The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2024, pt. 25: Elizabeth Clark-Stern

 

A Riot of the Heart, Mind, and Senses

by Elizabeth Clark-Stern

 

           

 

 Here we are, 2024. To capture such a year, a daunting task, but here goes:

           

The political scene had me in such a state, I turned to the parallel universe of L. Timmel Duchamp’s Tsunami, Book Three of the Marq’ssan Cycle (Aqueduct Press, 2007) It did not disappoint, and laid out a dramatic tale of power and politics and the struggle of women that helped me metabolize the comedy of the real world. Take a deep breath, and as you exhale, luxuriate in the luminous prose of Timmel Duchamp: “Waking, Elizabeth found the tent flooded with heat and light. She unzipped the bag and exposed her naked body to the air. As the sweat dried, cooling her fevered flesh, she checked her watch and saw that it was not yet six. Lazy but no longer sleepy, she lay with her eyes closed and listened to the elusive, sometimes mysterious sounds outside – the wind brushing over the tent and, further off,  whipping through the canyon’s scattered palm leaves, soughing like ocean surf, the chatter and twitter of birds she did not recognize…Vividly she imaged a hummingbird hovering over the willow tree only inches from the tent, its wings whirring in place as it dipped its long beak into the lavender bell of a flower and sucked its sweet liquor….Elizabeth’s sigh verged on a sensual groan. So beautiful to see, so lust-arousing to think of.” (Tsunami, page 92)

 I will never look at a hummingbird the same way!  Thanks to Duchamp, I will tremble with sexual delight at the sight of a hummingbird plunging his long slender beak into the delicate receptacle of a flower.

 

Moving on in a year of miracle and wonder, I devoured Brian D. McLaren’s Life After Doom: Wisdom and Courage for a World Falling Apart. Don’t be dissuaded by the phrase “Christian pastor” in the author’s bio, or his judicious use of scripture in the text. This book is packed with impressive scientific research. The “doom” in the title is based on the opening chapter that lays out the reality of climate change, its speed, and impact on our lives. The rest of the book is true to the subtitle, proposing how we can survive it if we learn to work together and respect one another on an unprecedented scale. A truly inspiring read.

 Sometimes, a book is so well-written, it demands our attention, in spite of the dark reality it portrays. Such a book is Patriot, the memoir of Russian dissident, Alexi Navalny. Impossible to put down, it leads us through his promising political revolt against Vladimir Putin, to near-death from poison, to imprisonment in Siberia, where he died. His courage, humanity, and deep love for his wife and family made me feel proud to be of the same human species as this man.

And then, lo and behold, as we splash into December, we see not the tragedy of a man doomed in prison, but the cries of joy from the prisoners released in Syria! Assad flees to Russia! Women and children stagger out of the depths of prison into the sunlight! It is early days, we are told not to trust the rebels, and yet, how can we resist celebration? I ran to my bookshelf and pulled out A Road Unforseen: Women Fight the Islamic State by Meredith Tax (Bellevue Literary Press, 2016) This book was the inspiration for my novel The Language of Water (Aqueduct Press, 2023). My heroine named herself “Sara,” the true-life code name of the revolutionary Kurdish leader, Sakine Cansiz. Like Alexi Navalny, Cansiz was tortured and later died in prison, but the relevance of the model of democracy promoted by the all-women’s YPJ fighting force, is in practice today in Rojava, an independent state in Northern Syria. In A Road Unforseen, Tax shows us the history and development of a democratic society—based on secularism, ethnic inclusiveness, and gender equality---that could possibly become the model for the new democratic state of the entire nation of Syria! What an unexpected possibility, and pleasure, coming to us at the end of 2024.

 

I wish my brother had lived to see it. He spent the last two years of his life in the prison of his own body in a nursing home in Austin, Texas. I visited as often as I could, called him on the phone every day from my home in Seattle. It did little to mitigate his loneliness and boredom. My brother, David Houston, was many things, a playwright, an actor, and a science fiction writer. I brought my granddaughter, Dylan Nicole Hansen, to visit him in July. An aspiring fantasy writer, she was thrilled to learn that her great Uncle, David Houston, was the author of Gods in a Vortex, its sequel, Wingmaster, Alien Perspectives, Shadows on the Moon, and other works of his highly imaginative mind. Each of these stories explores the longing for peace, justice, and love.

I will close with a poem that came to me in the weeks after my brother’s passing:

 

            MY BROTHER DIED AND WE GOT A KITTEN

 

My brother died and we got a kitten

She is soft as the tuft of a dandelion floating on the wind,

Her belly pink as a piglet, her paws white as a snowshoe hare,

Her back gray as a donkey on her way to the fair.

She stands guard at the picture window, a lioness looking down

On the dog walkers in the street below.

 

My brother, David, died in a room with no windows,

His paintings and photos silent testaments of life gone by.

His mind created a world where Mother lived next door.

“She died in 2003,” I said, “But if she comes to you in a vision,

That is a beautiful thing.”

“No,” he said, “It is very confusing.”

 

Our kitten is called Frida, for her black mustache, goatee,

And the haughty glance in her dark green eyes.

My brother’s cat is Dorian,

Soft powder gray, steel blue eyes,

He sits in the window in a stranger’s house,

Waiting for David to come home.

 

At night Frida curls onto my chest and licks my leathery neck

With her tiny emery-board tongue.

She purrs like a freight train

And we fall asleep together.

 

I can no longer curl beside David in his hospital bed,

Trim his toenails, cut his wooly hair, shave his jowly double chin.

I dream that he dances on point in pink toe shoes.

How about that, Frida, he wants us to know joy!

 

May you, dear reader, know joy and pleasure this holiday season, and in the New Year.

Elizabeth Clark-Stern is a retiring psychotherapist and volunteer with Operation Nightwatch, a program of folks who walk the streets of downtown Seattle at night and give water, snacks, socks, and conversation to unsheltered people. She is the author of The Language of Water, Aqueduct Press, 2023.

The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2023, pt. 17: Elizabeth Clark-Stern

 

The Joy of Art in Community: The Pleasure of Reading, Viewing, Listening 2023

by Elizabeth Clark-Stern

 

 

 

It was a bumpy year for me. Losses and challenges in the family, increasing threats to our democracy, the horror of war. I sought community in the arts, finding it in some very unexpected places.

At the Open Mic for local authors at Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park, Washington, I listened to writers of every age, race, and gender identity read from every genre: fiction, comedy, memoir, non-fiction, poetry--authors from small presses, large presses, self-published, and works- in- progress. A  nine-year-old Indian-American girl explained that she was upset about the impact of global warming on the animals of the earth.  Her grandmother said to her, “You are creative, you can write a book about it. That will help the animals. ” This girl went on to illustrate and publish her own book. She stood on a box to reach the podium as she read her story about two girls who saved an elephant and a panda. We all cheered. Her grandmother, in purple silk sari, beamed with pride.  

 Another community available at the flick of a button is Aqueduct Press. I adored Gwynne Garfinkle’s Can’t Find My Way Home. Her prose flows like a mountain stream, the characters so alive you expect to see them standing next to you at the grocery store. The original voice of the actress-heroine sparkles, “I felt my life fragment and reshape itself.” I love the sense of drama, the delight in entering Jo’s mind. I have a theater background myself, and lived through the Viet Nam war era. Garfinkle captured the madness and fury of the time flawlessly. A novel that elevates the spirit with meaning and magic. 

 

Also, from Aqueduct, I read Alanya to Alanya: Book One of the Marq’ssan Cycle by L. Timmel Duchamp. Although it was published in 2005, I was thunderstruck at the relevance to our current global crises. Through the metaphor of science fiction, Ms. Duchamp takes us into the complexity of a world of exploitation and tyranny, while allowing us intimate access to the shadow side of our protagonist, who must fight both external and internal battles. Duchamp’s writing is chilling in its breadth and depth. Such phrases as, “ Magyyt stared at the sky, wishing self could look upon the light of Marqeuei. They had miscalculated human psychology so badly that now they must take nothing for granted. This habit of denial…The humans were perfectly willing to grant extraordinary powers of reality to things imaginary and abstract, but would refuse to grant reality to the obvious.”

Sound familiar? Reading Alanya helped me metabolize the trauma in our world, and in my own psyche.

 

Next I turned to Yuval Noah Harari’s 21 Lessons for the 21^st Century, in some ways a nonfiction version of Duchamp’s Alanya to Alanya. Harari is a world history professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and author of Sapiens and Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow. While I don’t agree with all of his conclusions about human psychology, it was chilling to read his predictions about the colonization of A.I. in our present and future world

 

This theme was echoed when I visited my 85-year old brother in his nursing home in Austin, Texas. We watched the 1950’s version of the film Invasion of the Body Snatchers. My brother was a science fiction author in his day (Gods in a Vortex, and Alien Perspectives by David Houston) He loves the original Body Snatchers and considers it head and shoulders above recent re-makes. I agreed, and found myself trembling as I sat next to his bed, watching the movie on a portable DVD player. “So suspenseful,” I gasped. My brother smiled with satisfaction. We agreed that this black- and- white 1956 movie presaged the takeover of A.I. and Fascism threatening our world in 2023.

Also in the nonfiction category, I discovered the global community of authors in The Climate Book edited by Greta Thunberg. Scientists, health professionals, journalists and activists from around the world report on the impact of our warming climate in their countries. While not an easy read, the comprehensive analysis of the reporting pulled me into membership in the global community of writers like Karl-Heinz Erb, Joelle Gergis, Julia Arieira, and 100 others.  In the final chapter, “Hope is something you have to earn,” Greta Thunberg writes, “…some of the best ways of igniting the changes we need have not yet been discovered…You must take it from here and carry on connecting the dots yourself, because, right there, between the lines, you will find the answers---the solutions that need to be shared with the rest of humanity.”

I’m searching for those dots.  What can I do? With whom can I network? I have a renewed passion about our warming world, thanks to the world community portrayed in The Climate Book.

Small wonder with all of this churning in my head and heart, I turned to music for joy and redemption. My eldest daughter treated me to the Woodland Park Players production of Monty Python’s Spamalot, a musical comedy about the tyranny and genocide of the Middle Ages! I had never seen Community Theater so ebullient. The energy of love, connection, and laughter spread throughout the audience and leapt over the footlights. We left humming the tunes. The world be damned, we can still laugh and sing and dance.

 I discovered a less hysterical, but equally elevating musical experience when I took my youngest daughter to see my friend play the erhu in a production of the Seattle Chinese Orchestra at Benaroya Hall. The erhu is a slender, vertical violin with two strings. My friend, an immigrant from Hong Kong, confided that she was very nervous to play in such a big event for the Chinese community, but she did a beautiful job. My daughter was eager to see the performance since she had spent her senior year in high school in Beijing on a School Year Abroad scholarship. She saw people playing the erhu in the subways and on street corners. Her experience in Beijing, as a white kid among the Chinese, was replicated that night at Benaroya. We were definitely visitors –welcome ones—in an audience of exuberant Chinese. The music on the stage warmed all of our hearts and opened my ears and my mind, to a whole new style of music.

Finally the “word-music” of poetry has been important to me this year: Rumi, Mary Oliver, Hildegard of Bingham….

 

 I will close with Amanda Gorman’s The Miracle of Morning:

 

 We thought we’d awaken to a world in mourning,

Heavy clouds crowding, a society storming,

But there’s something different on this golden morning.

Something magical in the sunlight, wide & warming.

We see a dad with a stroller taking a jog.

Across the street, a bright-eyed girl chases her dog.

A grandma on a porch fingers her rosaries.

She grins as her young neighbor brings her groceries.

 

Wishing you all joy in your reading, viewing and listening in the year to come.

The Open mic for local authors in the Seattle Area takes place every third Monday at 6:15 at Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park. Check their website for details.        

 

 

 

Elizabeth Clark-Stern has had careers as a modern dancer, actor, teacher, screenwriter, playwright, psychotherapist (an art form in its own right), and most recently, a novelist. Her novel, The Language of Water was published by Aqueduct in 2023. She lives in the Seattle area.

           

The Language of Water by Elizabeth Clark-Stern

 

 I'm pleased to announce the release of a debut novel, The Language of Water, by Elizabeth Clark-Stern, in both print and e-book editions. It is available now at www.aqueductpress.com.

The dawn of the twenty-second century finds women in a new world where water—the lack of it or the over-abundance of it—shapes their inner and outer lives. Sara turns eighteen and longs to join the all-women’s Kurdish army to wrestle control of the headwaters of the Euphrates River from the grip of Turkiye’s first woman President, who calls herself “Ataturka.” These two women share a common enemy that has infected the globe: climate despair. And yet, in the darkest hour there is cause for hope. A new technology born of the secret substances of the Earth could transform the planet. Only the power structures of humanity stand in the way. Can Sara and Ataturka help one another create a new form of power defined by the depth and scope of their hearts, or will the Water War bitterly divide them? Will their passion for life, for love, for a world where all living things can flourish pull them down into the darkest cavern of the human soul or catapult them to the stars?

Read a sample from the book here: http://www.aqueductpress.com/books/samples/978-1-61976-234-3.pdf

"Elizabeth Clark-Stern has created a marvelous adventure that takes us into a mysterious future where the climate is out of control. Her characters vibrate with creativity, passion, and imagination as they bring an evolving world to life."
 —Beverly Olevin, Kirkus Award-winner for The Good Side of Bad

"I found this novel's complex characters and the richness of their relationships—in love and in war—tremendously compelling. Sara, Kethuda, Ruqia, and the rest of the cast are skillfully drawn. A story about the future devastation wrought by climate change has the potential to be a grim read, but instead Elizabeth Clark-Stern has written a gripping feminist tale exploring love and power, violence and forgiveness, despair and hope. The Language of Water is a page-turner and a paean to resistance."
 —Gwynne Garfinkle, author of Can't Find My Way Home

"The diverse ensemble of characters in Elizabeth Clark-Stern’s debut novel includes royalty and subsistence farmers, teens and the elderly, fierce warriors, and dedicated pacifists. Each character is compelling, complex, and struggling with the types of difficult decisions that can shatter souls. But the core protagonist in the novel, the only one truly powerful, is the natural environment.
    The action takes place in 2100, when climate change has created extremes in the global distribution of, and access to, water. The divide between Haves and Have Nots is an ever-­widening chasm. Regional conflicts sparked by dwindling natural resources are rampant. Agriculturalists have developed a plant, the pea cactus, that grows in harsh environments and can be processed into a variety of goods, but worsening floods and periods of drought make this, at best, a last-gasp measure.
    It is a world severely out of balance, but not quite out of hope. Clark-Stern captures the inflection point toward which we are barreling at break-neck speed, the moment when humans—having contorted ourselves to our limits in a desperate effort to maintain life as it was before climate change—are forced to decide if we want to die clinging to old ways or give up illusions of power and embrace something new.
    The Language of Water is a balm for nerves frayed by the fear of impending environmental disaster and a bracing vision of how balance might be restored to our off-kilter world."
 —Kate Boyes, author of Trapped in the R.A.W.

The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2022, pt. 7: Elizabeth Clark-Stern

 

On the Hunt for Transcendence

by Elizabeth Clark-Stern

 

 

With much of the world in disarray this year, I found myself reaching for experiences in art that took me into a place beyond the things I can’t control, stories that brought me into an imaginal world where I lost myself, then found myself, through the characters and their adventures. Two stellar examples are Damned Pretty Things by Hollow Wade Matter, and Cabinet of Wrath by Tara Campbell, both new Aqueduct titles. 

The characters in Wade Matter’s novel pop out at us with such vibrancy, we feel they are standing in the room next to us. To wit, “There are women whose beauty lies in symmetry, and there are women whose beauty lies in incongruity. The Devil’s girlfriend was an incongruous beauty of the first water.”  This is but a tiny sample of the tasty prose Ms. Wade Matter offers. I don’t know about you, but I have known several “Devil’s girlfriends” and now feel I grasp something about the appeal of evil I hadn’t understood before. Many adventures await our fantastical Thelma and Louise duo, Maude and Fortune, who bring us more charm and revelation than the ill-fated women of that film.

Tara Campbell’s Cabinet of Wrath invites us into the inner life of what we refer to as “inanimate” objects. In Campbell’s skilled hands, these objects become supremely animate, e.g., “I won’t deny that I began life as a novelty ring, giggled over in a shop in New Orleans, I was once only a silver skull with faux-ruby eyes and tiny silver bones strung into a circle with elasticized twine. One size fits all. I could have belonged to anyone, but I chose her.” ---If something that began life as a silly novelty ring can choose her owner, all manner of transformation is possible in what we call the “real” world.

 

 Another glorious read is Phantastes by George McDonald, first published in 1858, (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2000).  The introduction by C.S. Lewis sets the stage for this seminal work. Lewis confesses that he is “entirely dependent on Dr. MacDonald,” for his own career as a fantasy author. The first chapter shows why. Our young hero is thrust unawares into a fairy kingdom, much like the children in Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. MacDonald’s book also weaves in the newly discovered psychological theories of Sigmund Freud, adding a familiar aspect to the narrative: the main character opens a forbidden door and discovers his shadow, not a metaphor, but literal, his physical shadow follows our hero wherever he goes. How does this transform the character? You must look into your own heart – and read the book, to find out.

 Beyond the printed page, I found myself awash in live performances that thrilled me to the core. A friend bought tickets to Tristan and Isolde at Seattle Opera. I love opera, especially now that translations are projected above the proscenium so that I know what they are singing about. I knew the myth of these star-crossed lovers, but didn’t realize the opera was written by Wagner. An exhibit in the lobby traced Wagner’s controversial relationship with the Nazis, asking the question: should controversial art be produced? I was so glad to be educated about the controversy, beyond one-dimensional condemnations of the composer,  and that Seattle Opera chose to produce Tristan and Isolde.  

My opera companion could not make it to the end of this five-hour performance. I persisted, riveted by the voice and persona of Mary Elizabeth Williams, an African American artist who cut her teeth at Seattle Opera in 2000/01. In her hands, the Irish Queen, Isolde, vibrated with sensuality and all the power of her magical arts. In the final act, she held the body of her beloved Tristan in her arms, feeling his ascent into Cosmic Consciousness as she sang, “Mildly and gently how he smiles. How the eye he opens sweetly. Do you see it, friends?….Brighter and brighter he shines, illuminated by the stars….Shall I breathe? Shall I listen? Shall I drink, immerse? In the billowing torrent, in the resonating sound, in the wafting Universe of the World-Breath drown, be engulfed, unconscious supreme delight!” The entire stage was bathed in a video projection of the ocean, with only her face, and his, illuminated as their souls joined at last.

A fascinating musical fact: Wagner introduced the tension in the lover’s bond with the first note and did not resolve that musical phrase until the final note. This attention to musical detail is only one of the elements that made it such a moving experience. The full performance of Seattle Opera’s production is not online, but I discovered a grand reservoir of Tristan and Isolde on You Tube. I often wake in the morning and eat my oats in the company of Isolde’s final aria from a European production. Sublime.

My next ecstatic live performance was the Pacific Northwest Ballet’s production of The Seasons' Canon, Max Richter’s re-composition of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons. I had never seen the choreography of Crystal Pite. A group of friends praised her and insisted I join them. I am indebted to them. From the first moment that the light on stage poured across the backs of a core of dancers moving as one organism, their heads popping up like shoots of new grass, I was enraptured. Crystal Pite wrote in the program, “Creation for me is like looking through a lens. It’s a way to see the world in greater detail and clarity; it’s a magnified experience. It is the act of making that sharpens my awareness and connects me most deeply to the natural world and all the brutality and beauty it contains.”

I have always loved Vivaldi’s music, especially The Four Seasons. Seeing it so faithfully brought into the art-form of dance was exhilarating in its portrayal of love and rebirth in spring, the joy of summer, the letting go of autumn, and the silence of winter. Again, I refer you to Crystal Pite’s work on You Tube.  It isn’t the same as seeing a live performance, but you still get the awesome scale, depth and originality of the work. Her theme of how the individual operates in a state of inter-being with others is a critical one for our modern age. For any age. 

 

 

Pite’s work reminds me of the work of Korean sculptor Do Ho Suh, whose sculpture of a ten foot tall empty coat of armor was displayed in the Seattle Art Museum for years. I don’t believe it is there any longer, but you can find it online. The coat of armor is made for an individual, but his armor is made of thousands of dog tags. Art holds the paradox: we are solitary beings: we are One.

Finally, no year would be complete without reaching for non-fiction that wants to change the world.  Maria Ressa’s How to Stand Up to a Dictator, just hit the bookstores. (Harper Collins, 2022) She is the Nobel Peace Prize-winning journalist who stood up to the dictator, Duterte, in the Philippines, and still faces possible criminal charges. Look for her in interviews on PBS and Stephen Colbert, posted on You Tube. (Honest, I don’t own stock in You Tube!)  She is a passionate, adorable, and engaging personality. I had to dash out and buy her book right away. And How to Stand Up to a Dictator does not disappoint, inspiring a change in behavior, consciousness, and world view that can build a brighter future for all of us. 

 

 

Elizabeth Clark-Stern has had careers as a modern dancer, actor, teacher, screenwriter, playwright, psychotherapist (an art form in its own right), and most recently, a novelist. Her novel, The Language of Water will be published by Aqueduct in 2023.