Randi Beck Ocena was born and raised in Oklahoma where she divided her time between bookstores and horse barns. Her love of art, writing, and a particular passage by Natalie Goldberg took her to New Mexico where she lived for 10 years, earned a bachelor’s degree in English and Philosophy, painted a few murals, and met Natalie Goldberg once for about 23 minutes. Her work has been published in The Kenyon Review, Michigan Quarterly, Threepenny Review, As/Us, Ramshackle Review, Ploughshares and other journals. Her story, “By Morning, New Mercies” received an honorable mention in Best American Short Stories in 2014 and was runner up for the Ploughshares Emerging Writer Award. In 2018, she was awarded a residency at Vermont Studio Center to complete her collection of stories, The Ground We Come From. Randi now lives in California with her wife and writing companion, Samantha Tetangco. She divides her time between teaching, writing, gardening, artmaking, mustang horses and metaphysics, depending on the season. You can find her art on her Etsy Shop.
We at Plume asked her to create an aromatherapy gem essence mist for writers: Be Here, Write Now™ which she says is like a breath of fresh air through an open window, a clean sheet of paper, and a good cup of tea.
PLUME: When did you know you were a writer?
RBO: As soon as I first sat down under a tree and wrote my first free verse poem entitled “Mother Nature.” I think my mom still has it somewhere. I was 9 years old and up until then, writing poems usually meant making acrostics using our name (Reader! Animal-lover! Nature! Dancing! Imaginative!) or five words to describe our favorite color and so on. But this time we were led to the edge of the woods outside our school and asked to sit in the grass and be silent, to observe with our senses and then write a poem, describing the world in sight, smell, sound and touch. I took so much pleasure in that experience, both in the act of observing, the permission to be quiet and still in this way and then to write about it and I knew that I would always want to do this. I continued to write at recess, at home in the backyard, hiding in the library throughout middle and high school, and later in horse barns, truck beds, coffee shops, late night diners, on city buses, park benches, out on trails, sitting beside the creek, lounging on top of haystacks while my horses were eating, and twice in line at a theme park. I don’t really know if I thought of myself as a “writer” back then, in fourth grade. But that’s when I knew I wanted to write all the time and the joy I take in sneaking off on my own to enjoy the world through writing has remained true all of my life.
PLUME: Where do you get your ideas?
RBO: See the list of places above. But I think that the people I meet traveling and people I recall from back home are probably my primary source. Though I write mainly fiction, poems still spring up from time to time and nearly always from the very same exercise I mentioned above, just observing the here and now and the natural world in particular. I need quite a bit of stillness and time outdoors to refill the well, not just for writing, but for my sanity. I am also a collector of sorts and tend to cross-pollinate all of my interests, particularly in art and poems. More and more I find layers of language and meaning emerging in my work that is informed by myths, fables, the cosmos, animal behavior, plant life, and whatever else has recently caught my attention. For instance, some research on duck phalluses and a few horrible news articles about trophy hunting and poaching have influenced some of my work in the past year.
PLUME: How supportive is your local community for writers?
RBO: Having only lived in the Central Valley for a few years now, I still haven’t quite found my place here. While there are several visual art programs I have been able to connect with, if there are writing events or groups outside of the university they are not especially visible. There are not many coffee shop bulletin boards in this town…just one, to be exact. But when there are art and theater events, people tend to show up in impressive numbers, so I think there is a desire for it and certainly room for growth here, especially as the university continues to grow too.
PLUME: We at Plume consider you a successful writer–How do you define “success” for a writer? For yourself?
RBO: Ah, the hard questions. I think I was very lucky to grow up without anyone correcting my belief that as long as I was writing because I felt like it, then I was a writer, capital ‘W.’ However, I lost that certainty as soon as I started trying to publish things. Even with a few decent journal publications and credentials under my belt now, I still struggle with being able to own the identity. At what point do we get to answer the question: “What do you do?” with a simple: “I’m a writer” and not have to qualify ourselves with hard evidence (like a best-selling book, for instance). I once thought that when I could say that with confidence, it would somehow mean I am successful. But I think that was only another way of saying that when I can make a full-time living from writing, then I would be successful. That belief no longer holds true for me and now I think I expect more from myself than that.
I think I’ll only feel successful when I see that my writing has made some kind of difference in the world. If I could prevent a tree from being cut down or protect an endangered species or have even a small, indirect influence on how women are seen and treated in my home state, well…I guess that’s what it will take for me to really feel like I have succeeded at something worthwhile. I’m not sure that having a hundred stories published or winning a Pulitzer would be enough for me anymore, and oddly that only increases the pressure I feel to get to work. It’s tricky territory, because I try very hard not to weigh down my writing with a particular agenda, and yet clearly, I have one. I guess what I am saying is that I have enjoyed writing things that are beautiful I’d like to write things that are beautiful and that matter. But do I hold other people to that same standard for success? Definitely not. If you are writing because you feel like it and you keep doing it, regardless of anything else, then I admire the hell out of that.
PLUME: Do you have a writing hero? A fellow woman writer from whom you get inspiration?
RBO: I have a number of them. One of the first who comes to mind just now is Mary Oliver whose words can just about bring me to tears no many how times I read them. She has given me a lot of permission to embrace a private, low-tech, unsocial-media life which is surprisingly hard to do as a writer right now, I think. Another is Anne Waldman. I was fortunate enough to spend some time with her last fall and the first time I heard her read I was astounded. Perhaps enchanted, is more accurate. The poems themselves are powerful but when she reads them it is like being very gently electrocuted from the inside. I had a similar experience watching Patti Smith perform this year except in that case I cried for half the show. I would definitely add them both to the list of artist/writers who most inspire me. These women are all activists in one way or another. They work and live and love by their own code and they stand by it with conviction. I admire this because it is a quality I long to discover in myself. I’m not there by a long shot, but I’m working on it. I try to remind myself that it is probably not a coincidence that the people I admire most are nearly always twice my age or better, and that it may be a lifetime of work to become one’s best self or come into one’s full power.
PLUME: What are you currently working on?
RBO: I am finishing up a collection of short stories that was probably really finished five years ago. I really am almost done with it though, I swear. I am also working on a collection of poems that includes one about the duck penis I mentioned previously. There is also a poem in there about a man whose penis gets stuck inside a giant clam. In fact, there are altogether too many phalluses in the book, but plenty of other things too. The working title is Illustrated Poems for Nature Lovers of All Ages. It is not really for all ages, now that I think of it. But they really are illustrated, and I’ll probably include that one from fourth grade if I can find it (“Mother Nature”). Maybe then I can finally see this whole writing journey come full circle. More than two decades later and I’m still getting chased by wild geese, still writing poems about trees, and still trying to find the perfect place to sit down and write in peace.