November 4

There is something kind of liberating about having missed a couple of days already, you know?

So, Galway Kinnell died. He was a poet hero of mine. I loved his work and had the pleasure of meeting him and hearing him read a handful of times. He was such a lion, such a majestic voice. He was my Walt Whitman.

The world feels a little darker without him.

Here is one of my very favorite of his poems - and one I could most certainly recite from memory for much of my adult life.

Wait

Wait, for now.
Distrust everything, if you have to.
But trust the hours. Haven't they
carried you everywhere, up to now?
Personal events will become interesting again.
Hair will become interesting.
Pain will become interesting.
Buds that open out of season will become lovely again.
Second-hand gloves will become lovely again,
their memories are what give them
the need for other hands. And the desolation
of lovers is the same: that enormous emptiness
carved out of such tiny beings as we are
asks to be filled; the need
for the new love is faithfulness to the old.

Wait.
Don't go too early.
You're tired. But everyone's tired.
But no one is tired enough.
Only wait a while and listen.
Music of hair,
Music of pain,
music of looms weaving all our loves again.
Be there to hear it, it will be the only time,
most of all to hear,
the flute of your whole existence,
rehearsed by the sorrows, play itself into total exhaustion.

***

Five Days In

Five days in to National Poetry Month and here are the things I've learned so far:

I get inspired when I have a journal open on my lap and a pen in my hand. I used to spend a majority of my days like this and I really don't anymore. I carry the tiniest little journal in my purse and it does not seem to count. I need access to a bona fide 8 1/2 by 11 comp book at all times. This is a good thing to know.

I wouldn't have made it through the first two days without the enforced solitude and stasis of the pick up line at Max's school.

Writing makes me hungry.

When you are in a hurry the internet can be so sloooooow.

More people than I ever imagined are checking in over at For the Time Being. Very few comments but the page views are through the roof

Sitting down to write every day makes me miss the writing I used to do here.

Is National Poetry Month making you hungry too? Are you too dissatisfied with the size of the journal in your purse? As for me, I think I'm going to need a bigger purse.

Getting Back in the Swing

I have every intention of writing a poem and publishing it here every day in April for National Poetry Month. It is a great practice and a way to immerse yourself in writing/thinking about poems for the entire month.

There is one more reason. Week before last when I was casting about for one more shortish poem to round out my reading, I went back to look at the poems I wrote last year. Taken individually, they aren't much to look at. But viewed as parts/sections/fragments of a larger, longer poem, I actually liked them. I liked them a lot. And I did pull a little fragment out to use during the reading.

Moment

 Halfway through

the rambling description
of yesterday's sky I realize
this is going
nowhere.

It would certainly help
if the grass were not
so damn green

or if the light did not insist
on shoving itself
through the blinds
so provocatively

if dinner did not want
so desperately
to be prepared

mushrooms leaping off the counter
and the fish leaning suggestively
toward the oven.

So I am doing it again for the little herd of poems and fragments it will give me to work with in the days ahead.

This Is Not a New Year's Resolution

I used to be really good at writing no matter where I was or what was going on around me. I could write while waiting for the pasta water to boil, leaning on the kitchen counter. I could write with the television or radio on in the same room. Somewhere there is a photo of me sitting on the stairs, folded over my journal, scribbling as a long forgotten party swirls around me.

I lost this ability along the way.

As it is with any skill set gone rusty, the only way to get it back is to practice, to accept that for now you are going to be awkward and clumsy but do it anyway.

You can only ever start where you are.

Morning Pages in July

I'm writing morning pages every day in July with my friend, Jamie Ridler.

I've found morning pages to be a powerful practice and I consider them utterly non-negotiable.  I write them every day, no matter what.

If you're looking for a summer practice, a way to ground yourself in the every day, this is one I highly recommend.

Things You Say Out Loud

Heather invited me to be Derfwad of the Week over at her place and I said yes, because I like and admire Heather and I think very highly of the community she has created in her little corner of the web.

So I am picking out a photo or two and writing this little piece about myself today and I'm struggling with how I present myself. It is difficult to find the right tone when it comes to talking/writing about yourself. I am writing honestly about who I am and what I believe but I am leaving out a few of the less shiny details.

 So, in the spirit of full disclosure, here are the less shiny things I am leaving out:

I am socially anxious. I have a temper. I am a notoriously bad housekeeper. Until very recently, I did not own an iron. My desk is usually a mess. I have a compressed nerve in my neck that I have to treat pretty gingerly. I have forgotten almost all of my college Spanish. I watch Glee. I struggle every day with writing and finding time to write. At present, we are being tormented by a couple of rogue mosquitoes that found their way into the house. I am a little bit in love with my smart phone.


Okay, I feel a bit better now. Carry on.

I Wrote a Poem Every Day in April

So, I wrote a poem every day (except for two of the days we were caught up in the state robotics competition) in April to celebrate National Poetry Month.

In case you are new, I posted them here.

I did it because writing a poem every day is a pretty cool discipline - a good way to stretch some creative muscles that were getting a little flabby and also for this:

What you see there are the pages of rough sketches I did for the little snippets I eventually posted online. Ninety percent of those pages have writing on both sides. That, my friends, is a nice-sized pile of raw poetry material to noodle around with in the next few months. Between these notes and the bits I put online I'd be willing to bet there are several juicy poems worth of images and ideas.

I'm glad I did it. Most days, it was a lot of fun.


So, thank you for reading along. If you'd like to weigh in on what you liked best, I am always happy to have your comments.

Word Cloud for the Long Poem

April Full Moon Dreamboard

Sometimes a dreamboard sort of magically comes together, my subconscious does all the heavy-lifting and I breeze through the process. Other times, like yesterday, it is more of a slog, where nothing seems to fit together.

I think this month is about being brave, being strong and doing the hard work, the heart-breaking work that's ahead of me.

Here I Am

I am avoiding writing.

I am avoiding writing because there are things going on that I do not want to write about. It involves the story I never wanted to tell, the story that lies so far behind me I often convince myself that I've outrun it.

Even Max noticed and mentioned at breakfast that I don't seem to be doing much writing.

And then this morning, this from Mary Oliver's book, Dream Work.

You don’t want to hear the story
of my life, and anyway
I don’t want to tell it, I want to listen

to the enormous waterfalls of the sun.

And anyway it’s the same old story - - -
a few people just trying,
one way or another,
to survive.

Mostly, I want to be kind.
And nobody, of course, is kind,
or mean,
for a simple reason.

And nobody gets out of it, having to
swim through the fires to stay in
this world.

So, I'm still here, walking around with a pen in my hand, avoiding paper.

Update from Summer

I've been thinking a lot about letters and how I hardly ever write them anymore. Quite frankly, it feels weird to send a card or a note through the mail and since they inevitably go unanswered (although getting a response is not the motivating factor behind the writing) I often wonder if my letters, cards and notes actually arrive where I've sent them.

This is not a manifesto. No announcement that I'm returning to letter writing with a vengeance. I'm just feeling the loss, wondering what I might do about it. Does anyone still write letters? Do you?

But wait, I promised an update didn't I?

We are awash in tomatoes. These are "Juliet" tomatoes, a cross between cherry and grape, not as sweet as grape. Despite their size, they pack a lot of big tomato flavor.

In an unrelated note, Frank stumbled upon a snail habitat underneath a water sprinkler on Father's Day. A good deal of time was spent finding these little guys a new home.

One of the joys of this summer (so far) has been a resurgence of lego building which might explain why these guys were staring me down at breakfast this morning.
(I like that Max has supplied wine glasses for his minifigs.)

I was noticing while I downloaded these pictures that every shot I take at the pool looks the same, blue water, blue sky, quarry walls. The only thing that changes is the length of Max's hair.

We have been enthralled by paper airplanes for the last couple of weeks. Frank have Max have not only made a shelf full of various designs but they've been collecting data on their flight performance.

Max is very serious about data collection and graphs and also diagrams.

And here lies my abandoned yoga mat and gym bag...

I'm going back next week.

A Little Trick

I've been using this little trick to get creative work done. When I start to feel resistance, strong resistance to doing something, I immediately go do it. So yesterday, when I started to really resist sitting down to write, I just picked up a pen and sat down.

I had avoided writing for a day or two because it had become downright unpleasant. I was writing every day but it just felt bloodless, perfunctory. I wasn't enjoying it at all. It was like a chore to plow through a writing exercise and I thought, "Great. All the pleasure of writing is gone, disappeared, poof and I will never feel it again. This is what writing will be for me, this plodding, going through the motions, day after day after day."

And then yesterday I started to resist and then sat down and wrote and all the glorious pleasure came flooding back like a long lost lover, and I wrote and wrote, almost crying with relief.

I've noticed this before, how something has to reach critical mass, a kind of tipping point of frustration and failure and then it tips ever so slightly, something clicks into place and things start working again.

So from now on, this is what I'm going to do: I am going to acknowledge the resistance and then get down to it. I'm going to have faith in the tipping point.

And this morning, when my calves felt sore and tight and I tried ten ways to sunday to talk myself out of going for a run, I just laced up my shoes and ran and I'll be damned if it wasn't the best run I've had in weeks.

Well Shake it Up Baby Now

I'm shaking things up over here. I'm reading some new people, creative people, positive people. I have a big pile of books beside me at all times. I'm not sure how this space is going to change but I can feel the evolution coming. I have been longing for quite some time to write more about creativity and the creative process here, but trying something new is a little scary. I keep getting cold feet.

So bear with me, while I scramble to get my footing.

I'm going to take this guy's advice. (And who wouldn't, I mean look at his swishy cape/coat and that hat. I love that hat.)

"One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time." – André Gide

Blog as Confessional

We are coming out from under (knock on wood) a time of illness. Both Max and Frank have had a case of resistant bronchitis. They were both hopped up on antibiotics and inhalers. I managed to escape with just a cold and a lingering cough. All this in the midst of some very good news that was a long stressful time in coming.

If you follow me on Facebook or Twitter, you already know that Frank was awarded tenure a couple of weeks ago. The process was long and we all carried a lot of stress while we waited. In fact, I worried about the prospect of what not getting tenure would mean for us so much that I'm having a hard time putting the worry down. When I lay down at night, my worry brain automatically jumps on the tenure wheel and starts to run and I have to consciously remind myself, "wait – that's over – you don't have to worry about that anymore."

All the worry and the coughing has completely derailed my creative work. A submission that is awaiting five minutes worth of prep is sitting where it has perched for the last ten days, on the corner of my desk. In the little bit of time I've been able to spend sitting here, I just look at it out of the corner of my eye. Grab something to read, take a nap, wash a dish, anything but spend the five minutes needed to complete the damn thing and get it sent. Hopefully confessing here will give me the little push I need to get those poems off my desk and out into the larger world.

Quiet Zone

So I had a birthday and I think a mild case of H1N1 (given that Frank & I both got it but Max who had the vaccine did not). I'm on the upswing except for this annoying cough.

Things have been business as usual. School, work, writing, meals, dishes, laundry, beds to make. I've just felt unusually quiet every time I sit down to blog. Maybe it's the mid-winter doldrums, which I think I get no matter where I am on the weather map. Maybe it's the fact that I've been so slowed down by whatever virus I'm incubating I haven't been able to run all week. I don't really know.

I've been listening to a lot of music. I've been working on a longish poem. I've been thinking about politics and love and how to get down to the rich dark marrow of every day.

Fragments

I've been writing in little fits and starts since mid-December. Three lines here, two there, a rare complete thought every few days.

I write this way sometimes, creating a big pile of fragments until I reach some invisible tipping point and suddenly see how they are all connected to some central moment or idea or how they are really already a poem, and my job is to puzzle all those pieces into the right place.

It's just not happening this time. I've got lots of pieces but they just seem random with a few recurring themes: desire, geography, a couple of stunning lines about the laws of physics, memory, time.

Today, my fragments are stubbornly remaining fragments.

Surprise

This last burst of writing when the day's about done and I should be getting dinner on the table always surprises me.

Louder than Bombs

I'm listening to The Smiths this morning and the lyrics keep distracting me. Plus I have to stop every five minutes to play my imaginary tambourine.

I have been MIA from this space for a week and while I wish I had some gloriously interesting reason, I'm afraid it's just that life was happening. I was doing some other writing and every time I came back over here, there was nothing but the sound of crickets in my brain.

This morning the crickets have been shooed away by The Smiths and I am not completely sure that it's an improvement.

I've been trying to write for at least an hour every day and I keep getting stuck at 45 minutes. That's sixty minutes, ass in chair without interruption. For some reason, right at the 45 minute mark my brain just goes into a skid and I cannot go any further. Cleaning off my desk has helped immensely. I have even (gasp) shoved my laptop over to the corner so there's just a nice big blank space in the middle of the desk. Sharpened pencils help too.

Sometimes it takes me forever to do these very simple things.

I Have a Secret

I've been carrying this secret around with me in my purse for a little over a week. It's Jen Lee's Take Me with You: A Journal for the Journey and it has worked a little bit of magic for me.

Jen Lee is a luminous powerhouse of creative encouragement. She's a storyteller, a writer, a photographer and most of all an encourager. This beautiful journal is filled with little suggestions and encouragements, not really like the writing prompts you often get in journals like this. The book features little whispers of encouragement, the kind you might get from a dear friend or a sister.

And here's the magic, most times when I pull out a journal to write in the two minutes of time I have in line somewhere or picking up Max from school, I feel supremely self conscious. My gremlins go on high alert and start shouting, What are you doing? You are writing in public. It's weird! Someone will notice! Stop – put that pen away right now! When I pull this little journal out, all I can hear is Jen's encouraging voice saying, Go ahead, write it all down and then I do.

Jen's blog is here and if you have a writer or even a reluctant writer in your life, check out Take Me with You. It might be exactly what they need.

Other Voices, Other Rooms

I am hanging out over at The Women's Colony today. You'll find me on the the porch. Come on over and say hi. We can sit on the porch swing and talk about the weather.