Amigas on the wing

Amigas is launched.

Early this morning there was a little candle-lighting, a little clinking of virtual glasses, a flurry of laughing emoticons between Argentina and New Zealand, and a message from Doug to say that the new website pages are live.

With this celebration of our friendship comes an avalanche of gratitude:

Mine to Elena for being the true and generous friend that she is. Amigas was her idea. She has always said yes to every challenge, has always believed the best of me and my capacities, and made sure — somehow — that everything we did was fun. Beautiful woman, outstanding writer, exceptional friend — gracias.

Thank you to Creative New Zealand who sent me first to Iowa and then to Argentina, and to all involved in the Iowa International Writers' Programme itself. To Christina and Beatriz who translated our texts from one language to the other. To Emma who made a detailed and indispensable assessment. To Pablo for our striking cover, and Caroline for her stirling design work. To Jason for patient file-making, and Doug for meticulous website management. To Coral and her class for marketing plans. To Jane for help with enacting them.

Friends and family have enthused from the very start about Amigas. Several have read it and given invaluable feedback, here and in Argentina: Claire, Christine, Elizabeth, Barbie, Raymond who also proofread, Marcelo, Irène, María Andrea, Raúl, Beatriz, Jorge, Tati, Gigliola y Alejandra. I'm afraid of leaving names off if I list friends who have been always alongside — wings or feathers aiding our flight — so I'm going to make this thanks both general and particular: you know who you are and we embrace you. Without friends, this work would be empty of meaning.

Fly, Amigas.

Brenda Sue Cowley on coming to heel

Penelope: How strange. The image I'd formed of Brenda Sue since she sent her story to be considered for Slightly Peculiar Love Stories couldn't be more different from the one she sent yesterday of the athletic young person you see here. Nonetheless (or perhaps therefore) our exchanges have been lively, and I'm taken with the heart in her work.

Brenda Sue: I walk on tippy toes.  I've done it since childhood, as have many of my family members, leading me to believe it is a hereditary trait. 

Walking on tip-toes (usually reserved for puttering around the kitchen, slipping to the bathroom at night, climbing stairs ... and walking towards the computer) is a bad habit. 

It also has adverse physical effects such as (but not limited to) the deterioration of the arch in the foot and the shortening of the Achilles' heel — making it even more of a weakness. 

I met Penelope while walking on tippy toe. A very close friend had died an untimely and earth-shattering death, two years ago this summer.  Someone stepped into my life, and plugged me into a writing group here in Salt Lake City, Utah.  And that is where I met a woman named Dorothee Kocks. I tip-toed towards Dorothee (The Glass Harmonica), a new friend at the time, who quickly became a life-long friend.  Dorothee felt I might have something for Penelope, and that Penelope might have something for me.

On tip-toe, I reached across the world to Penelope and our finger tips touched. Now, while I head towards this publication, I am standing in a correct, upright position – feet spread on the floor, shoulder width apart, and toes gently splayed. 

Reading these blog postings have inspired me not only to correct my poor physical habits, but to correct some writing habits as well. 

Like not walking on tippy toe towards the computer when I think I might be onto something.

Angelo R. Lacuesta — our man in Manila

Better known to us as Sarge, Angelo was one of our Iowa mates on the International Writing Programme in 2007. His fiction has been nationally awarded and he's among the most widely anthologized Filipino writers of his generation. He was literary editor at the Philippines Free Press for four years and has been a guest editor, editor-at-large and contributing writer for several magazines and online publications. Sarge is a master of the quick quip, whose bonhomie and award-winning smile have most recently been lavished upon his baby son.

Angelo:
My story in Slightly Peculiar Love Stories stemmed from “Space Oddity” — that 1969 song by David Bowie. Also from a weird memory I had in my youth: of me turning my childhood desk into a cockpit from where I could escape my blue world. “Space Oddity” of course refers to 2001: A Space Odyssey, which remains, especially after more than 100 viewings, one of my favorite films. To me, 2001 is about man’s birth and childhood, but I remember just being scared by those hominids and that 20-minute hallucinatory journey when I first saw it as a child.

I remember spending many idle summers visiting my relatives in the rural provinces in the south when I was young, and there was nothing to do for days but go through my uncle’s old textbooks from medical school. On one of those days I discovered an illustrated guide to gynecological diseases. The illustrations were stark and realistic and beautiful, and you can imagine the effect it had on me as a ten-year old child, amid my boyhood crushes and my largely unexplored feelings and instincts.

Many years later, thanks to a writer’s memory, and most especially to editor Penelope Todd’s patience and careful guidance, “Space Oddity” takes shape as a story that hopes to gather the persistent and tender urges of my youth, along with their alien encounters.

(P writes: Careful guidance, tosh — clipping a stray whisker was the extent of it.)