Linda Dahl author

Just How Badly Does Addiction Affect American Women?

2011-10-11T11:18:00.000-07:00

More than 200,000 American women died of substance abuse in 2009.
That is more than four times the number to die of breast cancer! (Center for Health Statistics).
Question: Why don't we know this? How can we help more women to recover from this deadly disease?
Stay tuned.

Regretful book review: Nica's Dream

2011-06-27T11:25:00.000-07:00

"Nica's Dream," a biography about the enigmatic and extremely interesting Rothschild heiress and tremendous jazz patroness, Baronness Pannonica de Koenigswalter, known as Nica, just came about. And it is a frustrating read on several counts. About ten years ago, I came close to taking on this project but decided against it. Why? The Rothschild family has a policy of destroying or imprisoning all personal papers and NEVER giving interviews about family members. I felt then and after reading this book, feel even more strongly, that I made the right decision.
The book is workmanlike and the author clearly (sometimes too clearly) expended great effort in assembling what he could about Nica. Here all the known facts, plus some new anecdotes, are dutifully assembled, but also a lot of padding with the by-now old-hat story of jazz from the 50's on. Sadly, the subject of the book never comes to life, and her conflicts and dark side, the very stuff of a vivid personality and a good read - are never explored. To take two examples: she's drinking constantly ("sipping" is the ladylike verb used often), and eventually gets cirrhosis, yet there is nothing here about alcoholism's destructive power. Two: what especially vexed me was the lack of any insight into Nica's frank abandonment of her children. There were five, including very young ones, but only one daughter lived with her. Then suddenly, when they are grown, the kids are back in her life. This is rich material indeed, but we learn next to nothing about it.
I'm not trying to trash the writer here. But biography is a huge challenge and the Baronness merits the full treatment - or none at all.

Why winning a literary prize reminds me of high school

2011-03-03T13:41:00.000-08:00

Don't get me wrong. I love "winning" stuff. I was one of those girls in high school who loved getting prizes for supposed academic prowess.
Just as I had loved getting merit badges in my Scouts years. So when I just heard I'd won a literary prize for my novel "Gringa in a Strange Land" - for 'best creative writing of 2010' - I was pleased of course. But somehow it also feels just like high school.

Why endless snow is good for writers

2011-01-31T15:17:00.000-08:00

Because...there's nothing else to do but write. So I am tackling Draft No. 3 of the new book, "Cleans Up Nicely." It's a sequel to "Gringa in a Strange Land," moving from the Mexico of the early 70's to dirty, dangerous and wildly creative New York. Our heroine lands on the isle of Manhattan with one contact, a suitcase and 800 bucks. Oh and also a blossoming problem with booze. All kindsa characters in this one: believe me, I had to leave out most of them.
So February 2011 will be My Time to nail this one. Between trying to get the snowblower to start and pulling the Big White Dog out of snowdrifts.

Gringa in New York: post-hippy time

2011-01-01T16:41:00.000-08:00

I am never happier than when I am in the middle of writing a book (now: Cleans up Nicely ) and I am never more disssatisfied (like watching a great dream dissolving). A whole new cast of characters from the mid-70's, but impossible to include them all, plus the material is at times in danger of being too rich, like a decadent chocolate cake with whipped cream. But the best part of this book for me is getting into the visual art of the time, like the paintings of vaginas glued with thrift-shop fur. Our artist heroine did not do this one! Strangely, the first full-length bio of Alice Neel (aka Malice Neel) has just come out. Neel is a major minor character in Cleans Up.

Speaking at Madison's big Book Fest - ah memories (of anti-war protests...)

2010-09-25T19:12:00.000-07:00

During the first weekend of October, I'll be giving readings/talks on two of my books ("Morning Glory" and "Gringa in a Strange Land") at my old alma mater, U. of Wisconsin, Madison. I won't be talking about how lost I felt, how unambitious, how all I wanted to do was go to foreign movies, read foreign books ("A Hundred Years of Solitude," "Conversation in the Cathedral," "Things Fall Apart") and partake of foreign-grown substances. I knew I wanted to be a writer but couldn't imagine how this could happen, had no idea of the processes involved. It was the 60's and early 70's and you could more or less study what you wanted. I still remember my wonderful, sexy Buddhist Thought teacher, my brilliant eccentric Portuguese teacher, my John Halderman-look-alike Latin American Studies profs Thiesenheusen and Felstehausen, the broken-down visiting English poet who drank with us and poured great verse into us in the bar, the Scandinavian literature expert. Didn't know it at the time, but all of this I see now gave me my start - wherever it is I am going.

Jeff's Little Ship of Music: The Song Is Ended

2010-08-22T18:01:00.000-07:00

Jeff's Little Ship of Music: The Song Is Ended

A beautifully shaped lie

2010-08-10T12:26:00.000-07:00

Recently I read Julian Barnes' "Nothing To Be Frightened Of," a memoir about death, a topic I've been forced to be interested in (well, who won't be?) since the drawn-out dying of my husband from cancer, now two years ago. Al's death turned out to be a wrenching relief, for me anyway, and I'm now far more frightened of dying than death.
However, in the course of the book Barnes said something that struck me
forcefully as both true and (envious me) elegantly said, about fiction.
It is, he claimed, a beautifully shaped lie enclosing hard fact. The truth of this had occurred to me when writing biography, because loved ones, family, etc. so often have very different, even diametrically opposed, ideas about the one being written about. And tiny little facts forever change your view (change mine anyway)of a subject. Take, for example, Duke Ellington. One of his mistresses wanted very much to write a memoir or her time with him. We met; I ultimately decided there was not enough material, sadly, to merit yet another Ellington book. But one thing she said stayed with me and I have always been a tad less awestruck about this Olympian composer. She confided that Ellington always kept his socks on when he made love.
Even with trivial details, the way an interviewee colors or embellishes or deletes information will change the shape of the lie.

On Enabling: can we love them to death?

2010-07-26T09:50:00.000-07:00

The word "enabling" came into general usage about what? l0, l5 years ago,
I guess. Rather than "came into," it "seeped into" American via the psychobabble community. Of course it does have validity. Question: If my kid has a drug problem and I bail him out of jail twice, am I helping him or
hurting him? Answer: You decide. Some people can't bear to see their offspring suffer, even when they're suffering. It makes them feel better to speed to the jail in the middle of the night to meet the bail bondsman (trust me, I know). And it gets the kid out of jail. Question: So what does the errant child learn from this experience? Answer: a) The parents love him too much to let him spend the night next to a drunken guy who's pissed all over himself. Or b) The parents don't love him enough to let him spend the night next to a...You get the picture.

Writing novels equals box-office poison?

2010-07-08T12:13:00.000-07:00

I admit I'm case-hardened to the strange ways of book publishing. Over the years - 30 some - I've kept the best of my rejection letters for several novels. Before computers, these were well-formed letters by snail mail that often offered helpful suggestions along with the rejection. As time went on, I realized that I would just have to write the books I wanted to. Why spend years hunched in a small room typing hundreds of pages unless you really want to do it? I was lucky to discover dozens of brilliant writers via Penguin and Virago Press - they revived so many terrific women novelists' works - and others; yet how many people know of H.E. Bates, Elizabeth Howard, Joyce Cary, for instance? Not many. Still, they lived and worked when it was possible to get published, polish a literary reputation and not sell hugely.
Well, nowadays when I meet people in the publishing biz they actually cringe, or look at the floor, when I mention I'm writing a novel again. I've got two literary fiction books out there, a bunch of biographies, but all that matters is that novels don't sell. I'm still going to write them, and I love doing it.

The eunuchs in the harem - the writing biz

2010-06-16T07:21:00.000-07:00

The 800-pound gorilla in the bookstore: In my babyboomer life, it has been: potboilers, romance novels, chicklit, formulaic mystery/detective series, etc. In my 30-plus years of writing professionally, the very mention of the word "novel" has consistently made agents and editors react (often subtly) as if they were hearing the word "poison." And this has not been something directed at me personally - it's endemic, part of the essential structure of the writing biz. 2010 - a vampire novel makes millions! Harry Potter for the grownups. A good piece of fiction almost never makes thousands.
Years ago at a party, I heard the deceased writer William Goyen, a brilliant practitioner of fiction, explain the publishing biz best: "They're the eunuchs in the harem, they can't ----."
I love writing all kinds of stuff but there is nothing like fiction. I'm working on the second book of my "Gringa" series now. Didn't know there was going to be a part two.

Writing titles - I've gone blank

2010-05-05T14:15:00.000-07:00

I have a habit of collecting titles for books that may or may not ever get written. Sometimes the title seems so good there's no need to write the book. Example: How Not To Mourn - pertains to when I became a widow, nearly two years ago. And that summed it up for me - you kind of (have to) go crazy, enter new hostile territory and just deal. I made a lot of "mistakes" that some psychologist would have surely clucked at me about and no, I'm not going to say what they were (are?)! Anyhow, now I've got what I think is a great new book cooking but I can't find a good title for this book that is guide for parents who have daughters with substance abuse problems. My helpful l9 year old daughter has suggested some riotous examples: like..."Pills and Prom Gowns," "After-school Smack-tivities." Fine except some agonized parent isn't going to appreciate the joke. I'm stuck with boring possibilities, like "A guide for Parents who have Daughters with Substance Abuse Problems." Huge yawn. Help. More later.

What does a hippie quaalude addict in l974 have in common with 2010 oxy od's?

2010-04-19T13:48:00.000-07:00

Young people - my 19 year old and her friends - tell me they really get Erica Mason (quasi-heroine of "Gringa"). In my time, street drugs were psychedelics, "Black beauties," coke. Quaaludes, a drug taken off the market by the end of the l970's, bounced you off the walls and dulled all feeling except a sense of underwatery well-being (sort of). They were classed as a hypnotic, for what it's worth. I don't know about the rest of the planet but they were widely available in sunny Mexico, which is where I discovered them and eventually detoxed off them. That was l973/4; by the end of the decade, they were gone due to their very addictive potency. But people - young people - who go for downers are now widely at risk for the notorious heroin-like oxycontin, though they pay a huge amount for it in every way. Human nature is such that by the time oxies are gone, they will be supplanted by something equally potent and lethal. Serenity has to be worked for and kids want instant gratification. The tragedy of this is that the ultra-addictive nature of this painkiller causes a steady number of o.d.'s. Personally I knew one young man who graduated to heroin from the vile things and was found dead in his bed at l8. If you know someone using them, jump on this - it's not a quick life otherwise and yes, people can detox, recover and live to go through the normal ups and downs of teenagerdom.

Gringa in a Strange Land by Linda Dahl

2010-03-30T10:41:00.000-07:00

Gringa in a Strange Land by Linda Dahl

Why I liked being in a Muslim country

2010-03-22T14:20:00.000-07:00

OK, those full black veils with the little eye slits I saw in Egypt are definitely creepy. But I was soothed and uplifted by the call to prayer of the muezzin (sic) from the tops of the minarets of the mosques throughout the day. God and worshipping God is folded into everyday life and I Liked That.

Egyptian writer - highly recommended

2010-03-19T07:54:00.000-07:00

While in Egypt recently, I was turned onto a wonderful writer, Alaa Al Aswany. "The Yacoubian Building" was a great read and a breakthrough novel in Egypt, as it deals with sexuality in a frank way that is, apparently, new to the literature there. You come away understanding, among other things, why young men turn to jihad. (Actually there are two kinds of hijad - the spiritual struggle everyone faces in one way or another - and the radical political type which the vast majority of Muslims deplore). Al Aswany has also written a novel called "Chicago" I am eager to read.

The surprising happiness of young women in Egypt

2010-03-15T06:53:00.000-07:00

Back from intense trip to Egypt and no this blog will NOT be about the ancient and awesome attractions. Per usual, my favorite activity was watching people. In the virtually unliveable city of Cairo, my eye was drawn over and over to the young women - to their joie de vivre. 99% with heads covered, they have made scarfs a Muslim Fashion Statement - you go girls. Required modesty is pushed to its limits: no bare arms allowed but they wear tight tunics over tight jeans and boots. This was endearing but the quality that drew my attention was their lightheartedness everywhere they strolled, in groups, alone, with boyfriends (all in jeans), an intoxication with life that I realized is sadly missing from their much less limited, far more affluent American counterparts. I haven't worked this out at all. The unemployment in Egypt for university graduates is huge. Few will find jobs in the fields they're trained for and are lucky to find waitress gigs etc. Single women don't - can't -live alone, etc., etc. Maybe a relatively innocent adolescence is their main advantage. To me, mother of a teenager, this is a priceless interlude for these Egyptian young women.

What a "good" review means to an author - aside from the obvious

2010-02-12T13:22:00.000-08:00

Writing books, especially novels, is the lonelinest game in town. Well, painting is up there too except I doubt it rarely takes 2 or 3 years to finish a piece of art. And then you go through the dance of getting published, if you're lucky. By then the poor author is like a poor lost soul staggering around and wondering - CAN ANYONE HEAR ME OUT THERE? So when you get a positive review,which you equate with an intelligent review, the gold ring is that Somebody Gets You. Or part of you. Whatever.

Writing "Gringa" was a huge undertaking for me, because I was compelled to examine all at once the creative process, the seduction of drugs therein, the 60's and 70' rebellion -and the always-mysterious country of Mexico. A couple of readers who posted reviews on Amazon confirmed for me that I had succeeded in this book. Modestly, of course, but I gotta tell you, it was a long time coming.

Why a writer shouldn't blog or widget much

2010-02-04T13:46:00.000-08:00

I spend a freakish amount of time trying to "upload" videos and photos to all of these "sites" that promise me gazillions of viewers, possibly millions of them potential
buyers of my wares, such as the new and improved "Gringa in a Strange Land." widgets, tweeters, "friends," and blog blog blog! It's like a slowly-creeping addiction, cutting into my writing time and it's hard enough to get me to put my backside in a chair and try to think as it is. Yet now I feel compelled to join all these sites - maybe this will be the one! And I end up writing this "blog" about the silliness of blogs. What next?

A bad review is better than no review: "Gringa in a Strange Land"

2010-01-25T13:36:00.000-08:00

Years ago my agent told me when I was a callow young author, sniffling over a snarky anonymous review of my first book, that a "bad review is better than no review at all." This was supposed to cheer me up? But oddly it did, in time. The snarky review was eventually buried under a pile of good reviews (plus a couple of lukewarm ones). And like the dear dancers in "A Chorus Line," I learned to take it on the chin. Not that it doesn't still hurt when somebody beats up on my latest baby, but you move on.
Reviews of "Gringa," in blog posts of people who knit and also read books, cannot be expected to be glowing for a book of this kind. The protagonist, Erica, is a difficult personality. Why doesn't she just shake off her low, mean feelings and stop the pharmaceuticals? But no: she's a drug addict, let's face it, although like most of her tribe, there's a lot more to her than that. But she doesn't knit, that's for sure.

Ennui in a strange land

2010-01-20T14:06:00.000-08:00

Ennui is such a nice word. Because it's in French of course. It makes boredom and all of its relatives sound - well, romantic. Soulful. Even the intelligent thing to be in this cra-azy world. "Gringa in a Strange Land" is as much about "real" ennui as anything else. The motor oil of addiction, I'd say. People wandering around in tropical beauty as if they were in a hellish atmosphere - say, New York City in l975, which is where protagonist Erica Mason goes after getting off the 'ludes. But that's a story for another day. I deliberately left Erica hanging because I just knew she had another book in her! the question is whether the author has that book in her: I suspect she does. Ennui and addiction are not so easily defeated. Stay tuned.

Gringa and substance abuse

2010-01-14T10:25:00.000-08:00

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that readers and reviewers who have contacted me about "Gringa in a Strange Land" aren't focusing too much on the play of the substance use and abuse, and the underlying attitudes that
fuel Erica's addiction and her isolation. I did deliberately weave in this "theme" as part of the overall story, because I personally am much more interested in how someone lives, thinks, decides, reacts, etc., than in a drone about their constant intake of mood-changing chemicals. That said, Erica Mason is, once the exotic setting is stripped away, a kind of
"garden variety" addict in the making. Trapped in a chronic self-regard as
she struggles to have relationships with other people. I feel mostly sadness for her. But as someone did remark, she gradually approaches a realization that she is trapped. Does she get there? That's for the reader to judge.

Blog tour for "Gringa in a Strange Land" -- oh those questions!

2010-01-08T07:59:00.000-08:00

So I'm on this "virtual book tour" - a ghostly abstract experience!
Interviews from unseen forces, like behind the screen in "The Wizard of Oz" and I'm little Dorothy...Nah. I'm better than that!
Favorite question so far: What is a secret you've never told anyone?
Answer: If I told you it wouldn't be a secret.
Or: I'm intimate with my dog. NO!!!
What does the above have to do with writing? As usual, not too much.
At least no one has asked me Where Do You Get Your Ideas. I'd leave town,
I'd - smoke a cheroot. What Ideas?
As anyone who May Be Reading This Blog can see, I'm in a frisky mood. Hasta la vista.
P.S. Please do visit www.pumpupyourboook.com to Read All About It

Video of "Gringa in a Strange Land"

2010-01-03T17:42:00.000-08:00

Puerto Paradiso in Hell

2010-01-01T07:36:00.000-08:00

In "Gringa in a Strange Land," main character Erica Mason lands apparently by chance on a remote beach called Puerto Paradiso - Paradise. This was, I think, an inside joke my subconscious played on me as the writer: a (positive) twist on wonderful Malcolm Lowry's hellish physical images for the alcoholic Consul in "Under the Volcano." I didn't realize that I was drawing on "Volcano" influences until after I'd written the book and I let this one stay (as I also let the carnival rides stay in the Oaxaca parts - carnivals are everywhere in Mexico, after all.) Lowry's Consul was hellishly in hell. My Erica was in hell in paradise. Which is worse?

Jean Rhys and Erica Mason - What does a great writer have in common with my "Gringa"?

2009-12-27T13:42:00.000-08:00

I was 25 when I discovered the novels of Jean Rhys - "After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie," "Good Morning, Midnight" "Voyage in the Dark" etc. Rhys's writing, as much as Malcolm Lowry in "Under the Volcano" had a direct and deep effect on me and of course, on my writing. Both writers were self-exiled, driven to the page, and - alcoholics. Since I was also all three, I was dangerously suspectible to worshipping at their clay feet. My alter-ego Erica Mason in "Gringa in a Strange Land" (originally titled "After Leaving America" in homage to Rhys) became lit with the sacred-seeming fire of the obsessive-compulsive mind-set of the questing young addictive personality.
Back then, I had no notion of a world beyond the dark tunnel that I (and Erica) were traveling. There is so much hunger (as well as thirst) in the addict who hasn't yet been dulled or cut down by age or too many consequences. Now I have just finished reading a biography of Jean Rhys called "Blue Hour." The author, as is usual with books about alcoholics/addicts doesn't understand the illness that eats away dignity, hope and any possibility of healthy connectedness. Rhys's story is like the thousands I have heard by now at A.A. meetings: She drank too much, she got into trouble, her life became limited to a room and a bottle. She wrote some wonderful books but like Malcolm Lowry, these were chiefly marvelous meditations on her disease. And things got worse and worse, until the end.
Now, Erica Mason in "Gringa in a Strange Land" is at the other, fresher opening chapters of the repellant agonies of alcoholism. I can't and won't give away the ending, only to say that there is a suggestion of something unexpected. How I wish that Jean Rhys might have had that.

Why Penguin Paperbacks saved my sanity in Mexico

2009-12-24T12:05:00.000-08:00

It's back in the early l970's in Merida, the old "white city," as it's called because, presumably,of the silver-white brilliance of the local stone used in building this beautiful old town - some of it on top of the ruins of the Mayan city that precluded it. The "cuidad blanca" is now largely grey with the grime of hundreds of years of not taking a bath. But I digress...Down these old, narrow streets I go, just as Erica Mason, the maincharacter of my novel "Gringa in a Strange Land," goes. In search of books to read. I'm jonesing for a television to flop down in front of, a movie to divert me for a couple of hours, but there is none of that here for me. (Yes they have tvs and movies but the former is expensive and also all are Spanish productions, which back then meant lousy. No public libraries to indulge a lifelong escapist love of books either (years later, the then-thriving American community organized one.) So it's paperback time. There is only one place where I find them. All imported British Penguins and my introduction (and Erica Mason's), to a range of delicious new fiction, from Doris Lessing to all of Graham Greene and many others. They are not cheap but just affordable, savored and luxuriated in. Later I read that George Bernard Shaw came up with the concept of quality paperbacks because he wanted the masses to have access to books. Another reason to love GBS.

YouTube - Gringa in a Strange Land by Linda Dahl

2009-12-14T08:58:00.000-08:00

YouTube - Gringa in a Strange Land by Linda Dahl

New video of "Gringa" on the web

2009-12-10T08:41:00.000-08:00

So I'm working on publicity for "Gringa" madly, which I'm happy to do, even if means I am not writing very much - but after all, it's the holidays. This new video I just previewed will soon be up on the web like Youtube and so on. It captures the essence of what I was trying to write beautifully and has perfect music to go with it. It's strange as a writer to have a book inhabit your mind for so long and then see it translated visually. Never had a film made of any of my books although there have been feelers - Mary Lou Williams is a great character as is Susannah McCorkle and actually there is a "little interest" out there about doing a biopic of Susannah right now.

"Interviewing" Erica Mason

2009-12-08T13:06:00.000-08:00

So I interviewed a select character for a virtual book-tour blog
and to my surprise, it turned out to give me unexpected insight into
my anti/heroine Erica Mason, the ol' counterculture gal of "Gringa in a Strange Land" fame. The most interesting thing I learned? How much she is her own "person," how far she has traveled from me, her creator! For instance, Erica turns out to be annoyed with me for not stressing her "positive qualities" more in the book. In turn, I argued that her drug addiction had depleted and darkened her life such that it was a struggle to find her assets, but that I had in fact tried to do so. Erica sees herself - I mean then, back in the early 70's of "Gringa," as heroic in a way, while I admitted to more mixed feelings. We agreed not to talk about the years since "Gringa," as who knows? There might be a sequel someday!

The Cancer Clinic in Merida

2009-12-04T08:41:00.000-08:00

In "Gringa in a Strange Land," I wrote a chapter called, starkly, "Death."
Some of it was based on my own experience. Recently I found the medical record of my stay at a cancer clinic in Merida, Yucatan, in l974. The saga of finding a lump in your breast is familiar to women, but my experience was, I think, fairly unique. The notion of health insurance in those days was practically unheard of for a young expat living in a foreign country. My ordeal was frightening enough. I landed in a clinic for indigents, and spent spent two days and nights in a black hole in space from whatever anesthesia was given me. Happily, I did not have cancer, as it turned out.
But I also had a unique opportunity to live with, for the three days I was at the clinic, some of what Franz Fanon called "the wretched of the earth," the poor peasants who had no health care, or knowledge of such things as cancer, in their villages. Most of them were in an advanced state of the disease by the time they landed at the Clinic. Their loves ones bore powerless witness to their suffering.

Getting busted in Mexico; well, almost

2009-12-02T17:21:00.000-08:00

Getting really sick in a foreign country in the 70's was about as bad as getting busted and thrown into a foreign jail. In Merida where I lived, all the gringos I knew kept the memory of the poor schmuck who had gotten busted and was serving l0 years! in the "carcel" - all for being a peddler of pot - well, on a pretty big scale. The jails were filthy and disgusting and half-starved the inmates, though the locals were lucky in one sense: they had family to bring them food, medicine, etc. Come to think of it, everything could and can be bought in the jail, so this gringo was probably doing ok for himself in that regard. It was curious: All of us were scared shitless by the possibility of ending up in the Mexican pokey but it didn't stop anybody from smoking and trading in marijuana.
My own brush with the law came well into my stay in Merida. At that time, there weren't many of us gringos there - now it's like Florida or something. I stuck out. I hung out with known potheads, etc. I didn't sell the stuff but when I came across really primo weed, I would buy some for myself. This one day I had a pretty substantial amount in my livingroom and I had just smoked part of a j, when there was a knock on my door. After I threw a piece of cloth over the pot, I cracked open the door and there they were: three Federales, the "real" police not the local guys. They were in their worm-colored uniforms. I did not invite them in. For about a lifetime, it felt, I stood on my porch and talked with them and was my most straight and charming young lady self, taking care not to get too close to them so they wouldn't smell the pot emanating from me. They kept asking to go inside. This was all going to cost me a lot of money, which I didn't have. Finally,inspiration: I began to mention names of some of my (ne're do well) friends, the ones connected to money and in one fortunate case, a son of a high-level politician, and mentioned I was going to call them so could I have the gentlemen's names por favor? Ah, I was connected! I could see the disappointment in the way their shoulders sagged. The Federales drifted away and I went inside, checked to make sure all the doors and windows were locked, and then lit the half-smoked joint.

Homesick for the "Holidays" in the Yucatan

2009-12-01T09:45:00.000-08:00

Today is the lst of December and immediately panic bubbles up like a natural reflex. Concerts, parties, the annual ritual of watching my very non-alcoholic friend get drunk this one night out of the year, the red velvet skirt? or should I just wear jeans.
I spent one holiday season in Guayaquil, Ecuador, and one in Merida, Yucatan and neither one did the trick for me. Apparently I have this belief that Christianity is really only for snowy lands (like my grandparents' Norway) although how often do we have snow for Christmas anymore? Not here in New York (Hudson Valley area). But the idea of batting away flying cockroaches (Guayaquil) while decking the halls with palm fronds, or eating Christmas dinner at the Cafe Express after opening the little package from Home I'd picked up the day before at Wells Fargo - nah, it just didn't make it for me. I was always aware of being a gringa in a strange land on any holiday, and shamefacedly wishing I could "Go Home Again."

Favorite Latin American writers

2009-11-30T16:44:00.000-08:00

There are a number of writers mentioned or quoted in "Gringa in a Strange Land" - Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel Garcia Marquez (of course), Malcolm Lowry - to whom I dedicated the book, actually - an Englishman who wrote THE book about alcoholism and estrangement in the country he lived in for a bit, with fairly disastrous results. (In the l940's).
One of my all-time favorites is Pedro Vargas Llosa and above all, his
"Conversacion en la Catedral," "Conversation in the Cathedral." Not at all a religious book, he was right on the cutting-edge of consciousness among
Latin Americans in the sixties and seventies. And that has always meant a political edge as well. 46PKP5DDV6TX HFJBHTH4MUNE

Modern Mayans and Green Gold

2009-11-30T07:34:00.000-08:00

Not long ago, I revisited the scene of "Gringa in a Strange Land,"the Yucatan, which I had gone back to once before, in the mid-80's. This time I went to visit a factory that processes the ubiquitous henequen cactus out of which rope and other stuff is made - sisal. This plantation (right word for it) was meticulously restored to l9th century/early 20th century exactness. With peasants doing the work, cutting, crushing, separating, weaving the plant's tough fibers. The "big house" has been restored,too, where the overseer, and occasionally, the owner and family, lived - not luxurious except by contrast with the round adobe huts of the workers. Sisal was called "green gold" for the owners.
The land is rubbly, dry, and yet it supports people and their food, somehow. An old Mayan Indian I met showed me how the "mother" cactus protects her "hijos" (children),covering them with the shade of her "brazos" (arms) from the fierceness of the sun. This old man looked over his rubbly, cactus-strewn field with all the satisfaction of a rich man surveying his hacienda.

The Beautiful Washerwoman

2009-11-25T06:44:00.000-08:00

In Merida, I had a lot of time on my hands. I used to sit on my small front patio, shaded by trees, drinking something cold and probably smoking a joint. I loved to watch the slow parade of passersby, like a scene from a Fellini movie. The ragman, appropriately dressed, with a wooden pushcart, efficiently recycling anything worth a few pesos. The ice-cream vendor who came around in the afternoon when the heat had dipped a few degrees. His near-melting cups of "Pinguino" pistachio green, mango. Eating a Pinguino always made me homesick, as did the occasional hamburger, a pale imitation of the real thing. The most striking person to pass was the washerwoman, tall, slim, with long black shiny hair covered by the great tin drum she held for all the distance from the rubbly "colonia" of the poor that stretched behind my street. She was a Veracruzana landed in the middle of the hot flat Yucatan plain, abandoned by her husband and washing laundry by hand for the priests' house up the street, the one with the blue Cadillac and the pool behind the high walls. When I left Merida, I gave her the bits and pieces I had acquired and she took my hands and kissed them. U6M64PMX385P

Gringo and gringa

2009-11-24T14:14:00.000-08:00

In dictionaries, "gringa" (and "gringo" for guys) gets a demeaning definition. Say for example -- some scrawny pale woman in a bikini, no longer young, possibly divorced, sipping a few (too many) margaritas by the pool and being served by buff brown young men who are only too willing to extend their services after-hours...Or just hordes of college kids making a spectacle of themselves at Cancun. Or back in the Day (the early l970's), these weird-looking drug-ingesting norteamericanos - like the scene in "Gringa" where Erica Mason is tripping her brains out in Oaxaca on magic mushrooms while a quiet but hostile crowd of Oaxaquenos look on...
However,"gringo/a" has other meanings. Like the "n" word and in fact, most derogatory terms, it is readily coopted by the very people it is meant to put down. This is proprietorial, though. Black kids on a subway can call each other the "n" word a million times, but I would not dare to do so (or want to do so!) And the way I came to understand the "g" word throughout my various episodes of living in Mexico, it is a specially weird American. There is a kind of grace to being a gringa, another layer of outsiderness.

Gringa in a Strange Land: influence of drugs on "the sound of music" in the sixties & seventies

2009-11-23T16:18:00.000-08:00

Gringa in a Strange Land: influence of drugs on "the sound of music" in the sixties & seventies

influence of drugs on "the sound of music" in the sixties & seventies

2009-11-23T08:29:00.000-08:00

To be really alienated in the 60's-70's, if you were a teenager/twenty-something, you had to NOT be into rock music. This was easy for me: hearing Miles Davis, Billie Holiday, then the truly psychedelic Charlie Parker etc etc. This musical switch instantly meant not hanging out with the pot and acid heads at the "festivals" where people crashed in the dirt, or in Woodstock's case, the mud. Don't get me wrong, I'm not against the greats of that era. Jimi H probably above all. But once you get into jazz, it's like getting into chess, it's an intensely inward experience that requires ears at full mast, brain cells snapping. Oddly, pot "fit" into both rock and jazz. Or seemed to. Years later, all cleaned up and shiny-eared, a musician pointed out to me that when they were high, musicians warped or dragged the time. Since a very large percentage of jazz players (and singers) were frequently under the influence of some chemical or another, one could argue that this is an integral aspect of the music. Sounds good anyway.

Panchita the Monkey Discovers Boys

2009-11-20T08:51:00.000-08:00

So I wasn't thinking, was I, when I "adopted" baby spider monkey Panchita? The crucial thing was she had the freedom to come and go to her trees and lived in the right climate. Tropical. Downside: She began to expand her territory to other trees, despoiling neighbors' fruit and merrily throwing down the clothes that everybody dried outside on lines or in the more traditional Mexican manner, on bushes. When I took her with me on ill-advised bus jaunts, I had to wrap her in swaddling clothes because monkeys are not house- trainable. One day I bought a roll of thick cotton and fashioned diapers for her, cutting out a hole for her tail, but she usually managed to get out of them. All this was a drag. Then she suddenly grew up. Boom, one day she became like a teenager in full cry, sullen, anxious, wandering off past her curfew and got lost. I finally found her about searching the rubbly back streets of the colonia where we lived. Somehow, someway, she sensed a male spider monkey in the vicinity. This was the beginning of the end. Tantrums, sulks, speed-like energy fits. She had discovered boys and that was that. The end was not happy - for me. She wandered off again and I never found her. I cried. No, I sobbed. I was bereft. I got drunk and cried some more and I let her go. All I could do was hope that she had found the chango of her dreams and was living happily with him wherever he was in Merida.

Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald

2009-11-18T17:00:00.000-08:00

Asked to talk about Sarah and Ella for a radio documentary program KEXP out of Seattle. So I've been dusting off my old sides - LP's - collected during the early 70's mostly. Tons of good stuff and drek. Sarah Vaughan - "Bashful Matador?" "A Sinner Kissed an Angel?" Ella of course with "A Tisket A Tasket." Listening to stuff for hours and hours (this is the kind of work I love to do, just sit there listening) and remembering the late 60's, when I first heard jazz. Big love affair. Going to Chicago to Mister T's gigantic record shop on the South Side with my brilliant crazy scientist friend from Madison and his Chinese wife. We'd be the only white people in the store or on the street. Buying "cut-outs" for $l.98. Big splurge was 7 or 8 dollars. Always stoned on pot when listening to jazz, always. Had to re-learn how to listen when I stopped that nonsense. Sarah was my favorite, introducing me to great old songs from the past. Who was Stella "by Starlight?" The golden voice and Ella, lovely in a slightly older, swing-era way, was the silver voice.

My Mexican monkey, myself

2009-11-17T08:18:00.000-08:00

I had been out of college a little more than a year when I moved to Mexico. The plan was to slowly wander down into Central America and maybe somehow into South America, the motherland. The obstacle in l974 wasn't chutzpah, it was money. Always money. I knew I could live very cheaply but I also was vaguely aware that the money I had saved, working in a 9 to 5 advertising agency at the lowest level (except for the cleaning lady), and - I'm not proud of it - selling pot to my friends, would not last forever. Still, I was by then pretty familiar with Latin America and figured I could always teach English. I had spent almost a year living in Guayaquil, Ecuador after high school (Coming of Age in Ecuador, my quasi-novella in Come Back, Carmen Miranda), worked for the Quakers in Sonora, Mexico, l971, worked at a dig in Chiapas l972). I ended up in the Yucatan, got no further, but it was far enough. When I rescued the baby spider monkey, Panchita, I experienced my first longings for motherhood. She insisted on this. She would sit watching and imitating me for hours, my gestures, my noises. She could laugh. But she could not cry. She was very possessive and jealous and once chased away the only important almost relationship I had with a man, shrieking and attacking him when we kissed. She became so violent that he had to leave. It's funny now but it wasn't then. nbsp; Panchita was my main relationship in Mexico. When it came to writing Gringa in a Strange Land, I left her out of the mix.

Radio show - on Sarah Vaughan and Ella

2009-11-16T07:41:00.000-08:00

This week I'll do a conversation about two of the best jazz singers ever, Sarah and Ella, for a program out of Seattle. Over the years, as one of the 21/2 or so females writing about jazz, I became a kind of "expert" since I'd written Stormy Weather, a history of women in jazz still in print - since '84. And then books about two women totally different in every way, shape or form, except they both loved, and performed, jazz. (Mary Lou Williams and Susannah McCorkle). Ella and Sarah set the standard for a certain kind of singer: the musically hip and daring jazz singer, with a knowledge of harmonics and rhythm that put them on a par with the best players. Sarah, in particular, coming up with the fantastic brilliant set of "modern" players, fit into the ferocity of talent of the bop era, though of course she went beyond that. She was willing to shuffle, even throw away, a lyric in her musical drive. More on these two great ladies later. I get a plug for Gringa in a Strange Land, too.

The Monkey Panchita has Visions in her Tree

2009-11-13T07:11:00.000-08:00

As Barbara and I watched her, horrified but fascinated, Panchita, now stoned on mushrooms, began pacing up and down the tiled floors of the house, pausing to shake her head from time to time and staggering slihgtly. "Panchita, vente, ven aca." (I was convinced she only undrstood Spanish). She ignored my calls to her, absorbed in her disintegrating, reordering visual field. Normally a loud, busy pre-teen, she was strangely quiet now. Until she headed for the old tree outside the front door. For the next hour or so, Panchita treated us to a spectacular show, hurling herself from branch to branch, spinning on her tail - all her usual maneuvers except with what I can only describe as a hallucinogenic twist. The show ended when she miscalculated an acrobatic turn and went crashing down to the ground. I had seen her fall before as she taught herself to fly through the trees. After all, she had no mother or extended family to teach her, as she would have if she'd been snatched as a baby somewhere in the Lacandon. Instinctively, Panchita knew how to fall, rolling into a ball limply. Head still shifting as she followed the swirls and shooting lights from the mushroom trip, she let out one of her fantastic cries. You could hear Panchita for miles, I think. Then she stuck to me like glue for the rest of the day.

The Monkey eats the magic mushrooms...

2009-11-12T12:55:00.000-08:00

Poor little Panchita. For all my animal-loving friends (and foes?) out there, let me make it perfectly clear: I am against all cruelty to animals and hardly ever blew marijuana smoke into my cat's face back in the day. That said, accidents happen. The cute, mommy-deprived little spider monkey, soon named Panchita, that I rescued from a cage in the hot, dirty mercado in Merida in l974, was given the best life possible. She had access to and fro the screenless windows in my little house and grazed upon avocado trees, bananas, whole wheat bread and yoghrt. She was a delightful if very naughty and incontinent companion (fortunately she almost always "went" outdoors and if not, hosing down the tiles with water and ammonia was a simple, if unpleasant task for me.

Then came the day she got into the magic mushrooms that some hippie friend or other had dropped off as a "gift," stored in some sort of oil in a screw-top jar and, frankly, forgotten by me. I was pretty much past the psychedelic stage by then. My American friend Barbara was visiting and one day we came home from some shopping to find the jar smashed on the ground. My main concern was first for glass fragments, either swallowed or cutting into Panchita, but we accounted for all of them. Though greedy, it was Panchita's monkey nature with fruit to take one, maybe two bites of a fruit, then discard it. So luckily she had only eaten a small amount of the magic hongos. What followed was hilarious...stay tuned.

Monkey Rescue from Merida market

2009-11-11T07:20:00.000-08:00

One afternoon in l974, walking through the ancient dank alleys of the huge Merida market, filled with unreasonably-colored great mounds of what I always thought of as mole (as in mol-ay) mix, I came upon a sidestreet that was new to me. Cages of brilliant-colored chirping birds, mostly - and that is what the people of Merida seemed to like as pets by and large - a few puppies, snakes, lizards. And a tiny sad baby spider monkey. I stopped in my tracks. Smitten, in instant love. (It didn't help that I had just smoked some good mota with my layabout Mexican friends in a V.W. before being dropped off at the entrance of the market to do my shopping). I felt a calling - to rescue this adorable little child who was so well, human-like, in her gestures - pushing out her arms imploringly, fixing me with a huge sad look, whimpering. Thus began the saga: la gringa loca y su changita. That crazy gringa and her little monkey! I called her Panchita...

Creating Titles: Like..."Thirst"?

2009-11-08T14:18:00.000-08:00

At one point, I considered titling what is now "Gringa in a Strange Land" simply "Thirst." Often life revolved around finding liquids to pour down your throatt, over your body, in that flat, ultra-dry scrub land called Yucatan (or most of it seems to be that way). No air-conditioning in the l970's unless you were rich or staying at a classy hotel - again, rich. Those Casablanca whirring ceiling fans were everywhere by then, thank God. Imagine before electricity! The heat was like a silent fierce sucking machine, the year I lived in Merida. I lost 20-25 pounds, was 5 feet 5 and weighed 98 lbs. at my grimmest, got to experience what it's like to sit in a chair with no padding. I simply lost the desire to eat and lived on licuados - fruit smoothies - cold beer, mineral water and the occasional cheese sandwich.