themes and questions that are rising from the writing.  Often, all that remains from the first draft when I finish a poem is a few lines, but nevertheless, I need to put in the time to sit down and find those lines..  One of my favorite writers, Anne Lamott, explores the importance of less-than-perfect first drafts in her book Bird By Bird:

“For me and most of the other writers I know, writing is not rapturous. In fact, the only way I can get anything written at all is to write really, really shitty first drafts. The first draft is the child’s draft, where you let it all pour out and then let it romp all over the place, knowing that no one is going to see it and that you can shape it later. You just let this childlike part of you channel whatever voices and visions come through and onto the page. If one of the characters wants to say, “Well, so what, Mr. Poopy Pants?,” you let her. No one is going to see it. If the kid wants to get into really sentimental, weepy, emotional territory, you let him. Just get it all down on paper because there may be something great in those six crazy pages that you would never have gotten to by more rational, grown-up means. There may be something in the very last line of the very last paragraph on page six that you just love, that is so beautiful or wild that you now know what you’re supposed to be writing about, more or less, or in what direction you might go — but there was no way to get to this without first getting through the first five and a half pages.”

In light of her advice, I find myself excited rather than anxious when a first draft like the one below comes into being:

Coincidentally, the poem that came out of the scraps of paper pictured above came from my reflections on writing the other poems in my distinction project.  Here it is (as of now!):

At First

At first, words came

Slowly: crept out to dance on the crests

Of my fingertips, on the lines of my lips

Then fled to shadowed corners when I reached out

To catch them, to hold them

I fled too.

To desolate spaces where I could

Whisper somethings without substance

Where silence came easily

And I let it settle in because I was certain

There was nothing of worth to say

Then, just as dust began to film every hope, every thought

The words emerged or maybe

Returned

From his glance across the road

From her hummed harmonies

From our midnight conversations

Words for him: the one working two jobs

With toddler twins waiting

At home on a sun-flooded porch

And for her, who crafts notes so piercing

Her melodies bring down strongholds

And him who makes walls his stepping stones

To launch into worlds where nothing

Can hold him to the ground

Not gravity

Not weakness

Not fear of falling

So, if you rest here awhile

I will try to

Spread out words like laundry

So they will have space to dry

Space to breathe

Into the desolate spaces

You will see:

They are made to catch the light

To catch your breath

To bring down strongholds with a song

28 November 2011

Because I have always wanted this project to focus on Durham and Belfast, I have been trying to redirect my writing once again to those places.  In the past week and over the next several weeks, I hope to capture more precisely the reasons why Durham is so important to me and the ways that I see the themes of walls and borders playing out in this city, both in exploring recent experiences and by returning to earlier poems on the topic.

This year I am tutoring at SEEDS Garden, an organization that provides after-school supervision for elementary age students.  This week I’m including a poem that looks back on one afternoon when we decided to take the day off from school work to play in the garden outside.

With Stephanie, In the SEEDS Garden

And what about the hedges of a garden

Are they walls too?

If so, then they are a good kind of wall and

Today, they hem us in:

You, with the same name as my mother but with

A different laugh, a different way of holding yourself

And me, clasping your hand

Asking about your scratches and your schoolwork.

Together, behind living walls, we are safe

From kids on the playground and

Doctors on the phone

From boys sitting on the same bench who are

Maybe serious, maybe only teasing this whole time

We are safe from their words, their thoughts, even

Which ricochet off these walls of leaves and wood

Ricochet off into the coming dusk

And we are glad of it.

Now, we are safe enough to tumble into fall.

You drag me to your pumpkins (they are your favorite,

Even these ones, so small and lumpy)

Then I chase you to the tallest tree

Which you climb and climb until

I call to you; until you laugh and swing down,

Brushing my arm and looking up at my eyes in a single second

Holding them with your own,

(The darkest brown, the same as mine), then

You are running again and

Pulling me with you and

We are running again.

15 November 2011

This past week, I received some very helpful feedback from the members of my At Home/On the Wall independent study.  We talked about the poems and short stories that I have written thus far, mostly exploring which pieces they liked or disliked and why they felt that way.  I was surprised in some cases; a few of the pieces I felt the most sheepish about  were those they appreciated the most and vice versa.  There was a lot of discussion of when voice is “convincing” or “authentic” and when it is not.  My classmates and advisors generally recognized and confirmed that I was having difficulty speaking through other voices—for example, from the perspective of a resident of Belfast or Israel.  Instead, my independent study members agreed that the pieces that were most eloquent or interesting were those in which I spoke from my own perspective.  I’m not quite sure what to do with this problem, or whether it really is a problem.   On one hand, it seems entirely natural to speak with the most ease in your own voice.  Also, I often want to speak the most in my own voice.  There is a lot to process at Duke and many aspects of life here that I find quite relevant to my thesis topic of walls and borders.  On the other hand, I have so much respect for writers who can slip seamlessly from one voice into another and I would love to develop this ability.  I know that it will take time as well as a lot of effort (both in writing and rewriting as well as simply becoming a more acute observer of everyday conversations and speech patterns/dialect).  Still, I think that having a versatile voice in my writing is certainly something to strive for in the long run.  However, as I start to think about pulling together a collection of pieces from the portfolio, I think that I will tend to select very sparingly from the poems that are not in my own voice.  In this case, they just seem to have less of a place in the project than the others.

On another note, I’ve been able to play around with the new camera that I got for this project a few weeks ago.  Fall at Duke is such a beautiful time to take pictures, so I’ve been able to use the scenery as an opportunity to experiment with the various settings on the camera in preparation for taking photos of the people I interview as well as of my trip to Israel over Winter Break.

One of my friends recently made a joke about how when you’re writing a thesis, all of the themes and considerations of your topic begin to surface in your daily life, dominating your thoughts and sometimes even your dreams.  This gets interesting for her, as she is studying the Jesus movement of the 1970s.  While I haven’t experienced the same sensation of living in another era of someone writing a history dissertation, I do find the themes of walls and borders manifesting themselves in my experiences.  Sometimes it’s only in minor conceptual associations (thinking of social distinctions on my college campus as figurative walls) but I’ve also begun to see a variety of human experiences through the lens of landscapes and the boundaries between places.

In particular, I’ve found the notion of shifting setting to reflect mood to be an emerging theme in my writing.  For my final project for my Asian American Theatre course, my professor allowed the students to choose between critical essays or creative pieces.  Thinking that I could seize the opportunity to explore dramatic writing as an alternative to poetry, I jumped at the opportunity to draft a short play.  The result (still in the works) chronicles the experience of a Japanese-American teenager transported back to various landscapes to interact with her projections of her ancestors (heavily influenced by her exposure to American portrayals of Asia in pop culture).  I’m not sure yet whether the themes of this project will intersect enough with my thesis to allow me to add it to my portfolio without endangering the integrity and cohesion of the project.  Regardless, seeing how my various creative projects overlap and intersect has been confusing, encouraging, and refreshing.

As I begin to write monologues and short stories for this project, I find myself thinking more and more about narrative voice.  When I write poetry, I use my own voice most of the time.  When using my own voice, I feel the least inhibited and self-conscious about my writing.  There are diction and syntax considerations, of course, and decisions about rephrasing to be made.  Still, when I’m writing from my own perspective, these decisions are generally meaning-oriented rather than designed to establish a particular narrative profile.

By contrast, when I write in other formats, I find that using the voices of others often feels necessary.  Right now, I am writing a series of monologues and short stories in response to my time in Belfast.  Most of the time, it feels wrong to write from my own perspective.  I find that from my own point of view, as a young American, I have little of weight to say of most aspects of life in Belfast.  However, though I want desperately to write from the point of view of a local to develop a voice of urgency, authenticity, and relevance, I find it hard to create a voice that a reader would find believable and coherent.  As Anne-Marie pointed out to me last week, one of the most formidable obstacles in creating such a voice is dialect.  In order to make a character from Belfast believable to the reader, it is important to capture the language of the city.  I’ve wrestled with language choice in my pieces over and over again, but until recently I felt that I had come to an impasse.  Then, about a week ago, my sister sent me a recording of a short story by Northern Irish author Benedict Kiely posted on the New Yorker website.  The recording, narrated by Colum McCann, is so quintessentially Northern Irish that I felt almost transported back to my time in Belfast this summer.  After listening to the story, titled “Bluebell Meadow”, I found that writing in a believable Northern Irish voice became immensely less intimidating and more natural.  I’ll keep trying to immerse myself in Northern Irish literature as I write!  Here’s the link:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/2011/10/24/111024on_audio_mccann

Writing prose has always been more difficult for me than writing poetry.  I think that what I find so challenging is fitting the descriptive content of my ideas into strict grammatical structure.  When I explained this problem to my advisor, Anne-Marie, she reminded me that it is okay for me to write prose poetically.  Since that conversation, I’ve tried writing the first drafts of monologues and short stories in the form of a poem to help get the words down on paper and then re-writing the piece as prose.

This week, I’m rereading one of my favorite books: Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino.  The book is a series of very short stories describing a variety of imaginary cities, narrated by Marco Polo.  Different passages strike me with their beauty each time I pick up the book, and this time was no exception.  Calvino writes:

“Finally, he comes to Isidora, a city where the buildings have spiral staircases encrusted with spiral seashells, where perfect telescopes and violins are made, where the foreigner hesitating between two women always encounters as third, where cockfights degenerate into blody brawls among the bettors.  He was thinking of all these things when he desired a city.  Isidora, therefore, is the city of his dreams: with one difference.  The dreamed-of city contained him as a yong man; he arrives at Isidora in his old age.  In the square there is a wall where the old men sit and watch the young go by; he is seated in a row with them.  Desires are already memories” (8).

Invisible Cities reminds me once again just how poetic prose can be, confirming that writing does not have to be either poetry or prose, but can instead adopt qualities of both.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve begun thinking more about writing for children.  As I think back on my own experiences reading as a child, I vividly remember encountering stories that made me think more about the world or wrestle with conflicts or concepts that confused me.  The themes that I’m exploring in this collection of writing—the effects of walls and borders on the human experience—are complex and sometimes challenging to absorb emotionally.  However, I believe that this is all the more reason to try to present such ideas in a context that children can understand.

At some point during the course of this year, I would like to write a short story that is accessible to children about walls and borders.  I’ve begun to experiment a little bit by writing poetry for my nephew, Tressan. However, prose seems much more daunting (as usual).  In the book that I’m reading: The Encyclopedia of Writing and Illustrating Children’s Book, Desdemona McCannon suggests writing from a child’s point of view.  McCannon proposes this method as a means of avoiding patronizing the reader.  In addition, she comments: “This may sound obvious, but a writer for children needs to keep in mind that children see a special “slice’ of the world.  They are physically smaller than adults, and their senses tend to be sharper.  They are experiencing many things for the first time, so their observations are especially intense” (60).  I’m not yet sure exactly what I wish to write on, but I certainly hope to explore McCannon’s strategy of writing from a child’s point of view.