The Furious Spinner

Guess what I just got? Okay, I can't wait for you to guess. Here's the answer: my author's copies of Broken Moon. (I gave the Powell's link, but you can order it anywhere, and/or ask your local library to get it.) Such fun! Its official release date is February 27. Then it will be completely out of my hands. It'll either sell well or it won't.

The sun is setting, so the clouds are pink, and the Catalinas are pink. And it is cool and windy so if we went outside I would be pink.

I have started other posts, but I haven't finished them. Been in a funk. Not sure why. Partly the weather. Partly having trouble with the novel. Partly other things that I don't need to burden you with. In the novel, The Old Mermaid Sanctuary, Myla has had some surprising things happen to her, and she's a bit adrift. And that's hard because if Myla ever was actually adrift in the Old Sea, I think she would be the one who would find the life raft, or put it together herself, and gather everyone up and put them on the raft. I'm sure things will turn out for our gal, but in the meanwhile, it's strange. And she went 100 pages without telling an Old Mermaid tale!

The good news is that I've used many of the Old Mermaid tales that I've posted on the blog in the book. At least I think that's good news. Some of those tales I am quite fond of, so it's great to be able to incorporate them into the novel. I always tell those tales in Myla's voice, so it was fairly easy, although I shortened some of them. Right now in the story, our intrepid gal is in Mexico. She's having trouble getting back home. That's all I'm saying.

You all know about my visit to the borderlands last week. This week I talked with an attorney who deals with asylum cases. She was very helpful, and I got the answers I needed for the book. She also told me about the Florence Project. They help get legal counsel for migrants. Legal aid attorneys are not provided to people who are facing deportation, so this group tries to fill that gap at the Florence and Eloy detention centers.

I also learned from this lawyer a bit about what happens during the asylum process. (Someone might apply for asylum because they've been tortured in their country and they have a fear that it'll happen again if they go back.) After they apply for asylum, they have to wait for an appointment with an asylum officer. This person can grant the asylum, or they can say they don't think there are grounds for asylum, and then there is a hearing before a judge where the lawyer for the refugee can argue the case—and the Feds can argue against letting the refugee in. But the interview with the asylum officer can be rather arduous, to put it mildly. These interviews can go on for hours, with the asylum officer trying to prove that someone wasn't really tortured. "So first you say you were beaten for fifteen minutes and now you say it was twenty minutes? I think you're lying." Someone who has been tortured often suffers from memory loss to begin with—and can you imagine how traumatizing being interrogated like this can be, especially if your torture began with an interrogation in the first place! She said the asylum officer often doesn't understand the difference in cultures. For someone in parts of Africa, for instance, they view time in seasons. "It happened during the rainy season." To the asylum officer that reference of time can seem to vague, and they can use it as a reason not to believe the refugee.

Also this week, I spent more time at Humane Borders headquarters. Every time someone does a water run, they fill out a trip sheet. They make comments about what they find at the water stations and if they've had any encounters with migrants. I sat in a room for two hours looking through just a small portion of these trip sheets. They are a fascinating historical record. I asked if I could post some of these, so I will do that later. To me, it's a kind of narrative. And I'm percolating a way to incorporate this kind of storytelling into a novel.

We also chatted with Robin Hoover, the founder of Humane Borders. (I got to see what a blackberry is. No, I had never seen one before.) My experience has been that people who accomplish great things are often bigger than life, opinionated, driven, and sometimes annoying. My guess is that Robin Hoover is all of these things, which is to the benefit of the people he is helping. We need more people with vision and the ability to make their vision into reality.

After that, Mario and I went to Humane Borders weekly meeting. More than twenty-five people attended. (I say "more than" because I counted twenty-five but a few more people came in later and I didn't count them.) I was impressed with their committment. And there was no showboating during the meeting. No power trips. No one trying to impress anyone else—unless I'm really dense, and I'm not. I'm usually fairly sharp about those kinds of things. They talked about trips they'd taken and the evidence they'd seen regarding the further militarization of the border: heavily armed guardsmen, more Border Patrols, lots of machinery for building things like walls. It's sad at so many levels. We're not at war with Mexico, but you couldn't swear by that at some places along the border.

All right. This post had a point, but I lost it. Help! Help! I've lost my point.

May I borrow yours?

Sorry. I'm a bit weary.

Labels: Arizona, Broken Moon, Humane Borders, migrant issues, Old Mermaids

All photographs and written material copyright © 2003-2008 by Kim Antieau unless otherwise indicated. May not be used without permission.