An Editorial: "It's not time to worry yet."*
Patricia Friedrich
I was born preoccupying others, having prematurely left the place that I previously occupied, my mother’s womb. Maybe this is what unleashed for me a life-long song and dance with thought, anticipation, and concern for the future. To be in a Zen, meditative state is hard work for me, which itself is a contradiction in terms. So I don’t think any random coincidence exists in my having co-edited an issue about (pre)occupation for Trivia.
Nevertheless, despite my inclination for worry, instead of causing me anxiety and stress, this process of co-editorship has been delightful – to read the contributions, to have conversations with Jo and the editorial team over tea and treats, to imagine what hidden threads held our issue together were all indeed remedies to preoccupation itself.
The best prescription for preoccupation is to occupy oneself with the present, with an actual task that engages the mind, not with the past or the future but with the now. And every now of editorship presented itself with compelling images and words. I also became occupied with the many meanings that this elastic construct of (pre)occupation, made even more elastic by the presence of the parenthetical and removable “pre,” could take.
Being a linguist, I found it impossible not to turn to the etymology of “occupy” in this editorial. The many meanings associated with the term range from “seize” to “take possession,” from “dwell” to “take space or time.” Closely related are the words “capable” and “captive” and also in the same family is “conception” (both as in “take into mind” and “become pregnant”). We don’t have to stop there: we can add “emancipate” and also “municipal/municipium” (free town, governed but with its own laws). You can probably imagine I am grinning as I write this. The women who contributed to this issue knew these meanings all along. I don’t know if they consulted an etymology dictionary; more likely they consulted their minds and hearts and accessed the kind of knowledge and wisdom we sometimes don’t even know we have. And they expanded the meanings of “(pre)occupy” without ever losing sight of our common denominator and of the invisible cable (yes, also same origin) that holds it all together.
With these meanings in mind (or in our collective consciousness), we designed an issue that beautifully fills the white spaces of our electronic medium. We offer here contributions that speak of physical occupation, for example, the occupation or re-occupation of public spaces, of our own municipalities, as in the wheatpastes of La Muñeca and the public art of Mary Lucking, who respectively show their preoccupation with displaced peoples and the maintenance of a sense of memory in sites that have been reoccupied by walls, platforms, trains, our houses and stores, etc.
Our contributors also showed preoccupation in the sense of continuous attention to a topic or theme. This is clear in the pinhole photography of Sheila Bocchine (exposure takes several hours, and she has been engaged in the project for many years), the serial images of Suzanne Van Rosenberg, and the thematic nature of Karolina Sussland’s sunsets.
Political topics such as the Occupy movement, which again speak of our collective concern for reclaiming space, power, and voice, are present in this issue, most prominently in the works of Cathy Bryant and the poster by Casebeer. Political too is the preoccupation expressed by Claudine Corbanese’s characters in her short story. Preoccupation with and sympathy for the unequal and unjust conditions under which many women around the world (still) live can be appreciated in the work of Margarita Gokun Silver.
A preoccupation with conception and the occupation (or lack thereof) of women’s bodies is evident in the poetry of Sara Baker and Molly Sutton Kiefer. A preoccupation with preoccupation itself (especially the kind that takes obsessive form) is the theme of Judith Terzi’s poetry as is the idea of an upbeat rhythm as an antidote to such fixation. A fixed idea about the non-occupied continent of Antarctica is embodied in Jen Urso’s exploration-minded work.
That the occupation of space sometimes overtakes us is a central concern in C.O. Moed’s piece. And the time period one occupies and the preoccupations of switching from time to time are the working ideas developed by Kristina Blackwell in her atmospheric short story.
Ronna Magy is preoccupied with falling, both literary and figuratively, as in falling in love. Love and loss also occupy the stanzas of Ruth Sabath Rosenthal’s poem. Hilary King writes of our constant occupation with daily tasks, of the time that everyday conflicts might steal from little pleasures that we are often too occupied to enjoy. The main character in Janet Yung’s story, on the other hand, finds comfort in the familiarity of home and preoccupation in the sound-filled outside.
Jane Attanucci’s poetry reflects a preoccupation with terms, and images, and forms, and people that might occupy our lives and our vocabularies without us being aware. Similarly, the conflicting nature of sentiments and relationships occupy the lines of Claire Scott’s poem.
Jane Addams and the house she occupied make an appearance in Susan Azar Porterfield’s poetry. Hannah Roche reflects on the state of preoccupation necessary for those whose occupation is to write. Her notes also wittily speak of a woman’s constant state of “pre.”
The flipside of preoccupation occupies Florence Major who writes about the (sometimes dire) consequences for women who dare to dream. A sense of place and the place of preoccupation occupy Renée Guillory, whose composition occupies the page in unique ways.
I want to close with the narrative suite of woodcut prints by Pamela Dodds and the preoccupation with war, dream of peace, and the possibility of regeneration they convey. I want to then circle back to the beginning, to the strong connection between occupation and capability from the Latin forms capabilis, "receptive, able to grasp or hold" and capere, “to capture.” Occupied with their craft and their art, our contributors have captured a wonderful portion of what women fill their days, nights, minds, space, and time with, and we hope the collection of their works provides the reader with many hours of suspended preoccupation.
* Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
I was born preoccupying others, having prematurely left the place that I previously occupied, my mother’s womb. Maybe this is what unleashed for me a life-long song and dance with thought, anticipation, and concern for the future. To be in a Zen, meditative state is hard work for me, which itself is a contradiction in terms. So I don’t think any random coincidence exists in my having co-edited an issue about (pre)occupation for Trivia.
Nevertheless, despite my inclination for worry, instead of causing me anxiety and stress, this process of co-editorship has been delightful – to read the contributions, to have conversations with Jo and the editorial team over tea and treats, to imagine what hidden threads held our issue together were all indeed remedies to preoccupation itself.
The best prescription for preoccupation is to occupy oneself with the present, with an actual task that engages the mind, not with the past or the future but with the now. And every now of editorship presented itself with compelling images and words. I also became occupied with the many meanings that this elastic construct of (pre)occupation, made even more elastic by the presence of the parenthetical and removable “pre,” could take.
Being a linguist, I found it impossible not to turn to the etymology of “occupy” in this editorial. The many meanings associated with the term range from “seize” to “take possession,” from “dwell” to “take space or time.” Closely related are the words “capable” and “captive” and also in the same family is “conception” (both as in “take into mind” and “become pregnant”). We don’t have to stop there: we can add “emancipate” and also “municipal/municipium” (free town, governed but with its own laws). You can probably imagine I am grinning as I write this. The women who contributed to this issue knew these meanings all along. I don’t know if they consulted an etymology dictionary; more likely they consulted their minds and hearts and accessed the kind of knowledge and wisdom we sometimes don’t even know we have. And they expanded the meanings of “(pre)occupy” without ever losing sight of our common denominator and of the invisible cable (yes, also same origin) that holds it all together.
With these meanings in mind (or in our collective consciousness), we designed an issue that beautifully fills the white spaces of our electronic medium. We offer here contributions that speak of physical occupation, for example, the occupation or re-occupation of public spaces, of our own municipalities, as in the wheatpastes of La Muñeca and the public art of Mary Lucking, who respectively show their preoccupation with displaced peoples and the maintenance of a sense of memory in sites that have been reoccupied by walls, platforms, trains, our houses and stores, etc.
Our contributors also showed preoccupation in the sense of continuous attention to a topic or theme. This is clear in the pinhole photography of Sheila Bocchine (exposure takes several hours, and she has been engaged in the project for many years), the serial images of Suzanne Van Rosenberg, and the thematic nature of Karolina Sussland’s sunsets.
Political topics such as the Occupy movement, which again speak of our collective concern for reclaiming space, power, and voice, are present in this issue, most prominently in the works of Cathy Bryant and the poster by Casebeer. Political too is the preoccupation expressed by Claudine Corbanese’s characters in her short story. Preoccupation with and sympathy for the unequal and unjust conditions under which many women around the world (still) live can be appreciated in the work of Margarita Gokun Silver.
A preoccupation with conception and the occupation (or lack thereof) of women’s bodies is evident in the poetry of Sara Baker and Molly Sutton Kiefer. A preoccupation with preoccupation itself (especially the kind that takes obsessive form) is the theme of Judith Terzi’s poetry as is the idea of an upbeat rhythm as an antidote to such fixation. A fixed idea about the non-occupied continent of Antarctica is embodied in Jen Urso’s exploration-minded work.
That the occupation of space sometimes overtakes us is a central concern in C.O. Moed’s piece. And the time period one occupies and the preoccupations of switching from time to time are the working ideas developed by Kristina Blackwell in her atmospheric short story.
Ronna Magy is preoccupied with falling, both literary and figuratively, as in falling in love. Love and loss also occupy the stanzas of Ruth Sabath Rosenthal’s poem. Hilary King writes of our constant occupation with daily tasks, of the time that everyday conflicts might steal from little pleasures that we are often too occupied to enjoy. The main character in Janet Yung’s story, on the other hand, finds comfort in the familiarity of home and preoccupation in the sound-filled outside.
Jane Attanucci’s poetry reflects a preoccupation with terms, and images, and forms, and people that might occupy our lives and our vocabularies without us being aware. Similarly, the conflicting nature of sentiments and relationships occupy the lines of Claire Scott’s poem.
Jane Addams and the house she occupied make an appearance in Susan Azar Porterfield’s poetry. Hannah Roche reflects on the state of preoccupation necessary for those whose occupation is to write. Her notes also wittily speak of a woman’s constant state of “pre.”
The flipside of preoccupation occupies Florence Major who writes about the (sometimes dire) consequences for women who dare to dream. A sense of place and the place of preoccupation occupy Renée Guillory, whose composition occupies the page in unique ways.
I want to close with the narrative suite of woodcut prints by Pamela Dodds and the preoccupation with war, dream of peace, and the possibility of regeneration they convey. I want to then circle back to the beginning, to the strong connection between occupation and capability from the Latin forms capabilis, "receptive, able to grasp or hold" and capere, “to capture.” Occupied with their craft and their art, our contributors have captured a wonderful portion of what women fill their days, nights, minds, space, and time with, and we hope the collection of their works provides the reader with many hours of suspended preoccupation.
* Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
About the author
Patricia Friedrich is Associate Professor at Arizona State University, having received her PhD from Purdue University. She is the author of non-fiction and fiction, with two books by Continuum - Language, Negotiation and Peace: the use of English in conflict resolution and Teaching Academic Writing (ed.) and a new edited book (Nonkilling Linguistics: toward practical applications) by the Center for Global Nonkilling. She has also published some 25 articles and book chapters in periodicals such as Harvard Business Review and World Englishes, and edited an area of The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics (Wiley-Blackwell).
Patricia's fiction has appeared in Grey Sparrow, Eclectic Flash, Blue Guitar, and The Linnet’s Wings and is forthcoming in the anthologies Fiction in the Attic and Birkensnake 6. Her novel manuscript, Artful Women, won first prize at a recent Romance Writers of America regional competition (as a mainstream fiction entry). Find out more at patricia-friedrich.com.
Patricia's fiction has appeared in Grey Sparrow, Eclectic Flash, Blue Guitar, and The Linnet’s Wings and is forthcoming in the anthologies Fiction in the Attic and Birkensnake 6. Her novel manuscript, Artful Women, won first prize at a recent Romance Writers of America regional competition (as a mainstream fiction entry). Find out more at patricia-friedrich.com.