Rhena Writes

Author: Rhena

  • What needs to be written?

    This is a place of personal acceptance. What happened that this place became necessary?

    Many years ago I attended an MFA program in creative nonfiction writing. I won’t go into too many details about the program. I entered in bright-eyed, engaged, and optimistic. I was going to become a WRITER and this program was going to get me there. Suffice it to say, that’s not what happened. It was only years later that I realized just how cut-throat and toxic that whole setting was.

    Here, let me share with you one experience. I wrote and submitted a piece to a workshop. It was a long piece, maybe fifty pages. I was nearing the end of my access to getting feedback on my work and I wanted to get as many eyes on my writing as I could before I would be on my own writing my thesis. The comment that I received from the professor was that it was a disaster, so disorganized that she couldn’t even read it. At the time it didn’t cross my mind that if that was the case, how did she know it was a disaster. My only solace was that there was one other student in the class who received more or less the same feedback. In fact, the professor gave us the feedback simultaneously. We were both women of Asian descent.

    After workshops, we scheduled meetings with our professors to go over the work one-on-one in more detail (or something like that). To pour salt in the wound, this professor wanted to schedule our meetings at her apartment. I think that this was supposed to be some big deal: like the professor was so gracious as to welcome students into her home. But this professor lived across town. And most students lived near the university. After I scheduled the meeting with her at the end of the workshop, she turned to schedule with the other student who had received the same “this was unreadable” comment. The other student said something along the lines of, “if you weren’t able to read it, then there’s nothing to talk about and no need for a meeting.”

    Damn. I wish I had thought enough of myself to do the same. But I didn’t. I think part of me still thought I would show up to the meeting and, I don’t know, she would have changed her mind? Or she would have read it in the meantime and had more, you know, helpful things to say? Needless to say, she didn’t. When I was younger, I was always giving the wrong people second chances.

    I must have trekked across town because I remember sitting in her apartment with a cup of tea which she had offered and I had accepted because I thought that was the right thing to do. She couldn’t find a saucer or small plate and I told her it was fine. And I remember she said, “isn’t the tea bag going to bump against your lips?” And it was such a weird concern to me. Like, if you’re so worried about that, then just find a fucking plate or bowl for me and let me make the decision. And also, “you’re so worried about my lip coming in contact with a fucking tea bag when what you should be thinking about is the tens of thousands of dollars in tuition that I’m paying for you to read my fucking pages and have something helpful to say.”

    But, honestly, I didn’t have those thoughts until much later.

    “Pretty hard to hear feedback like that?” she said to me.

    “Oh no. It’s fine.” I might have low enough self worth that I was willing to cross the entirety of this island city on the off-chance that this person who had already proven herself to be unable to do her job was going to redeem herself, but I wasn’t going to break down in her apartment. Somehow, part of me thought that maybe that’s what she was trying to do? I implicitly (and wrongly) trusted professors and teachers and assumed that there must be some sort of greater plan or lesson behind this whole interaction. There wasn’t.

    This whole incident was one of the most obviously toxic moments of my MFA program, but there were other ones. The cumulative effect of these small jabs is that I really struggled with my writing and, as a result, my self worth. I hate that these individuals had so much say in how I valued myself.

    I’d like to end this post with some sort of redemption arc for myself. But, also, it’s necessary to sit with these moments of pain and toxicity, allow them to move through before jumping into “light and love.” Not everything is linear, which would be boring anyway. Besides, maybe where I want to end this post is actually where I started it.

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  • On AI, John Henry, Likes, and Views

    I have a few pages of handwritten notes for this post and yet I struggle to make the transition from drafting in pen to typing on the computer. When my older daughter was attending school virtually, she made friends with people over google docs. It is her generation’s version of passing notes. She commented once, as she sat in our basement on her computer watching her classmate type a letter to her, live, “You can learn a lot about a person from how they type.” I remembered being in school myself and how familiar I was with my classmate’s handwriting and how much it could, in fact, reveal so much about a person. It’s a different era now. And perhaps this is in part why I struggle to convert from hand to computer. 

    I also remember a song that we learned in school. “John Henry was a steal driving man, oh lord, …” I don’t remember much else from the song except that the final line was something like, “… he laid down his hammer and he died, oh Lord, yes, he laid down his hammer and he died.” I could probably look up the rest of the lyrics and listen to the song and I’d be able to give you a fuller picture of John Henry and the song and my experience with it, but somehow, that feels like it would be a lie. I’m trying to give you the truth of what I can currently recall, which isn’t much, but it’s real.

    I remember learning the song in elementary school. Maybe in the gym/lunch room. Maybe in the wood floored music room/ stage, the one with the cool storage loft with the spiral staircase we weren’t allowed to go up except for special times when we were helping retrieve props, instruments, costumes, or other flotsam and jetsam. Probably both the gym and the music room. Anyway. We were a small, mostly white school in a very white section of a very Black city. Were we taught that John Henry was a hero? I guess we were singing the song that heralded him as such. But I also remember feeling very sad that he’d died at the end. It seemed as though he had worked himself to death. And even though he was also very strong and courageous and determined, did he really defeat the machine if he ended up dead anyway? It was a lot for a kid to make sense of. Even as an adult, it’s still a lot to think about.

    Apparently, the difference between the steam digging machine and John Henry was that the drill kept getting jammed up with all of the rock and stone. In other words, the machine needed to be cleared by hand. It wasn’t just that John Henry was strong, it was that he was able to think and problem solve as he went along. He used his brain, his strength, and what he had learned digging other tunnels. 

    I read once that it’s possible that John Henry was a real person. An historian found a person with the same name on a list of incarcerated men at a prison nearby where it’s believed that John Henry took on the machine. The song that I’m familiar with suggested that he worked so hard to beat the steam drill that his heart gave out. What more likely happened is that he died some time later from the cumulative effects and exposures related to digging tunnels through mountains and hillsides. Tow-may-tow. Tow-mah-tow. I guess.  

    I am not comparing myself to John Henry, but sometimes I feel like his ghost haunts my struggles as I try to move my thoughts from pen and paper to machine. I’m not trying to out-do my computer but I am aware of the existence of AI which has made me somehow even more desperate to assert my humanity from behind this screen. 

    I wrote last week about how I deleted my social media a few months ago and how it made me feel more grounded and more connected to people and in-person community. I never had comments turned on on this blog.  And last week, I turned off email notifications for likes. I stopped checking stats, likes, and views. Prior to this, I had been checking often. And I felt myself starting to bend what I would think about and therefore what I would write towards getting more likes and views. In other words, I was thinking, “how can I get more – or any – likes and views on what I’m writing” rather than just writing. I was like the steam drill, getting jammed up in the very stones and rocks I was trying to remove. 

    The first few times I checked my email after turning off the notifications, I had forgotten that I was not longer receiving them. In my forgetting, I felt a little sad for a moment. But in the next moment, I remembered and a whole world of possibility opened up. What if I’d gotten 10,000 likes? It didn’t matter whether that was the reality or not. I could imagine it and so it was true where it mattered: in my mind. 

    When I imagine John Henry, I do not see him looking over at the machine. I see him focused on his task at hand. Part of me thinks that for him, it wasn’t really even a competition. It was that the steam drill inventors stuck their contraption next to him. It was doing its thing over there and John Henry was doing his over here. The company men were the ones who wanted to have a competition. For John Henry, it was just another day on the job. I wonder if he even thought it was something he was good at. Did he know he was going to become an American folk hero? Was he imagining songs being written about him? Probably not. I think he was just here to do the work. I hope to do the same.  

    Even though I don’t see them, I still appreciate shares, likes, and views. I also appreciate (and see!) tips. Show your appreciation for this hard working writer here at my ko-fi page. Thanks!

  • This is the post where I ask for tips…

    … beg for money but where I don’t come right out and just ask for it. Let’s start with a scene. Madison, Wisconsin. First warm day of spring. Class has just gotten out and so I cross library mall to State Street. The sound of a guitar reaches up and down the block around Gilman or maybe Gorham.  The scent of incense and patchouli and just a soupVon of weed is in the air, but this is not exceptional. This is just Madison. The outdoor seats are all full of people eager to enjoy the weather after a long Wisconsin winter cooped up inside. These are the moments that it felt like I could never take anything for granted.  

    Except for, I could and I was.

    When was the last time I lived someplace where I could encounter someone playing live music in public on just an average day? The city is too pricey and the suburbs where I do live don’t have that kind of culture. 

     A few months ago, my daughter and I were waiting for our order at our local filipino bakery when a man carrying a guitar and speaker approached us. I think he must have been performing out on the sidewalk before coming inside. But that area doesn’t really have a lot of foot traffic. He held out his cup to us and I put a few dollars in. “You want me to play you something?” We said sure and he warned us it was going to be loud, gesturing to the speaker he had just set down. Our halo-halo arrived before he could plug into his amp and we had to be on our way. That’s the last time I remember dropping a tip in a musicians jar. 

    Back in Madison, Catfish Stephenson, a musician who often played on State Street once told me that a big crowd is actually worse in terms of income. No one wants to step out of the crowd to throw money in. Or else everyone assumes someone else is going to do it. People just don’t know what the protocol was. Catfish always threw a few bills into his guitar case when he was first setting up and before he started to play. Get the ball rolling. Show them how it’s done. No one wants to be the first. 

    At the end of last year, I started taking guitar lessons. It’s fun. I enjoy it. I’m working on Let It Be. I’m not bad at it and I really enjoy it. It’s already paying off dividends. Just yesterday, I had a bit of a panic when I realized that a prescribed medicine I’d taken was counter-indicated for another prescribed medicine. I put a call into the answering service at the cancer center. “I’m going to go play guitar while I wait for the call,” I told my husband. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to focus enough to do my other calming activities like reading and it was raining too hard to go for a walk. 

    But it’s been two months that I’ve been working on Let It Be. Give me another month and I’ll be confident enough that I’ll be able to take it out to the sidewalk and open my guitar case for some dollar bills. But, well, it will be the only song I’ll be playing. I’m more likely to earn tips to make me stop. 

    The point being that I have an appreciation for the work, time, energy, and effort that goes into performing on the street. And I wish I had taken the time to appreciate it more when I was living in places where it was more commonplace, like Madison. 

    I hear that tipping culture has gotten out of hand these days. At least, that’s what people say. And to be honest, if my mother knew I was out here busking on these internet streets, she’d probably be pretty embarrassed. I don’t know. I don’t mind the opportunity to show my appreciation for the hard work that people are putting in. And I’ve never felt like I have to tip. It’s just a nice thing to do. 

  • The second time they ask, “Where are you from?”

    “No. Where are you really from?”

    It’s in the “no.”

    Or it’s in the really.

    Or it’s in the emphasis on from.

    It’s in the asking the question the second time.

    It’s in the way they mean to say my first answer wasn’t correct.

    As if to say, “You don’t know yourself.”

    As if to say, “I do.”

    As if to say, “Nobody is where you’re from.”

    As if to say, “You have to have come from someplace else.”

    As if to say, “Being born here isn’t enough. How many generations back can you go?”

    As if to say, “Ooooooh. So exotic.”

    As if to say, “Ching chong ling long. Do a little dance. Sing a little song. You know kung fu? Pad Thai? Hoochie coochie? Ho-chi-minh?”

    What do you know about skipping stones in the Rock Creek?

    What do you know about the smell of warm track grease inside a windy underground tunnel?

    What do you know about working the walls in a hot high school gym under cowbells and congas?

    Because even without these bona fides…

    …if you know…

    …you know…

    where I’m from.

    Daily writing prompt
    What is one question you hate to be asked? Explain.
    View all responses

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  • Failure? I don’t know her.

    The only failure I’ve observed is on the part of the editors, agents, judgy mcjudgers, publishers, et al who have failed to see my writing as the gift that it is. Their loss, my gain. In other words, the bouncers were so busy keeping people out that they failed to see that outside is where the real party is happening. As for me? I stopped looking for their approval and started approving of myself and here we are. So, yeah, that’s a success by another name.

    Daily writing prompt
    How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success?
    View all responses

  • Final Fire

    I spent a portion of last weekend high off of a few sunny, warm days. I directed this new energy towards organizing a little around the house and setting goals for exercising and writing on my computer in my office closet on Monday. A classic case of early spring energy. But when Monday rolled around, the forecast indicated that it wasn’t going to get out of the forties. Fifty and above is our top end cut off for fires in our wood stove. So, change of plans. Or should I? Could I enjoy a fire and also make good on all my ambitions? Could I just write on my ipad in front of the computer? Could I do a work-out in front of the stove? I could… but I didn’t want to. The glow of the screen is the very antithesis of the one emitted from a fire. I knew I couldn’t truly cultivate hygge with an iPad and exercise sweat. 

    I threw aside my plans for a “productive” day, ignored the obnoxious voice in my head saying that I was being lazy, built a tower of logs and kindling and ignited one of our homemade starters. I tucked myself into the couch for a day of alternately reading and staring into the flames. It was a lovely, luxurious, morning. 

    It was an unusually cold winter here in Maryland. One furnace went out during a cold snap so we’ve been using and relying on the wood stove a lot. We have two furnaces, so it wasn’t as dire it might seem at first glance. Using a wood stove for a heat source is this lovely balance of yin and yang energy. Cleaning the stove, chopping kindling, carrying the wood inside, and building the fire are all yang. The sitting back, admiring the fire, and resting in its warmth? That’s yin. 

    One of the cold stretches was right when I was recovering from my mastectomy. The snow fall meant the kids were home from school. Having them around helped me heal faster. (My surgeon said I didn’t look like someone who had just had surgery at my follow up.) And I’m confident that the snow alleviated some of the guilt I might have felt over taking time to rest and recover. 

    And so I’m grateful that mother nature sent us one last coldish day to enjoy a fire. But as the morning turned into afternoon, it grew warmer than I’d expected and I let the fire die out. My husband mentioned that it’s always nice to have a fire once it’s dark outside. (We’d lost electricity for about an hour on Saturday evening in the middle of dinner and we were all surprised at how much light the wood stove provided once we’d lit it in the complete darkness.) So I attempted to get it started again once the sun had set. The fire was finicky by which I mean that it smoked to the point that I had to open the sliding glass door. Eventually, though, we got to enjoy another nice flame. But it somehow seemed perfect that our last fire would be so imperfect, so troublesome in a way. It was as if mother nature was reminding me that there’s a time and season for everything, lest in my longing for beautiful fires in our woodstove, I miss her other gifts and blessings. 

    My six-year-old son was home sick a few days this week. He asked to go for a walk. We searched for signs of spring and found snow drops, crocuses, robins, and onion grass. The next day he observed that the snow drops looked different. They’d opened overnight. He held up his hand, letting three fingers droop to illustrate how they’d changed. As much as I love the fires, I also love to see what’s there when the smoke clears. 

    This is not paid advertisement, but if you are looking for a wood stove, this one is great and it’s one of the few that’s EPA approved to burn with lower particulate emissions.

    Also, not a paid ad, but if you are looking for fireplace and wood stove installers and maintenance in the DMV, I cannot say enough about Traditions Chimney Sweeps.

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  • Heart of Empire

    Daily writing prompt
    You’re writing your autobiography. What’s your opening sentence?
    View all responses

    I only consider my invisibility a super power because of where I grew up: the heart of empire.

  • Untethering from Social Media

    I deleted Facebook years ago and Twitter a few after that. A few weeks ago, I the last of my social media apps: the mostly image-based Instagram and their partner text-based Threads. Social media, the whole of the internet, is, I believe, mostly a gift to the world. But my brain, my whole person was formed before the internet, much less social media, existed. In other words, I’m not equipped for handling it. My mind simply doesn’t move fast enough to keep up and, in attempting to, I was doing damage. It was as if I was lining up on the track next to Florence Griffith Joyner each and every day and expecting myself to keep up. My hamstrings – nay my whole body would have taken a beating if I ever even dreams of going up against Flo Jo but, more importantly, my self-esteem would have been obliterated. And it was. 

    I wasn’t too keen on the idea of deleting social media. The other day, my six-year-old son was staring out of the car window into the massive sky above. “Mom,” he said, “I don’t like to think about the universe.” I told him I get that. He confirmed that it’s the vastness that makes him feel small. It’s dark and lonely out there in the universe. I was so used to having and being on social media that I thought that deleting it would untether me from the earth and send me out there into the universe, alone, cold, and in the dark. 

    When I first came across posts on social media by patients in cancer treatment, it made me feel less alone.  Somehow, in spite of the fact that I wasn’t really looking for it, I’d come across people posting about their experiences with cancer. There was even a woman preparing for her mastectomy at around the same time that I was. I wasn’t alone. 

    Perhaps you can see where this is going. As soon as I clicked on a couple of cancer posts, the algorithm latched on. Soon, a good portion of my feed was cancer. And I couldn’t help myself but read and click. I’d try to close the app and just the c-word alone would catch my eye. I felt an obligation to consume it all. 

    One of the prayers that I had when I was going through treatment was this: that my suffering makes someone else’s a little less. There are certain aspects of Catholicism that are engrained in me and that’s one of them: offer it up. Offer up your suffering so that it has meaning if not for you, then at least for someone else. For the most part, I was thinking about my daughters in those moments, praying that somehow me going through all of these trials would save them from a similar fate. In the early days of my treatment, the genocide in Palestine was dire and so my prayers were also for mothers there. In my moments of pain rooted in my own body attacking my breasts, all mothers and children and their bonds and their bodies and suffering all became mixed together. 

    And some of that responsibility and connection carried over to my fellow cancer patients on social media. Somehow, it was my duty to keep reading all of these threads. But reading, engaging them seemed to created more until everything was cancer content. It’s about as much fun as it sounds. 

    This was all in the midst of me, in-person, going with some regularity to a literal cancer center where I would sit in waiting rooms nearly full with other people who possibly also had cancer. And at one appointment, my doctor mentioned (without violating HIPPA) that he’d been recently seeing more of the type of cancer that I have. Later, as I moved into the recurrence prevention phase, he mentioned that he had a patient in a very similar situation to me. At the very least, it’s possible that the doctor was able to use some of what he learned treating me to better care for the other woman. 

    These are connections that I couldn’t get on social media. 

    And so it was that I had it all wrong. When I finally cut the tether, I didn’t float out into the vast, cold universe. Rather, I floated back down to very real, solid, warm earth. 

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  • The Doctrine of Chai

    “Time catches up with kingdoms and crushes them, gets its teeth into doctrines and rends them; time reveals the foundation on which any kingdom rests, and eats at those foundations, and it destroys doctrines by proving them to be untrue.” –James Baldwin from The Fire Next Time

    Most of my mornings begin with making a cup of chai. Actually, it’s more like four cups: two for me and one for each of my two daughters. My son has yet to show any interest in having his own and my husband has never been a warm beverage drinker. (Yes, that includes coffee. Cast aspersions as you will. He’ll never know.)

    Here is where I explain the process of making chai. And perhaps a little bit of the history. But this isn’t really that type of essay. What type of essay is this? Let’s find out. 

    First, I pour about two cups of water into the pot and set it to boil. I pull out my round, lidded chai box packed tightly with smaller also round containers each holding a different component, which varies only based on what has been available at the Asian market (where spices are cheaper than at the “regular” grocery store). Cinnamon sticks, fennel seeds, rose petals, cardamom pods, star anise, candied ginger, whole cloves and, of course, black tea leaves. I’d like to say that I choose what to add based on some sort of higher sense of what my kids and I need that day. Extra rose petals for love. Cinnamon for protection and boundaries. Star anise for good luck (especially if I find a rare nine-pointed one). But the truth is that I mostly do it by rote: scooping small amounts of whatever is available. This is with the exception of fresh ginger, which I will pull from the fridge, slice thin, and toss in the pot if any of us has a cough or cold. This makes me feel like an apothecary. Or a witch. 

    My daughters have helped me on occasion. One such time, my older daughter commented, “This is what I think potion-making is like.” The other daughter recalled when they were younger playing in the yard, they would mix up batches of something that seemed, in their imaginations, to be both nourishing and magical. Our morning chai feels a bit like that with the added benefit of being also drinkable. 

    While the tea and spices steep on medium heat, I can step away from the stove to feed the dog or take my medicine, cut up an orange or make the bed. The next step requires my full concentration. I pour the two cups of oatmilk into the pot and watch the white whirl into the dark brown (“clouds in my cha-ai, clouds in my cha-ai.”). The liquid starts to bubble. It reminds me of the edge of the ocean where the surf breaks and kicks up sand. It’s a similar sandy color and, at least for this moment, similarly unappetizing. But then just when I start to think, “am I really going to drink this?” the roiling becomes suddenly light and almost airy. Just the right amount of foam. This is point when I have to watch carefully as the liquid climbs the sides of the pot. I keep one hand on the handle of the burner and the other holds my measuring cup which I use to scoop and pour the chai, thus aerating it further. I want the drink to bubble up as high and for as long as possible without it spilling over. I have no idea whether this is the goal or whether this is good chai making technique. I’ve found I just kind of enjoy the challenge. 

    On more than one occasion, I have let the pot boil over, not only wasting the precious tea, but creating a sticky mess that needs to be cleaned. Once or twice, this happened when I let myself get called away from the stove during this crucial stage. Shockingly, it’s also happened when I’ve been right in front of the stove, hand on the burner knob, eyes on the pot. How is it possible that my body can be in the right position, my eyes laser focused on the pot, and yet still it boils over? There are times when allowing my mind to wander, perhaps to even dissociate from my body was perhaps something of a gift. But dissociating is not the doctrine of chai. 

    One day, after I’ve been practicing this for years, will I be able to space out? Will I be able to let my mind wander and still be able to keep track of the tea and the pot and the foam and the heat? Do I want that day and moment to arrive? I do not. Dissociating is no longer a gift. Embodiment is. 

    Ritual is routine made holy and some call the product of this particular chai ritual “liquid gold.”

    This winter, I watched by daughter play a lot of basketball. Observe a player take to the free throw line and you will see ritual. It’s not just that the shooter has her own pattern of familiar actions (dribble three times, line up knuckles on the ball, place toes a set distance from the line, breathe), but the crowd also participates. At one of my daughter’s games, every time a player on her team found herself at the line, the cheerleaders would all silently extend their hands and twinkle their fingers in the direction of the shooter. I could almost see the fairy dust flit through the air. When an opposing player was on their line, the cheerleaders were less quiet. “Rebound!” they’d chant while stomping their feet on the stands. These rituals were all familiar to me from my own days in high school, save one thing. The noise the fans used to make when the opposing team was on the line used to be aggressive —  hissing and booing meant to intimidate the shooter. But the “rebound” chant of today’s young people encourages their own team rather than trying to disrupt the opponent. I love this generation. Each time I observe them practicing the power of approaching the world from a place of support rather than tearing down, this Gen Xer is a little more healed. 

     Are you with me here? Do you see the magic in the mundane? Do you see how there is no doctrine of chai? Do you see how the ordinary is not a kingdom? How ritual creates a bubble around us pulling us away from time’s awful teeth?

    At least some of the magic is in the returning, coming back to this pot, this stove at this time each morning. Yes, even coming back to the foul line. Day after day like a miner returning to the depths of the earth, digging a tiny bit each day in search of that seam of gold. Here. This writing is a bit like that too. I’ve returned to this piece day after day first in my little notebook filling up with my sprawling handwriting. Twenty minutes at a time. I set the timer and drew the habit tracker to keep me honest in the moments when my faith in the ritual of return faltered. And here we are because reading is the other side of that. A partnership. 

    Showing up to the stove is not dissimilar from showing up to the pen and paper or keyboard and screen. And it’s not dissimilar from sticking it through to the next paragraph or page. These are acts of devotion. And devotion always transcends doctrine. These commitments to these rituals. We are not kingdoms. Nor are we the foundation. Whenever we choose to return, to focus ourselves to a particular task, to a particular ritual, to a particular moment, we become an ally to time. And together we rend kingdoms. Here. A pause. A slurp of chai. The steam creeps up in front of my screen. I made this pot a few hours ago this morning between my morning stretches and morning writing. I reheated it just now so I could have the creamy comfort here as I venture back down into this particular mineshaft. Liquid gold to fuel my search for that seam of gold somewhere in these folds of my brain. Oh! Here it is. 

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  • Overheard on the elevator to and from the 7th floor (oncology and hematology) (a poem)

    What floor?

    I like your outfit. 

    Comfortable chic.

    What floor?

    Thank you. Have a good one. 

    I like your earrings.

    What floor?

    Did she just fall down?

    They’re made of wolf fur, sustainably harvested.

    What floor?

    At least I’m not underground. 

    You get what I’m saying?

    Do they just brush the wolf?

    What floor?

    Did you just come from the seventh floor?

    I’ll pray for you.

    What floor?

    What floor?

    Thank you. 

    Seven please. 

    What floor?

    Thank you.

    Seven. 

    What floor?

    Seven.