Archive for December, 2017

Reunion in China

Thursday, December 14th, 2017

This BBC video about a 20-year-old woman, Kati Pohler, born in China and adopted by a family in Michigan has been out for a while, but I just got around to watching it tonight. Titled Meet Me at the Bridge, it’s powerful, powerful. What struck me most: the stark bigness of the emotions. Fear. Love. Bewilderment. Belonging.

Because that is truth.

Description from BBC:

When Kati Pohler was three days old she was left at a market in China. She was later adopted by an American family.

When she was 20, Kati discovered her birth parents had left her a note, and that every year on the same day, they waited for her on a famous bridge in Hangzhou.

Filmed and directed by Changfu Chang.

Photo above: Facebook

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Antioch MFA

Monday, December 11th, 2017

It’s not the most picturesque campus, but oh how I love my low-residency MFA at Antioch LA. I’m here until Saturday, absorbing wisdom and fellowship. My idea of heaven.

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The Ventura fires

Wednesday, December 6th, 2017

Fires along the 101, where I was this morning, driving from Santa Barbara to LA. Only a few yards from the freeway and dozens of them burning. I was alone and taking photos out the window, one hand on the steering wheel, the other holding up the camera, foot pressed hard on the gas pedal.

Long story, but I spent the night in a hotel where all the other guests had been evacuated. After dinner, they gathered around the pool with plastic cups and bottles of wine and I heard one of them say: “Less house, more home.” Which made sense, in all its terrible and profound truth. Everyone so impressively brave.

I made it to LA for school in record time. The 405 eerily deserted. California in flames.

 

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Kallie and Maya

Monday, December 4th, 2017

We met Kallie and her daughter Maya in 2003, as we like to say “on the calle” in Antigua, when Maya and my daughter Olivia were babies in arms and Kallie and I each had moved to Guatemala to finish their adoptions.

Now teenagers, Maya and Olivia remain close friends–“oldest” friends, in fact–and Kallie and I share a bond that’s forever. Our families met up this weekend and remembered those days, and our other dear friends who fostered. xoxo

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