My recent retirement from full-time teaching to the status of research professor at University of California-Santa Barbara (UCSB) encouraged me to come out, so to speak. Shirley Geok-lin Lim More Quotes by Shirley Geok-lin Lim More Quotes From Shirley Geok-lin Lim Sometimes the taproot and the vines are far apart. Like English and the Asian poem. Shirley Geok-lin Lim vines asian sometimes The foot can march or it can dance, but it cannot stand still until end-stopped. Shirley Geok-lin Lim march ends feet Singing has nothing to do with poetry, except as twins separated at birth. Shirley Geok-lin Lim birth singing twins Breath and brevity are sisters; the long-winded is an enemy who muffles your heartbeat. Shirley Geok-lin Lim heartbeat long enemy Rather, the collapsing between act and condition, "I am" with "I do," feels like authenticity, an authenticity of being. The muse rewarded me for a few months, after April of 2012, by giving me poems, almost a poem each day, that I can claim as coming from my writer's status. Shirley Geok-lin Lim months each-day giving Note, the reply will not be "I write," an act that I have, after all, been performing since I was nine. Shirley Geok-lin Lim notes nine writing These commonplace categories - wife, mother, housewife, teacher - are in fact teleological referents. They gesture to profound states of being that animate, absorb and saturate the subject, like indelible dyes spilled repeatedly over a plain fabric. No matter if the fabric is sturdy or delicate, translucent or opaque, those dyes will stain. They will color the days and years and life. Shirley Geok-lin Lim color mother teacher Sometimes, in my published complaints about not being a writer, I have recalled the prospect - the yearning to be a writer - as it first formed for me. Shirley Geok-lin Lim yearning sometimes firsts In various memoir pieces, I have traced the trajectory of yearning through decisions made, good and bad, that had somehow kept the ambition on track. Shirley Geok-lin Lim track decision ambition John Milton famously claimed, "Fame is the spur" for the poet, and indeed when we consider the six years he spent writing Paradise Lost, and the additional years revising it, from 1664 to 1674, we may allow that spur. Shirley Geok-lin Lim spurs writing years I do not think a similar goal, to attain fame, drove me when I was a child and young woman. Shirley Geok-lin Lim goal children thinking In Among the White Moon Faces, I wrote about my desire to be a writer as rooted in my obsessive hours of reading English novels and poetry. It was that spur, that desire, that pushed me to set aside love and marriage in my early twenties. Shirley Geok-lin Lim moon reading white Of course, among the confused motives that spurred me toward being a writer was also the desire to look, to be above the trees and rooftops, beyond the Malaysian horizon that circumscribed my life. Shirley Geok-lin Lim confused desire tree I was driven, as have been many writers, both by a repulsion of the childhood home's narrow confines and a desire to reach further, to keep desiring more of a future not yet imagined and not yet written down. Shirley Geok-lin Lim childhood desire home That desire to reach further is also where I ended my memoir, in 1994 in California, perhaps ironically, looking out to the Pacific and back to Asia, toward the not-yet-written. Shirley Geok-lin Lim asia california desire In some ways it is absurd for me to assert, counter to evidence, that I have not been writing. Shirley Geok-lin Lim absurd writing way Even my novels offer passages in which the major character is imagined as a writer. In Joss and Gold, Li An is a business writer who edits her company's weekly public relations magazine. And in Sister Swing, Suyin writes human interest stories for a free, local community paper, The Asian Time. Shirley Geok-lin Lim swings writing character When someone asks me now, "What do you do?" I will be able to say, "I am a writer." Shirley Geok-lin Lim ask-me asks able Philosophy is a bad master for poetry; religion worse; and politics self-serving will never serve the Muse. Shirley Geok-lin Lim muse self philosophy The crows that are predatory are something you have to deal with. For me, they also become associated with cancer cells. Shirley Geok-lin Lim crow cancer cells
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