True-life story of aids survival

Fiction based on Fact. This is the cover of the teen novel I wrote for the Dutch market, Dance upon the Sea–A story of hope from South Africa. I am desperately seeking an English-language publisher for this book that has won an award in The Netherlands, and is being used by schools to raise aids awareness, and in classes addressing African studies, current events, issues of injustice, social studies and political science. I wrote a sports-hero story, and Dutch kids seem to be loving it. I get all sorts of interesting emails from them.

Anyway, my main character in the book, a boy named Promise, is based on several aids orphans I met in South Africa and Zimbabwe. I sort-of combined their voices into one. But there also really is a black South African surf champion, and his name is Kwezi Qika. Kwezi was my primary source of inspiration for Dance. I used his story as a foundation for mine: In an area of the world with 16 million aids orphans and groaning poverty, turned away from school and with little to hope for, 14-year-old Promise was a boy destined to fail. Yet Promise has a dream to become a surfer champion, and that dream will not let him go. Promise’s struggle to shoulder the responsibility of his little brother and sister—his father dead, his mother dying—is a story of aids survival from close up.

Here’s a video of Kwezi and Gary Kleynhans. Gary taught Kwezi to surf and swim when Kwezi was 12. In another life, Gary fought with the South African forces in Angola. Now he runs a surf school for street kids: aids orphans and kids whose parents are unemployed, so they can’t afford school fees and the children end up on the street.

What I love about this clip is the grin on Noble’s face when he says, “I see myself going far.” It’s what keeps me returning to places of conflict around the world: the children’s voices. Once these kids have a dream, there’s no stopping them. To check out Gary’s Extreme Surf School and how we can help, click here.

Patterns Restored by Dreams

“Memory lived not in initial possession but in the freed hands, pardoned and freed, and in the heart that can empty but fill again, in the patterns restored by dreams.”—Eudora Welty, The Optimist’s Daughter, pg. 179

These words bring me comfort. And hope. I repeat them and something settles.

I know I’m not the only one out there struggling with the schizophrenic life of loss. We smile. We forget. Then we remember. We nod. We try to make others feel comfortable. We long to go back to sleep.

Fun things happen around us: children squealing on the beach, boating picnics, young couples’ tender touches, a dog lapping the surf. I smile. But inside I’m angry and tired. The tsunami of emotion reminds me of when I ran from such a wave after I came home from Zimbabwe. Why run? What if . . . it catches up with me? What if it drowns me? What if I simply stand as it breaks over me? And rest.

We expect the lost one to walk through the door, send an email, call. An open drawer, a photo, a fragment of last year’s conversation, and they are back. But no, they are gone. And the cycle of denial and anger rev up again. Acceptance hovers, ready to land, but the terrain is too rocky. Meanwhile, everyone around us is waiting. For what? For me?

My heart feels like it fell off a cliff but forgot to die. I’m limping around down there, looking up, wondering if anyone saw me. If help is coming. How much longer? Who listens? A voice calls out, “Don’t give in to self-pity.”

“I’m not!” I call back into the nothingness.

“Get your act together.”

“I’m trying!”

And I limp on.

Writing Tip #6–Write the Wrong
The absolute best writing comes from the heart. So tap into your own passion by remembering an incident that affected you deeply, then describe the details within the context of whatever you’re writing. For example, when your character is betrayed (and every good story must have betrayal), be brave enough to unlock the door to that dark memory and re-live the sights, smells, emotions and tastes of when it happened to you, as you describe the same for your character.

She Taught Me Honesty

My friend of 16 years has died. And my brother died the same day. Neither of them died in pain. And her best friend died exactly six months earlier, at almost the same time of day. What’s with this timing? Both my brother and my friend died with their loved ones around them. I think this is important. Maybe the loved ones and the lack of pain are actually the most important of all.

I hear many things in the white noise around me: “Death is part of life.” “One day at a time.” “The pain softens with time.”

Is there such a thing as soft pain? What I see around me, what I feel around me is nothing but sharp pain. Pain in the eyes of my friend’s husband and teenagers. Pain in my daughter’s own eyes as she peeks at the scary place of motherless children. Pain in my eyes above the bags and shadows that trample my face.

And I am like some multiple-personality disordered woman with a zoo of voices grunting, shrieking and hooting. The elephant in the room trumpets, “What will happen if you lose even more loved ones?” as the Others all beg me to let them take over my heart and mind and soul:

• The Injured Party—They limp around hissing, “Poor me, lost a friend, lost a brother, gave my heart away, poor me, poor me, pour me a drink!”
• Boys in the Band—My subconscious creative crew, I give them assignments like “Help! Fix this chapter!” and they drum and jam all night while I sleep and in the morning hand me a few sheets of music that reveal my theme. Currently unemployed due to a labor dispute with the Injured Party.
• Jesus—He holds a little solar-cell stone that you can only see in the dark. It beams my mantra, “I am safe, I am safe.” He doesn’t make much noise at all, really. He’s always there, and pretty much just waits. When I let go of my gaggle of fears though, I can feel tender touches: the comfort of writing, a summer breeze, seagulls wheeling high. And I hear more fragments: “Ruthless trust, trustless Ruth, restless Truth.”
• Little Orphan Annie—She’s my artist child and the leader of the pack. Right now she’s crouched under the sink, crying her heart out. Someday soon she’ll feel the arms of comfort all of you have extended through emails and hugs and kind words and prayers and being there. Showing up. Then she will be. And do what she was born to do and rest and receive in that thin place where the lion of love lies down with the lamb of listening and a little child leads us all.

Anne Lamott–Author of “Grace (Eventually)”

Because my friend is dying, I threw a dinner party on Saturday. It’s Anne Lamott’s fault. I heard her tell a hilarious story about coming alongside a friend who had cancer, and how the two of them decided it all sucked so bad, there was nothing left to do but throw a dinner party. But her sick friend didn’t have any matching napkins, so this made everything even worse . . . and even better.

So I sent out invitations, roughly quoting Anne, “When a friend is dying, throw a party with non-matching napkins.” And my friend and her cool daughters, my daughter and her cool boyfriend, and my friend with the cool baby and husband, all came. The bbq didn’t work. It rained that morning. My daughter’s boyfriend turned pasty white after having to blow up a giant orca that floated around flirting with the giant crocoldile that assumed “take me I’m yours” positions in our postage-stamp sized pool.

But I cooked up a storm and made margaritas that knocked the socks of us all. We told stories and laughed, got serious, laughed some more, toasted the absent loved ones, and told more stories.

“Who’s Anne Lamott? What was that quote all about on the invitations?”

“She’s a writer from San Francisco who taught me courage. Totally.”

Here’s Anne Lamott in person. I know the clip is 57 minutes, but you can ration yourself and watch 5 minutes at a time. Every single second is worth listening to.

Writing Tip #5–All Write!

We’re in a community of artist children. The sort-of playschool of the world. And although we may create alone, behind drawn blinds, how much richer and braver and deeper our art becomes when we allow others to comfort and challenge us. Writer’s block? Stomach in knots? Get out the clay, wash the brushes, open the file and show up for a half hour. Then, watch this video!

So This is What I Think. . . .

In the strange place I find myself these days, with a husband on a Russian ship halfway between Africa and Brazil, a friend halfway between heaven and earth, and a book halfway in my heart and on the screen, I’m wondering where am I????(Yael Naim: “New Soul”)

Bosnia Memory

Several readers have emailed me lately, wanting to know what I’m working on. At the moment that would be my novel for smart teens and 20-somethings: a murder mystery about stolen art and diamonds from WWII, ending up in Bosnia in 1995.

Here’s a video of the sort of images floating around me as I write. I visited Srebrenica and other places in Bosnia to research this book and interviewed young people, teachers, aid workers and child psychologists.

A Friend of Mine is Dying

I read somewhere that there are two things that make time stop: when your baby turns one week old, and waiting for a friend to die. I’m waiting now. I know that for the rest of my life, the summer of ’08 will be the summer I waited for a best friend to die. She’s at home now, not in pain, battling to stay awake as floods of people visit to say their goodbyes. She is too well loved.

And the days have taken on a heaviness that grinds them to a halt. Stopped time is not such a bad thing. It is a gift, really. I catch myself wondering how it must feel to be the dove swaying in the redwood of my front garden. I squint my eyes and see the sky in reflecting water on the beach and dislocate, so that I seem to swim in the sky and sea at once.

I am very present. I count the days, each one a gift. I practice this present/presence and find it calms me. The shouts of fear dim and I can focus. On her eyes. Her husband’s words. Her children’s questions.

Writing Tip #2 refers to a stillness exercise. This is very simply closing your eyes for 5 minutes and counting slowly with each intake of breath 1-10, then 10-1. It releases the editor in us and lets the genie of creativity out of the bottle. The trick is to keep the editor (“I can’t write. I don’t know what to write. It’s no good. I’ll never get it published . . . blah, blah, blah”) occupied, so that the artist child in us can create with reckless abandon.

Funny, this season of waiting. I have rarely written as surprisingly. I know a stillness as I, with time, stop still.

Writing Tip #4–Write Away!
Close your eyes. Imagine the sound of your fingers tapping on the keyboard. See yourself typing away. Remember the last time you finished something and got it out the door. Be very present. What do you hear? Now keep your eyes closed and touch-type away. (If you have to peek, focus just on the keyboard, not on the screen.)

Reflections on the Lake

So what is real here? The trees? The water? The mist? The mountain? Their reflections? The picture itself? The image? Is the photo upside down? Have I photo-shopped it somehow?

Maybe what is real, is not even shown. What is real is UNDER the water, below the surface, beyond our line of sight.

Madeleine L’Engle wrote: Plato spoke of the necessity for divine madness in the poet. It is a frightening thing to open oneself to this strange and dark side of the divine; it means letting go of our sane self-control, that control which gives us the illusion of our safety. But safety is only an illusion and letting go is part of listening to the silence, and to the Spirit. . . .

And I wonder about that line of thought where air and water meet. The wilderness of the will. The desert of desire. The inner landscape, so wrought with plateaus of peace.

Are these reflections on the lake?

Writing Tip #3–Two Writes Don’t Make a Wrong!
Write twice. Write again. Write some more. The best writer is the rewriter. Often we write what we think is important in order to reach what truly is.
Spend 20 minutes a day free-writing, preferably with a pen, by hand. Call it brain dump, or stream of consciousness, but it’s a guaranteed way to glean the gems from among the garbage.

A Woman’s Gotta Do What a Woman’s Gotta Do

A friend sent me this quote last week, from Henri Nouwen’s Daily Meditation, “Writing, Opening a Deep Well”: Writing is not just jotting down ideas. Often we say: “I don’t know what to write. I have no thoughts worth writing down.” But much good writing emerges from the process of writing itself. As we simply sit down in front of a sheet of paper and start to express in words what is on our minds or in our hearts, new ideas emerge, ideas that can surprise us and lead us to inner places we hardly knew were there. One of the most satisfying aspects of writing is that it can open in us deep wells of hidden treasures that are beautiful for us as well as for others to see.
(With thanks to Terry)

See, I think, as we write, we heal. The trauma therapy former child soldiers undergo often involves their reaching a point where, just once, they paint a picture of what happened to them and their emotions. This can be done through drawing, sculpting, dance or by writing. The children who do manage to somehow describe their ordeals have a better chance of living relatively stable lives than those who are so blocked they cannot find their way back to, and out of, that dark place.

I’m not saying we need to have (or find) a trauma in order to write. But we may listen to what weighs heavily on our hearts and write about that, once we’ve found a safe place, and locked the door.

(By the way, that’s not me in the tub.)

Writing Tip #2–Write On!
*Finish the job you are doing in one go. (Compartmentalize large jobs into definable chunks.)
*Give the task your full attention. Don’t switch attention to other things.
*Keep your attention present and focused.
*Start and stop the task with a quick stillness exercise.
(With thanks to Bruce)

Back Home Again

The warm water off an island in the Bahamas called Eleuthera, which means “freedom,” seems very far . . . and very close.

Hearing voices in Spanish these days: Vamos a Mexico! Mi corazon. Gracias! Muy simpatico.

In Puebla, the Minister of Culture arranged a guided tour of the oldest library in North and South America. I donned white gloves and turned weathered pages of an Old Testament written in Aramaic, Hebrew, Greek and Chaldean. I felt like Sean Connery in “The Name of the Rose.”

I remembered my trip to Iraq, between the wars, and visiting a Chaldean Orthodox church in Nineveh. The priest told me most of their old manuscripts had been destroyed. In Mexico I find what once was lost.

Join me in letting down our nets into the deep. Then jump in!

Writing Tip #1–Write Here!
“Thirty minutes—just make sure you write 30 minutes a day.” That’s what I told a student at WMUN (World Model United Nations), in Puebla, Mexico, when he told me he wanted to become a writer. “Then you ARE a writer.”
The to-be list and not to-do.
I am.
Write here. Write now.