"Roadside Flowers"

Yellow Grass Field, Chromogenic Print by Karen Bell

Summer is warming up, and for each month I've a story coming out: 

June for the dancing bear in "Surrey with the Fringe on Top" at This Land Press. 

July for photos taken in wartime in "Roadside Flowers" at R. kv. r. y Quarterly.

August for an afternoon at the Berlin Zoo in "Gorilla," forthcoming in Animal Literary Magazine.

Here is JULY! With thanks to Mary Akers at R. kv. r. y Quarterly for publishing "Roadside Flowers," and pairing it with Karen Bell's photograph, "Yellow Grass Field." A stunning straight horizon of tall grasses against a white sky, it's a photo that James, the main character of this story might have taken.

Points of Connection

A Conversation with Bich Minh Nguyen

“In August 1965 a woman named Rose walked into my grandfather’s café in Saigon.

That much is known. My grandfather would say that’s the beginning of this story.

My mother would say I should have left it at that.”

So begins Bich Minh Nguyen’s much-praised second novel, “Pioneer Girl.” As in her memoir, “Stealing Buddha’s Dinner,” and her first novel, “Short Girls,” thematic points of connection–places of origin, family relationships, and comforts of food–are laid out before us, each influencing the next, each as important as the others. These points are textured by differences between the first and second generations of immigrant families, the feelings of belonging and not belonging, and the weight of lives that lead from east to west, all the while anchored in both places.

These points of connection are exactly what I love about Nguyen’s books. There is the sense of geography, which spans from Vietnam to the Midwest to the West all the way to the Pacific, which leads back to Vietnam. There are the relationships, close and distant, caring and complicated, between sisters, grandmothers, fathers, uncles, grandfathers, mothers, brothers, and friends. And then there is the food: from all-you-can-eat childhood comforts to the more mature market-grazing of peaches and oysters, white wine and lemon-lavender cake, and throughout the years, the love of banh mi and cha gio and pho and, ultimately, the shared love of eating.

Nguyen approaches these elements with the consideration and concern of a scholar, yet invites her readers in with the ease of a storyteller, her intricate narratives threading through terrain that is as tough as it is touching, revealing characters we come to care about.

“Pioneer Girl” by Bich Minh Nguyen

Thank you, Bich, for agreeing to this interview. You’ve had an incredible year, what with the publication of “Pioneer Girl,” moving from your longtime home in the Midwest to the Pacific Coast, and joining the MFA in Writing Program faculty at the University of San Francisco. Do you see a parallel between your own move to the West Coast and the travels of the narrator, Lee Lien, in “Pioneer Girl,” as well as those of Rose Wilder Lane, the mysterious subject of concern in the novel? 

Thanks for inviting me to do this interview!

I wanted to write a book that brought together some of my enduring obsessions: the immigrant experience in the United States; the “Little House on the Prairie” books; and bad food in small towns. In “Pioneer Girl” the city of San Francisco becomes hugely significant to more than one character; it was also the place where Rose Wilder Lane, Laura Ingalls Wilder’s daughter and editor/co-author, became a writer in the early 1900s. When I wrote “Pioneer Girl,” I’d been living in the Midwest for years. I also grew up in Michigan and have spent more time in the Midwest than anywhere else. I had no idea I would leave. But by the time the novel was finished and edited, I had accepted a job in San Francisco. I think what I share with Rose Wilder and Lee Lien is a sense of restlessness, or at least an understanding of that feeling. Neither Rose nor Lee wants to “bloom where they are planted”; they want to roam. They feel the tug of family obligation but also the longing for adventure. I felt many of these complications myself, growing up in a small city in Michigan in the 1980s.

The Midwest

For some, small-town America, as in Sherwood Anderson’s “Winesburg, Ohio,” generates a feeling of distress, of feeling trapped and wanting to escape. Your novel, “Pioneer Girl,” and your husband Porter Shreve’s novel, “The End of the Book,” in a way a sequel to Anderson’s book, approach this idea of entrapment with the sensibility and firsthand knowledge of town life in the Midwest.

Lee Lien, of “Pioneer Girl,” questions her family’s choice to remain in the Midwest, once they settle in the Chicago suburbs and open their own café, after years of moving from town to town through a series of Asian buffet jobs. In “Stealing Buddha’s Dinner” you wonder at your father’s strength in bringing your family to the Midwest after the Fall of Saigon and at his decision never to leave. Do you think the Midwest will always inform your writing?

It’s true—Porter and I both wrote novels that deal with real-life literary figures, family duty, and the Midwestern feeling of isolation. We didn’t read each other’s work until we had pretty solid drafts and even then, it took us a while to realize we were on similar thematic tracks. I think it must have been because we were both in the midst of questioning where we were, geographically. We had ended up in Indiana for academic jobs and we had two young kids. We’ve both moved quite a bit, but having kids made us more anxious about where we wanted to be. The back-of-the-mind questions became daily ones: Are we going to stay? Do we want to live somewhere else? Where? What are the risks, gains, and consequences of leaving and starting over? Inevitably, these questions also came out in our writing and in our characters.

I’m sure the Midwest will always inform my writing because I am essentially Midwestern; it’s where I grew up and it’s what I know. One of the aspects of geographical identity I wanted to explore in “Pioneer Girl” is how our childhoods are made by other people. As children, we have no control over where we live or where we grow up. But it informs so much and, as adults, we contend with it. Lee contends with it against her mother’s expectations. Rose Wilder hated growing up in Mansfield, Missouri and couldn’t wait to leave. My father gave me and my siblings the best childhood he knew how to give, and it started with his decision to leave his world behind and start over in the United States. No move I make could ever be so bold and brave. Now that I have kids, I am even more in awe of the burden and responsibility involved in his decision.

Bich, Anh, and their dad – Grand Rapids, Michigan – mid-1970s

In “Pioneer Girl” you have created remarkable moments between the first- and second-generation members of an immigrant family. You’ve shown the conflicting sense of guilt and sense of responsibility, as well as the loyalty and memories that bind one to family. The daughter Lee’s relationship with her mother is seemingly no-win, the mother always disapproving, criticizing. Yet Lee tries to imagine why her mother is this way, and generosity, understanding, and compassion rise above feelings of shame, anger, and guilt. The grandfather, Ong Hai, is nonjudgmental, always understanding and optimistic, always caring and loving without agenda. His is true unconditional love. And the brother, Sam– first-born, the son, “spoiled”–separates himself from family by disappearing.

Could you comment about these relationships, how you found a way to describe them so deftly, focusing on each character, keeping their wants and needs distinctive and yet tied together, so that family remains the true collective sum of its individual members?

I wanted to explore the way people take on certain roles in a family and how sometimes those roles are given. You know—that’s the artsy kid, that’s the athletic kid, that’s the good one, that’s the wild child. These identifiers can be only partly true because they’re too reductive. But once they get made they can be hard to shake; they can end up becoming self-fulfilling prophecies. Yet everyone has a secret self, a set of secret beliefs and feelings: this is who I really am, and no one else knows it. Lee feels this for herself, but it takes a while for her to realize that’s true of everyone else in her family too. She thinks she knows her mother so well, but there are, of course, hidden wells. The same goes for Sam and Ong Hai.

I also wanted to explore the way families make their own myths. Laura Ingalls Wilder and Rose Wilder did that through the “Little House” books—and they fought quite a bit while working on them. Most families have internal and often passive-aggressive struggles for power: who gets to control the narrative of the family story? In “Pioneer Girl” Lee’s mother seems to be in control, but Lee begins to question that. She does and does not want to be the good daughter. Obligation is inescapable in most families, I would guess, and not just Asian ones. And it’s a major factor in the conflict between the first and second generations in immigrant families. I wanted to find ways to show that conflict emerging, not just in big fights, but in everyday interactions.

Bich and her sister, Anh

“Short Girls” by Bich Minh Nguyen

Early in your novel “Short Girls,” the chapters alternating between two sisters’ viewpoints, the character Linny has a moment of understanding and empathy for her older sister, Van. She “thought of her sister driving through her subdivision in Ann Arbor, decelerating, directing the car into the driveway. She pictured Van just sitting there, almost unwilling to move. How well Linny knew that feeling… a mixture of relief and dread. Now I have to get out of the car, she thought at those times. And she always did, even though she dreamed of driving on without a map… For the first time, it occurred to Linny that maybe her sister had fantasized that very same thing.”

Would you speak about your process of approaching the tougher, more emotional concerns of relationships, especially between siblings?

Fiction writing requires empathy and understanding. In many ways, that’s why we read and why writers are born out of reading: we want to understand the lives and experiences of other people. “Short Girls” was partly inspired by my own relationship with my two older sisters and partly by Jane Austen’s “Sense and Sensibility” (a book I’ve loved since high school). My sisters and I aren’t much like Marianne and Elinor, or like Linny and Van. But we had, as those characters do, our ups and downs, our arguments and resentments. I remembered always trying to figure out my sisters when we were growing up. Why won’t they play dolls with me anymore? Why are they listening to that same Led Zeppelin record over and over? How do they know how to behave as girls? Do they like me? Are we going to get along today? I wanted to apply these feelings toward Linny and Van. They have to figure out how to see each other not just as sisters, bound by the common, irrefutable bond of a shared childhood experiences, but as people who are in some way essentially unknowable. By the way, I should say that my sisters and I get along great; it’s just much more interesting to explore the conflicts!

Noi and her sons

Bich, Anh, and their grandmother, Noi

Food, family bonds, and identity are recurring themes in your writing. One example of how these themes come together, and in which you pay beautiful tribute to you grandmother, Noi, is in the chapter “Cha Gio” of “Stealing Buddha’s Dinner.” When Noi prepares the ingredients of cha bio for Tet–the grated carrots, fish sauce, black pepper, mung bean noodles, the ground shrimp and pork–you recall the “forkful of filling on a triangle of banh trang spring roll wrapper,” Noi’s laughter and how later she would “pluck the cha gio from the frying pan,” and “the first anticipated bite, the sweet and peppery flavors of shrimp and pork and fish sauce weighted against the delicate crunch of the fried wrapper.” In Noi’s cooking there is love, as seen in the lines: “I ate slowly, trying to memorize the flavors, trying to know what my grandmother has always known: this amount of pepper, this amount of fish sauce. She had always been there to show me this world without measurements.”

Would you tell us more about how the world of tastes and meals, both Vietnamese and American, was influenced by family and friends, creating new ties and strengthening or complicating old ones, and how all this shaped your identity?

Food keeps appearing in my work because I think about it all the time! Don’t most of us? What should I have for breakfast, lunch, dinner? What’s in the refrigerator? Where should we eat? What should I make? I love thinking about food and reading about it; I love fulfilling a craving. I think I ended up writing “Stealing Buddha’s Dinner” because I realized that food was an expression of longing in my childhood, a marker for cultural and social contexts. At home, we ate Vietnamese food. Out in the world of small town Michigan in the 1980s, no one was eating that; they were eating peanut butter and jelly, Chef Boyardee, Hamburger Helper, and casseroles. So much of my experience growing up was about trying to figure out where I fit in as a child of immigrants. I felt totally American, yet could never “look” American enough; I was also Vietnamese, yet knew almost no Vietnamese at all. My relationship with identity became very complicated, but somehow my relationship with food did not. I loved Vietnamese food; I loved American food. No matter what else was happening around me, as long as I had the right food at the right time, then everything was going to be at least a little okay. I credit my grandmother Noi for instilling in me a great appreciation for good food. She truly enjoyed it—the process of cooking, the art of opening a pomegranate, the daily ritual of dinner—and so I did too.

“Stealing Buddha’s Dinner” by Bich Minh Nguyen

“Throughout my childhood I wondered, so often it became a buzzing dullness, why we had ended up here [in Grand Rapids, Mich.], and why we couldn’t leave. I would stare at a map of the United States and imagine us in New York or Boston or Los Angeles… I was convinced people were happier out on the coasts, living in a nexus between so much land and water.” – from “Stealing Buddha’s Dinner”

Bich, now that you’ve landed decades later with your immediate family in San Francisco, a city on the Pacific Coast, do you feel a sense of happiness and possibly a connection—geographical, spiritual, or otherwise—to the distant coast of Vietnam?

I probably felt that way, growing up, because when you live in the Midwest you’re always being told that you’re in the middle of nowhere. Flyover land. But the Midwest—Michigan, Indiana, Illinois—is where I’ve lived the most, and it wasn’t my life’s goal to move to New York or San Francisco. When the opportunity came up, my husband and I really debated it. It freaked me out, really, to imagine living on the west coast, in the Pacific time zone, far from everything I’ve known. Now we’re here in the East Bay and I’m still getting used to it in a sense—getting used to the fact that I chose to change my life. And that our kids are going to be Californian, which seems so strange. I wouldn’t say that living here gives me any particular connection to Vietnam or anything like that. But I do feel more comfortable, by which I mean normal.

Lemon-lavender cake, Twinkies, or a Top Pot hand-forged doughnut?

Lemon-lavender cake. I do love doughnuts though, and almost all kinds of homemade cakes. I love making old-fashioned bundt cakes and layer cakes.

And finally tell us something you’d like to be asked – from inspiration to breakfast to bliss!

Why the obsession with Laura Ingalls Wilder?

When I was a kid I read those “Little House” books until I practically memorized them. I loved the descriptions of food, the cozy evenings, the ongoing battle of farmer versus nature. When I reread the books as an adult, it occurred to me that maybe I loved them because the experiences of the Ingalls family—pioneers moving westward, homesteading, in the 1870s—was not unlike the experience of immigrants moving west to America. They’re parallel stories of heading out to unknown places and starting over. Though Laura and I had nothing in common on the surface, I felt a kinship with her. She knew what it was to be restless, to be shy and bookish, to want to stand out while also wanting to hide. She had longings for certain foods and material comforts. She had a great frenemy. She had secret rebellious thoughts. When I started researching the origin of the “Little House” books, I learned that her daughter Rose had heavily edited, perhaps even co-written, the books. Rose is an obscure figure now, but once upon a time she was more famous than her mother. And late in life she went to Vietnam, as a journalist, in 1965. When I learned about that literal connection between the “Little House” series and Vietnam—this was probably twenty years ago—I knew I would one day write something about it. I just didn’t know what it would be.

Bich Minh Nguyen

Bich Minh Nguyen’s most recent novel is “Pioneer Girl.” Her novel “Short Girls” was an American Book Award winner in fiction and a LIBRARY JOURNAL Best Book of the Year. Her memoir-in-essays, “Stealing Buddha’s Dinner” received the PEN/Jerard Award and was a CHICAGO TRIBUNE Best Book of the Year and a Kiriyama Prize Notable Book. Nguyen received an MFA in creative writing from the University of Michigan and has taught in the MFA Program at Purdue University and the MFA Program at the University of San Francisco. She has also coedited three anthologies of short stories and essays. She and her family recently moved to the Bay Area. 

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All photographs with permission of Bich Minh Nguyen.  

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The Poppy: An Interview Series

Four to six questions begin as pods, then burst open with answers, bright lapis, 

black-stamened, conspicuous—ornament, remembrance, opiate.

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First posted in the ARTS section of Hothouse Magazine.

NINE-STORY MOUNTAIN

“In the far west of Tibet, there is a mountain some call the CENTER OF THE WORLD… MOUNT KAILASH.”

The opening of Nine-Story Mountain, a documentary film directed by Augusta Thomson, reveals soaring blue skies and a wealth of white clouds and the Kora, the route pilgrims follow around Mount Kailash, a holy pilgrimage site. Originally from the Monadnock Region of New Hampshire, Thomson is a dynamic and engaged world citizen, now in her final year of studies in Archaeology and Anthropology at Oxford University. She has been involved in other documentary projects, including as Director Corporate Screenings and Outreach Coordinator for ongoing screenings of Girl Rising, a strong and stunning documentary about nine girls in developing countries, and how education has transformed their lives and their communities. The powerful message of Girl Rising has inspired a global movement for the right to education for girls around the world, just as the panoramic footage of Nine-Story Mountain will raise awareness about the cultural and environmental impact of pilgrimage practices in Tibet.

“Nine-Story Mountain charts the journey of three western researchers on a path of self-discovery, from Lhasa to Mount Kailash, Tibet… to understand the secrets of a mountain and landscape that have magnetized millions of people for centuries.”

Four young Tibetan Bon pilgrims come barreling down the incline. “So, so, so, so, so,” they sing as they run. When they are directly in front of me, they raise their hands. “Tashi delek,” they say. “Blessings and good luck.”

I am in western Tibet, on the path leading up to the highest point along the Mount Kailash pilgrimage route, or Kora, a significant site for many faiths—Buddhists, Hindus, Bonpo, and Jains. I carry my karma with me—a 40-pound backpack filled with assorted books, clothes, notebooks, snacks; a Canon d550; and a 35-pound tripod. With the aid of two expedition members, I am researching the material culture of pilgrimage—the offerings left by pilgrims along the sacred route and the rituals associated with them.

— from“The Purple Umbrella,” by Augusta Thomson, WellesleyMagazine, Summer 2013

“Not only does material culture have implications for spiritual devotion, but it also connects individuals and communities to the geographical landscape.”

Augusta, tell us about your background, your interest in Tibet, and how you came to filmmaking as a student of Anthropology and Archaeology?

People always ask me where my interest in Tibet came from. To be honest, I’m not entirely sure. Tibetans would say it’s Karmic. I do have one memory of when I was around thirteen and a group of Tibetan monks came to visit my middle school. They chanted for about an hour during an all-school assembly with these deep and haunted voices; during and afterwards I was completely transfixed.

Later, I did some research. And the more I learned about the Tibetan diaspora the more I felt compelled by Tibetan culture. I was intrigued by Buddhist philosophy, and especially, the concept of compassion. There was something so graceful about the way that Tibetans handled the Cultural Revolution and corresponding religious persecution. I thought then and still feel that grace like that is a valuable teaching tool.

Later, when I was studying at Wellesley College I remember watching my peers respond to academics and adopt career paths, and being struck by the realization that so many people seemed to be “running before they could walk.” They were filtering into finance jobs and career paths they hadn’t chosen intentionally, with self-awareness. It made me want to do something to help—to fill that gap. I decided to leave Wellesley and apply to Oxford University to study Archaeology and Anthropology—to learn more about alternative perspectives on the world and especially the culture of the Indo-Tibetan region. In the interim before the start of my first year I spent six months working on a Tibetan text preservation project in Cazadero County, California. For six months I worked in a bookbindery set up by the Nyingma Lama, Tarthang Tulku. I spent much of that time dyeing the sides of sacred Tibetan texts a traditional red hue, and preparing them for shipment to Bodh Gaya, India. Tarthang Tulku set up Yeshe De, the Buddhist text preservation project after fleeing Tibet during the Cultural Revolution and subsequently recognizing the need for cultural preservation through literature. Over the course of that time I developed a deep reverence for Tibetan culture, and especially, for the significance of cultural preservation in the Indo-Tibetan region. Every year the Lama funds a world peace ceremony in Bodh Gaya, India, the Monlam Chenmo, when thousands of monks and nuns pilgrimage to Bodh Gaya to receive offerings of the sacred texts prepared by Yeshe De—texts they might otherwise never have access to. To be honest, working in the bookbindery was the first time I felt wholly connected to a humanitarian project—probably because I could really see where it was going and how it was benefiting people. That sense of connection to the deeper intention behind the project was really transformative.

I never actually thought that I would make it to Tibet, and later, when I had the opportunity to launch an anthropological research expedition to study Tibetan culture, I realized the blessing of that opportunity. Tibetans and other pilgrims from different faith groups used to spend their whole lives dreaming of the chance to visit Kailash. In the past, pilgrims would walk or prostrate over 1000 kilometers from Lhasa to the Ngari Prefecture of Tibet just to visit the mountain.

To think that we would have the chance to live that dream was deeply humbling. And before Lara, Don, and I even left I remember thinking that we had to turn that gift into something more—a blessing for others—with the simultaneous purpose of memorializing the stories and myths of a mountain that are at risk of becoming lost. This film is our attempt at painting a picture of a mountain that deserves to be protected and preserved, as a landscape of peace.

“Nine-Story Mountain memorializes the sacred myths and stories surrounding Mount Kailash— myths and stories in need of preservation.”

Nine-Story Mountain focuses on “pilgrimage practices across the Tibetan plateau,” specifically around Mount Kailash. What is it about pilgrimage that calls to you?

As an anthropologist and artist, the concept of pilgrimage has long fascinated me. I am intrigued by the individualistic and community-focused elements of pilgrimage journeys, which seem to meander easily between the personal and the communal. For some time now I have been drawn to the ways that pilgrims cement their ties to transitional pilgrimage landscapes—either through storytelling, the construction of small shrines and sculptures, and/or the collection of photographs and other sacred mementoes in the landscape. Taken one step further, the material culture of pilgrimage might be viewed as a sort of meta-language, left by pilgrims in a sacred landscape, to connect them to the landscape, to past legends and stories, and to other pilgrims.

After sifting through assorted literature on pilgrimage I knew that I had to travel to Tibet. In Tibet pilgrimage is almost universal. Pilgrimage routes circle sacred monasteries, shrines, and even towns. Larger pilgrimage circuits weave from sacred monasteries to sacred lakes, on circuits stretching thousands of kilometers. Pilgrimage in Tibet is undertaken as an exercise in purification; pilgrims walk to cleanse their defilements and karma. Offerings comprise an ingrained part of Tibetan pilgrimage culture, as do stories and myths.

“As one of the few landscapes… where people of different and historically oppositional religious and cultural traditions can peacefully coexist, the story of the pilgrimage community begs viewers to consider how the mountain’s culture of tolerance might be a useful tool for different conflict zones around the world.”

“As some of the few westerners to make it into Tibet… they travel alone through an empty landscape, a landscape witness to changes most people will never have the chance to see.”

What did you, along with your fellow Oxford University researchers, experience and learn on the expedition across Tibet?

Over the course of five weeks we learned a landscape unlike any other we had ever experienced. Our amazing guide and Tibetan crew introduced us to locals and took us to locations off the beaten path to aid in our research. When we were on Kailash, our guide and translator, helped to facilitate the interview process, such that we captured never-before-seen footage and anecdotes of Tibetan Buddhist pilgrims, Tibetan Bon practitioners, Hindu pilgrims, Western pilgrims, Chinese pilgrims, Tibetan teahouse owners, Tibetan guesthouse owners, Tibetan nomads, Tibetan monks and caretakers, and Tibetan mantra carvers. I spent most of the research period learning Tibet through a lens, and I will never forget how the colors of what we saw and experienced gave life to our film and story.

Nine-Story Mountain is our tribute to the landscape and culture, not only of Tibet, but of a sacred mountain on the Tibetan Plateau, with the incredible ability to transcend territorial ties. Mount Kailash is one the few places in the world, claimed by oppositional religious faiths, where pilgrims of different ages, genders, and cultural backgrounds walk together in peace. It is one of the few transitional landscapes in the world, shared by people of different ages, genders, cultural, and faith backgrounds, where the culture is unequivocally one of tolerance and acceptance. Throughout the research project I kept looking for a hole in the fabric and culture of Kailash; I kept searching for the one broken strand. In the end, I found that the only broken strand was my resistance to believe.

“The Tibetan woman holds a bright purple umbrella.”

At Drolma La Pass, “the most sacred point along the Kora,” which “represents the point of rebirth,” you came across the woman with “the purple umbrella,” as mentioned in your essay in the Summer 2013 issue of Wellesley Magazine. Would you describe this encounter?

I made my way up the incline toward Drolma La for the second time. The last time I’d climbed up to the pass, on our first Kora, the wind bit my face and the path was blanketed with snow. This time the rocks were clear, the sky cornflower blue. Behind me, a young Tibetan woman with a baby strapped to her back held a bright purple umbrella.

Almost at the top of the pass, the sun hit my back, and I found myself gasping for air. Around me Buddhist pilgrims blessed the sky with lungtas—five-inch paper images of the Tibetan “windhorse,” thrown into the air like confetti. Bonpo pilgrims sang mantras and shook strands of prayer flags to honor the sacred mountain. A small urn smoked; the smell of juniper mingled with the clear smell of Kailash. In Tibet, juniper is believed to possess healing and restorative properties.

As I passed another rock littered with prayer flags and other pilgrims’ mementoes, I saw the woman with the purple umbrella. She sat, picking tufts of juniper, her baby sheltered under the purple arc, then stood, approached me, and gestured at me to watch. She took the juniper, rubbed it between her fingers, and threw it into the air. “Ah,” she said. “Ah.” Then she gathered a bundle of the savory green shoots and placed them in my palm. She carefully closed my hand with her hand, looked right though me, and nodded. When her baby began to wail, she turned away, my gesture of thanks unnoticed. Drolma La Pass, in the mid-morning, was full of pilgrims. Together we sat—to share snacks, to smile when communication faltered, and to watch others learn the landscape—rebirth everywhere.

“In Tibet, pilgrimage sites are everywhere. They dot the landscape: lakes and rivers, monasteries and shrines.”

To have assembled the research team and funding for the expedition, traveled to Tibet and trekked the Kora, interviewed Tibetans and others about the pilgrimage to Mount Kailash and captured these moments and the landscape on film—really, this is beyond accomplishment. You must feel astonishment and an incredible kind of pride. And in exactly one month—on March 8, 2014, International Women’s Day—Nine-Story Mountain will premiere at the inaugural Women’s International Film Festival at Oxford University.

What are your thoughts at this point, about the film, in terms of the audience, and in wider scope, in terms of the world? And in close-up, what does this mean to you personally?

This film is about the power of community. It is a testament to the strength of stories to connect people of different cultures and backgrounds. It is a testament to the power of hope and perseverance, to the beauty that exists, always, at the foundation. Even as the landscape changes and evolves to welcome tour operating companies and hordes of pilgrims, I have faith that the beauty of Kailash will inspire a renewal.

I never thought that I would be the one to film Kailash, to capture its transcendence with a tiny HD camera. In the end, Kailash captured me.

Hearthside, mountainside, or deep within an archive of sacred Tibetan texts?  

I love this question. But, I would have to say, “none of the above.” I’d like to hope that the most comfortable place I find myself is always the place I am most needed. That could be any or all of the above. It could be anywhere. A little like a snail—I carry my home on my back.

What is your idea of absolute happiness?

For me, happiness is the feeling of running through a summer thunderstorm, of the wind on my face cutting through the waves of a wide ocean, of being totally and completely free. Absolute happiness is the experience of passing that on to someone else—bringing others into the immediacy of that joy. It’s something that drives my work; I truly believe that if everyone could feel that “splash-in-a-puddle, tennis-in-the-rain” type of freedom the world would be made better. So much of joy is tied to space—to the sense of expansiveness that comes with opening one’s heart. In my opinion, joy channeled into positive action, inventiveness, and productivity will change the world. That would make my absolute happiness ABSOLUTE.

Augusta Thomson

Augusta Thomson is currently a student at Oxford University, where she is studying for a B.A. in Archaeology and Anthropology. She spent the last year living and working in New York City, as Director of Corporate Outreach and Distribution at 10×10/Girl Rising, and simultaneously interning with the filmmakers, Sarah Teale and Lisa Jackson. During that time she wrote pieces on the Girl Rising movement and spoke at schools and venues throughout New England. She is the Director of Nine-Story Mountain, a documentary film about an Oxford University and Royal Geographical Society-sponsored research expedition, which took place in July 2012, to study pilgrimage practices across the Tibetan Plateau and around Mount Kailash, a sacred mountain in the far western Ngari Prefecture of Tibet. The film will premiere in March 2014. At present, she is working as Regional Ambassador for Girl Rising, to help launch the movement in the UK, and is coordinating the first Women’s International Film Festival at Oxford University— to celebrate International Women’s Day, on March 8, 2014.

Photo credits: Don Nelson

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The Poppy: An Interview Series

Four to six questions begin as pods, then burst open with answers, bright lapis, 

black-stamened, conspicuous—ornament, remembrance, opiate.

*

First posted at Hothouse Magazine.

Mitsou

Passage de la Tour - a sculpture by Jan Reymond

So happy to have a little story, "The Last I Saw Mitsou," included in the Guest Folio (edited by Elizabeth Graver) of Post Road Magazine's Issue 25.  The picture above of Jan Reymond's sculpture, "Passage de la Tour," was the story's prompt.  The mystery of the entrance and what might be inside led to the story of Mitsou.

An Interview with Ruvanee Pietersz Vilhauer

Most of my interviews have been posted at Hothouse Magazine and then re-posted here. This summer I was approached by friend and writer, Ruvanee Pietersz Vilhauer, to interview her at R.kv.ry. Quarterly. Ruvanee's prose is elegant, deft, and surprising. Here is a snippet of the interview.

Karin C. Davidson:  Ruvanee, your story, “Craving,” is such a complicated and careful look at intimacy and, in a very restrained way, of sexuality. Sexuality is the theme of r.kv.r.y.’s Summer 2013 issue, and so I love that your story is included here. Would you speak about the origins of this story, how you came to write of this couple, exhausted and overwhelmed by their responsibilities of caring for the elderly, blessed and later unblessed by the presence of the young woman who comes to help them?

Ruvanee Pietersz Vilhauer: This story was influenced by an essay I had recently written, about an elderly relative’s struggle with dementia, but it arose primarily from my feeling exhausted by a set of administrative tasks at work—that had nothing to do with caring for the elderly—and wondering about the very human tendency to want an easy way out, and about the value of service and sacrifice. The idea of sacrifice—with its many negative as well as positive connotations—interests me; it is a theme I explore elsewhere as well.

KCD: “On the day Ivy Auntie went missing, Sriya Polgoda wished, once again, for more help.” This is the first line of “Craving,” an incredible first line in that it is deftly worded, each part so very simple, yet pointing straight into the conflict and the story’s heart. When you begin stories, do the drafted first lines lead you directly into the rest of the narrative, or do you find those intricate beginnings through revision?

RPV: Thank you for the kind words, Karin. There have been occasions when I’ve labored over first lines, revising wording and even the point at which a story begins. Most of the time, though, first lines come to me almost fully formed. Beginnings are much easier for me than endings, with which I struggle, revising over and over until I feel they are right.

Read the complete interview at rkvryquarterly.com/interview-with-ruvanee-pietersz-vilhauer/.