Author: Azlan

574: “TEMPORAL ALLEGIANCE” (Ross Gay)

                “I have since begun cataloging delights that I will save for a future date, which, while stacking delights in itself is a useful activity and practice (sounds like a Denny’s pancake breakfast special: Delight Stack), it defeats this book’s purpose of TEMPORAL ALLEGIANCE, which I actually wrote on my hand in the bathroom of Darn Good Soup in Bloomington today…” Ross Gay, The Book of Delights, page 107-8

                This from near the beginning of Ross Gay’s 35th delight in The Book of Delights, as he’s reflecting on his project of writing a delight every day (more or less) for a year. As he’s noticing patterns, five months in, in how he looks for delights, how he writes about them. These words meeting me.
                This also being the page I opened to just now after my love and I came back from a late summer walk, the evening cool and then warm as we washed through it, muscles waking up after a day inside, fireflies flying their fires, neighbors walking their dogs, the zipline carrying a kid across the playground (and the kid carrying the zipline into his games). Which is to say: I also notice patterns. I’ve been writing Uproar for 570-some weeks. Which is to say: I sometimes start “saving up” Uproar posts, making sure I’ll have them. Have enough. Which is to say: that saving turns away from what I love most about Uproar. Remembering, that is lovely. (Just yesterday my love recalled something funny we’d said, and said it again, and without meaning to I said “good remembery!” Remembery like a spell, like magic, I think). But instead of saving up because I’m worried about having enough, these posts for me are about abundance. About what I’m surrounded by and enmeshed in. Abundance of thought and creativity, abundance of lives and relationships, abundance of community powers and vitalities and delights. 
                TEMPORAL ALLEGIANCE, Gay says, “means, simply, dailiness.” The dailiness of walking into this. The dailiness of being met by so many wonders, and meeting them, open armed and ready to join not just with the possibilities I’ve saved up but the daily possibilities lighting like fireflies or pausing to chat like neighbors.

by Azlan

573: Little Red Riding Hood

                Today I was talking with a student about Charles Perrault’s “Little Red Riding Hood” (1697) and Jacob Wilhelm Grimm’s “Little Red Cap” (1812) and all the other versions of Little Red that we’ve met in books, TV shows, games, conversations, and our own or shared imaginations. This student didn’t like that the parents never tell Little Red why the forest can be dangerous, or go with her to teach her how to navigate its dangers. Now that my student mentioned it, I don’t like that, either. I started wondering about a version of the story where the parents and the child listen to each other, learn from each other. Help each other. I started imagining a version of the story that started with a different family and a different Little Red.
                One of my favorite things about folk tales is the way they invite us to ask what if, what else, what if we turned another way, or learned together, or met each other anew. So sitting together, while my student wrote her version, I wrote (and I’m just going to give you the beginning!)

                There once was a wolf called Little Red Patch because she’d been hit in the side by a hunter’s bullet when she was only a pup, and ever since, the fur there had grown red. Despite the wound and maybe a little in response to it Little Red had also grown curious. She was curious about the birds in the sky, and sometimes got dizzy from staring up for so long as she listened to their singing. She was curious about the glistening stones in the river and sometimes she dove into the water to touch them. She was curious about the woodcutter nearby and sometimes followed her nose toward the cooking smells that came from his cabin. Her mother told her to be careful.
                “Sometimes humans are scared of us, and they can attack the people they’re scared of,” said mother wolf. “Sometimes they just don’t want to share the food of the forest so they kill us. You can’t go to the woodcutter’s house!”
                Little Red listened to her mother, and for three days she swam in the river looking at the stones and watching how quick the fish were. But…

                In this version of the story Little Red is still curious. But what if Little Red tries to listen to her mother while still feeling her curiosity? What if her mother sees her curiosity, and decides, not to teach her a lesson, but to help her learn how to move safely? What—we might wonder—then. Or maybe your wonder goes off in another direction?

by Azlan

572: “I Love Being a Frog” (Reale & Lobel)

                “I love being a frog in the warm sunny summer—”
                -Frog in Willie and Robert Reale’s A Year With Frog And Toad, which adapts the books from Arnold Lobel

                I’ve been thinking about heat lately—perhaps because the temperature keeps laughing past 90; perhaps because I’ve been remembering my time teaching in India, where the temperature kept laughing high numbers—and then my partner and I listened to A Year With Frog and Toad on a long drive. The heat washing down from the sky. The rain washing, too, though briefly, a flood across the windshield that dried a few minutes later. And my partner said, “There’s so much love for the everyday of life in this.” This the musical. We keep talking about it as something that’s going on. (It is, in my head, like the sun and the rain). This the drive together. This lounging on the couch now as the shade deepens toward evening. This being welcomed home as who you are, as Arnold Lobel was eventually welcomed home. Later his daughter Adrianne Lobel commissioned the play.
                Jay Goede gives Frog his singing voice in the original Broadway cast. He swells up with “looovveee,” drawing it out. Holding it up. As if there’s as much of it as there is warm sunny summer. As, I suppose, there is. When I first heard the song I didn’t like it as much as some of the other numbers. I wondered if it was too much. I wasn’t sure what it was about. Now it’s been running through my head for days, delightfully. And I realize: oh, yes. It’s—in part, at least—about this.

by Azlan

571: “For My Mother” (Malka Older)

“For my mother, Dora Vázquez Older, 
whose careful and appreciative first readings 
encourage me through every book, 
chapter by chapter.

There are other ways to live.”
-Malka Older, dedication for The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles

                My partner and I are in Illinois again, back from our trip to spend time with my parents, siblings, and niblings. Tonight we’re starting a new book: Malka Older’s The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles. Tonight I’m also sending the revised draft of my dissertation to my mom and my dad. Both of them appear in it. They’re there with me, learning and teaching and walking along.
                Whenever I write, I read what I’m writing out loud. I listen to the words, feeling how they rise and fall, wondering if they say what I mean. Wondering how they might carry us along, and to what kind of meeting. When I read I hear my parents’ voices in my voice. I think I was thirteen or fourteen when my dad first read a story I’d written out loud. I listened, surprised, because in his voice the possibilities I’d imagined came to life just like The Lord of the Rings. (He read those to me a lot, at home but also along rivers and up on mountain passes). When my niblings were young I’d go sit with them while my mom read a bedtime story. Some of the stories I remembered, like Enid Blyton’s The Magical Faraway Tree. When I didn’t remember these characters, this world, I always remembered her voice, rising and falling, pausing and dancing along as it carried us. There are so many other ways to live. I listen, grateful for all the ways my family (and Older’s family, and so many families) encourage us to reimagine the possible, chapter by chapter, and in the relationships between us as we share chapters.

by Azlan

570: “King Arthur Ct” (Street Sign)

“King Arthur Ct”
-street sign in Santa Rosa, CA

                Last week my partner and I took our two niblings for a walk. Or maybe our niblings took us: they wanted to scooter to a playground, and we adults went along for the swings and the giggles, the careful faces at crosswalks and the delighted sounds at little free libraries. (We brought back a book of ciphers, but we haven’t started decoding it). Along the way we stopped at a house that had 14 dragons out front, as far as we could count. We talked about witch’s brews. We talked about anime demons and the songs that can become magic.
                For a block, we also turned down King Arthur Ct. It’s a little connecting road between Horseshoe Drive and Rainier Avenue. Sitting here, now, it also seems like a delightful (and fraught) reminder of all the ways our myths and fairytales give us characters and motifs and relationships and pieces of meaning to arrange into concepts of courage and family, loss and hope, friendship and power. Perhaps because in two weeks I’ll be teaching a course in all that. I didn’t know King Arthur Ct was there until I saw it on my phone’s map, and announced that’s where we’re turning. Of course I did it playfully. Of course my niblings teased back: “No we’re not!” “There’s no such place!” “You’re teasing!” And then we turned the corner, talking about dragons and witches, groaning at what a fool I was. Walking near Camelot. Or near the places we reimagine as Camelot. Or, passed Camelot, toward the transformed place we make for our witches on their way home.

by Azlan

569: “350 Recipe Testers” (Peter Reinhart)

                “First of all, there are nearly 350 recipe testers that must be thanked again and again.” -Peter Reinhart, Whole Grain Breads, page viii

                A few days ago my sibling Maple and I went to the library. I brought back poetry—Billy-Ray Belcourt’s The Idea of An Entire Life. Maple brought back another poetry—Peter Reinhart’s Whole Grain Breads. And last night we were up late, walking, talking, watching the trees shadow and sway another poetry.
                We’ve been talking about expertise. Maple loves incremental progress: bake the same recipe, again and again, look carefully for what went right and wrong, and bit by bit your loaf transforms into what you imagined it could be. I like that too. I mean, this is week 569 of uproar, and part of that is the practice of looking, listening, listening deeply, trying again. But I think my love sways away from “progress” and toward community. Maple is an amazing baker. I’ve shared their bread. They’d probably say they were only a “good” baker, shying away from the amazing, but for me a recipe is about all the testers and tasters and hungry friends. Or maybe I’m making a distinction where I mean to make a connection. We practice what we have to share. I love that. We show up to eat together. I love that.

by Azlan

568: “Alice’s Route” (Juliet & Charles Snape)

                “Take Alice’s route as she chases the white rabbit down the hole…” -Juliet and Charles Snape, The Classic Tales Maze Book, page 1

                Tonight I’m at my mother’s house, and my little sibling (who’s not so little—several inches taller than me, for example) took The Classic Tales Maze Book off the shelf. I remember the mazes in this. Or more particularly, I remember the pictures: the giant puppies crouched in the woods, the tables laden with teacups and saucers, the rivers. I remember the stories: Alice in Wonderland and Tom Sawyer and Don Quixote and Gulliver on his travels which I always skipped because I didn’t like it. 
                I remember lying on the floor, book open before me, running my fingers over the oceans and the fields and interlocking paths. Each two-page spread constructs a maze for you to follow along in the main character’s journey. Each spread also has a clever flap that folds back and forth, opening a room or cave you hadn’t seen before. I liked that part, but the paths of the maze confused me. A letter, lying across the path, is meant to block the road. So is the line of a roof if the perspective is drawn so that the path crosses behind the house. The mazes are put together for you to follow a completely uninterrupted line from place to place. As a kid, looking at them, that confused me. I thought you could step over the letter. I thought you probably could go around behind that house, and for that matter, you could cut across these open green fields. I would look in the back of the book to find the solution you were supposed to take, and then look at the pictures again, trying to backsolve why that way was the right way. 
                I liked this book. I fell into it. I was bewildered by it. In its colors and lines, I don’t think I was trying to understand mazes. I was trying to understand the signals and signs by which people say that some paths can’t be walked, and some paths must be.

by Azlan

567: “A Series of Tales” (Arthur Conan Doyle)

                “You have degraded what should have been a course of lectures into a series of tales.” -Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Adventure of the Copper Beeches”

                In the last weeks I’ve been spending lots of time at my desk, revising my dissertation, thinking about arguments and stories and how they make different kinds of space for thoughts and relationships. It’s exhausting, consuming. Sometimes inspiring, especially as my dissertation is interwoven with my friends: conversations we’ve had, concerns we carry, hopes we share.
                In the last weeks my partner and I have also been reading Sherlock Holmes stories out loud together. Sometimes in the evening we listen to Holmes audio books and work on a puzzle together, watching mountains and trees as the pieces meet. When I was ten, eleven, and twelve I spent hours doing something similar with these same stories. I was putting together legos, then, my hands playing as my thoughts followed Sherlock Holmes. Reading out loud from Copper Beeches, or listening to my partner read out loud, I find another delight in tales: the delight of telling them again. 
                There’s a lot I love about Sherlock Holmes stories. There’s also a lot of awfulness, from the casual sexism and racism to the rational-as-all triumphalism that somehow protects both. I read out loud and hear the audio books I used to listen to. That voice still in my head. I listen to my partner read and remember untangling these mysteries as a kid. We can make and remake the stories of our childhood, the moments of determination and joy, the quiet misgivings that I didn’t know how to say then but I can say now. How wonderful that stories can live and then live again, changing. Reflecting how we’ve changed.

by Azlan

566: “Lapse Into Silence” (Jay Dragon)

“Additionally, anyone can do the following Whoopsies:
>Drop a soapy dish, and break it.
>Change the subject.
>Lapse into silence.”
                -Jay Dragon, Yazeba’s Bed & Breakfast, page 108

                Yazeba’s Bed & Breakfast is built around a lot of wonderful, changing game mechanics, One of them is Bingos and Whoopsies. When you play a character, your Bingos are moments of playing to your strengths, fully engaging in the moment and who you are, helping work through a difficult problem, and so on. Your Whoopsies are moments of weakness and old faults coming out, tripping up the situation even more. Both move the story— that is, the game—in different shifting ways. 
                I started this post because, when I sat down to write, I liked the silence more than the sound of my fingers typing. Hours before that some friends and I were playing Yazeba’s Bed and Breakfast. The chapter we were playing shows friends trying to share their uncertainty about their place in the world while washing the dishes from a big celebration. In that chapter, all players have additional Whoopsies: break a dish, change the subject (as someone tries to share something important), or lapse into silence. In the context of the chapter, I think “lapse into silence” means stop trying to say something important, or stop trying to respond to the piece of themselves a friend has just shared. But as we played, as the game led us through our characters’ attempts to talk about their place in the world, we found other meanings in that silence. Some of the characters’ most open, connective moments were shared silences. Sitting down to write I kept thinking about that. I didn’t want to write it, not yet. I wanted to listen to all the little sounds of the house. To the sound of voices hours or days after they’ve stopped talking.
                Yazeba’s Bed & Breakfast is built around a lot of wonderful, changing game mechanics. One of them makes me think about how sharing our brokennesses—tangling a situation even further—can also be part of fully engaging with the moment and who we are together.

by Azlan

565: “All Players Survive” (Kenna Alexander)

                “If you all make it through to the end of Turn 8, then all Players survive and win the game for a collective victory! Time to celebrate!
                In addition, if one Leader has more Status Awards than any other, they are elected as chief among all of the communities and are granted an additional victory. Congratulations! […] while it’s great bragging rights to say you had the most Status and were elected chief, it can only happen if you all get a collective win first.”
                -Kenna Alexander, Wolves (2024) rulebook

                It may come as no surprise to folks who know me that I usually prefer cooperative board games to competitive ones. Concept (2013). Pandemic Legacy (2015). The Crew (2019). Tranquility (2020). Yazeba’s Bed and Breakfast (2022). I guess I like working with my friends more than trying to outsmart them. But it was absolutely a surprise, at least for me, to come across Kenna Alexander’s wonderful Wolves. 
                Wolves is “a semi-cooperative game about community survival.” I read the rules today, working out how its mechanics work. Tomorrow we’re having friends over to play. Sitting now, the box at my elbow, I’m struck by how easily I accepted cooperative and competitive as mutually exclusive categories. I remember teaching a friend a game (I can’t remember which), and whenever we came across a moment where one player would make a decision without talking to the others, my friend asked, “So wait, is it actually cooperative?” The question made sense to me. It was cooperative, or competitive. It couldn’t be both. 
                Except of course it can. Tonight my partner and I met some friends to ramble around our neighborhood, enjoying night’s cool. We stopped at a neighborhood park with a zipline. During the day it’s alive with nine and ten year olds, but I guess we stay up later. We took turns. We talked about how we jumped and swung and approached the zipline to go the fastest, bouncing off the far end and returning as close as we could to where we started. We saw how far one another went. We laughed, and then we kept walking. It’s a little thing. And the more I sit with it and Kenna Alexander, the more I’m wondering how many of the competitions I’m part of can only happen inside a larger collective win.

by Azlan