Category Archives: A Woman of Letters

You are a human treasure

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Dear One,
Your compliment, so kind, compels me to remind you how much beauty also lives in you. You, of course, the person,  and you the word, so small in all the language.  “You” can mean the one, or “you” can mean the many. “You” can mean the Angel who I wrote about last May in “Stop this day and night with me.”

Angel returns one morning last week.  I open the oak front door to see him standing on the porch.  He shuffles his feet, looks at the stone, points to the empty dirt in my new yard and wonders if I need help planting.  His eyes are bloodshot, the scent of alcohol sweet in the morning air.  He smiles as he gestures toward the mud.

“Would you like me to put in roses? Fruit trees?”

“Let me check with J,” I say, acting like it hasn’t been months and months since he stopped gardening for me, acting like this newly emaciated body clothed in muddy khaki pants, cinched with a black belt flapping several extra inches at the end, might actually be able  to dig holes and tamp mud any better than my own.  He has a gift, this man who knows exactly how to coax a growing thing to triumph. Should I stand in the way of allowing him to work?

“Can you come next week?”

“Sure, sure.”

I give him J’s number to arrange a day, a time, a price.  Angel calls on Sunday.

“I can’t make it on Monday. I’m in the hospital. For tests. Maybe I can come on Tuesday.”

On Tuesday night Angel calls.

“I have stomach cancer. I have an operation tomorrow. I cannot come and plant your garden. Maybe next week.”

You are a human treasure.

Must I know exactly where I’m going when I compose a leading line?

chester on trail

What if I have no idea how the story ends, or how to compose a view for effect, or how to make any sense of muddy paths leading straight into the fog?

Is it an accident, or part of nature’s wondrous plan that the view when looking up

Light and lattice

offers much more hope and light than the gaze that meets the ground?Two muddy feet

Yet it’s on the ground where the growing things begin. Salt of the earth.  Grounded. It’s the earth we all return to.

When a writer thinks of leading lines, a writer thinks of books, that first taste of a voice which can make a difference in the way a reader sees the world.

I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids – and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.

from Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison

There is nothing worse I think, than the feeling of not being seen.

Even among books, some seem small in stature, insignificant when compared to the legacy of others based on copies sold, appearances on syllabi, or inclusion in the conversation among critics.

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Some books, some lives, are at risk of getting lost.  I’d like to highly recommend such a book that might have missed your radar.  Dominque Fabre’s The Waitress Was New, (translated from the French by Jordan Stump) is the perfect little 106 page gem to reacquaint yourself with what  Fabre describes as the, “genuine beauty, genuine dignity of  places or people that have been somehow overlooked.”

Unknown

It’s the story of an entirely undistinguished bartender.  It offers a leading line straight to the very mystery of the beauty of the anonymous life most of us exalt in. It reminds us that we must take the time to tell each other, You are a human treasure. And then, we must live as if we believe it to be true.

With all due respect,
~Catherine

Lessons from winter

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Can I weave a nest for silence,
weave it of listening,
listening,
layer upon layer?

May Sarton, from “Beyond the Question”

I told you once, there are four of us Backyard Sisters.  Today’s post comes from the eldest,  Theresa, prompted by a telephone conversation.

Winter

“I drove in the dead winter,” she tells me one day.  “From Des Moines to Minneapolis. And it was darker than dark except for headlights on the highway. And I thought of letters flying through cyberspace, of too many words, like those headlights.

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“And I thought of a poem by May Sarton.  Then I wrote this for you.”

Theresa’s my hero. She finds a way to quietly approach life, to focus as if each moment, each person, each word matters.  I’m happy to share my big sister with you.  Here’s Theresa…

sisters

“words once spoken, can tear down or build up – but can never be destroyed.”

I wrote that when I was 14 or 15 years old, probably after an angst-producing adolescent moment – and I still think about words a lot.

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This 27 ft x 17 ft sculpture, Nomade, is by Jaume Plensa, who “envisioned the letters as building blocks for words and ideas, in the same way human cells form tissues, organs and bodies.”  It sits in Des Moines’ outdoor sculpture park.

DSCN0865I too believe that words and ideas form us in the same way our cells give us shape and I believe that we are all the better that words can’t be destroyed or we would have lost our earliest stories.

But one must first become small,

nothing but a presence,

attentive as a nesting bird,

May Sarton, from “Beyond the Question

I also think about how today thoughts can be casually dispatched as quickly as you can type and in a split second be launched at someone or some group and preserved forever in our digital minds.

I picture cyberspace as the darkest of nights, illuminated by flashing lights like lightening bugs and trailing comets, letters strung together careening and whistling to their intended targets.

And then I think about us, how we see this chatter, day and night, incessant words, constant words, bathing our thoughts and I wonder what will come of this, what are we building?

What happens in a world when conversation is mostly visual and  there are few pauses between our words? Where are the spaces in our communication now, the opportunities to pause and reflect before answering, or to just sit in comfortable silence with one and other.

Beyond the question, the silence,

before the answer, the silence.

May Sarton, from “Beyond the Question

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This amazing technology that allows us to connect instantly is for the most part a gift, allowing families and friends to share their lives in a way never before possible. But like all blessings, it might also be a curse, teasing us into believing that putting thoughts into words without pausing to consider the effect or substituting virtual reality for an opportunity to connect with a real person is the way it is supposed to be.

I have no answers – I suppose when the telephone first became available to most people, there were those who declared it unnatural and dangerous to humanity, most likely by someone like me who tends to think too much… However, quite by accident, I stumbled upon a book, Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other by Sherry Turkle.

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Sherry Turkle is director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and the Self and spoke with Krista Tippett about this topic on “On Being” recently. Do you think we really expect less from each other?  I’m going to download the book on my Nook and start reading.

You don’t expect me to throw the baby out with the bathwater do you?  I’ll let you know what I learn.  Until then,

Happy wandering –
Theresa

p.s. Catherine here ~ What would happen if today, this week, this year, you focused on treating the words you release as precious as art, as air?  Celebrate silence. Be attentive “as a nesting bird.” Speak and write carefully.

 

The Weekend Dish – Thank You

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Dear One,

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(You are amazing. I love you beyond the clouds and back.)

I found your note, tucked under the honey jar after the dinner party.  It’s hard to know exactly what made you underscore “amazing.” Was it the dancing in the kitchen after cheesecake? The roaring laughter at the table when you told that story about a sprinting basset hound? Whatever dear friend, it was really nothing, you know, nothing more than deciding to open up the door, serve a little food, and add some candlelight. For the record, you are amazing too. And for that, I’m grateful.

DSCN2554A few years back I had this idea to keep all my Thank You notes. At the time I thought I’d collect a pile, then paper a wall with them, or create a room border, maybe modge-podge them onto a tray. Yes, I’ll pause while you chortle.  At my earnestness. At my utter disregard for the fact that I have no crafting ability. But still, I save these treasures.

Thank you for including us! We enjoyed meeting some of your friends.
Thank you for spending a Saturday afternoon with me at the AFI Fest…
Merci pour the less-buttered chocolate cake…
Thank you for a wonderful semester of learning!
Thanks for your love and support during what has to be one of saddest times of my life…
Thank you so much for sharing your time, your words, and your poetry…

Thank You notes remind me of good times and of the importance of helping friends through  the sad ones.  They’re a living scrapbook of parties I’ve almost forgotten, of cakes I’ve made so frequently that I tend to I overlook how they might still be special to another. Thank You notes, sent and saved, draw in pen the invisible web of connected lives.

This weekend, take a minute – that’s really all it takes – and send a Thank You note.  Or, if you’re like my friend, write a note and tuck it in a hidden spot where it will be discovered later.  Either way, show a little gratitude for big things, yes. But focus on the small things too; the time spent together, the cake, the poem, the words said at just the right time.

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To our readers, on this our 100th post – this one’s for you. You are amazing.

With No Crafting Ability Whatsoever Except When Using Words
~Catherine

 

 

Rock, paper, scissors…

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Focus. Focus. I need to focus, to find an image, a metaphor to guide when life’s rapids churn around blind curves and threaten to upend me.

Rapids on the Reuss

Rapids of the Reuss, Illustration from 1,000 Miles in the Rob Roy Canoe

What’s the point, I wonder, of crafting a vision for a life, without a symbol? I try on images like new dresses.  Words from Henry David Thoreau’s Walden echo.

…beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes. If there is not a new man, how can the new clothes be made to fit?

The first time I heard of a life image was when my daughter’s friend, poised between college graduation and a new career, said “I want to be the Swiss Army Knife, you know, that guy who’s helpful in any situation.”

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I’m not a knife. I am a rock. I am an island.  

Rock

No, I’m not a rock.  A stone is too immobile, improbable. Too cold.

Paper. Paperback writer, (paperback writer….) Too ephemeral.  Too easily ignited by flame and burned to ash.

Scissors. Sharp. Sharp tongued. Rock beats scissors.

Quick jot.
Things I love:
You. Of course. And…
Ocean.  Freedom.  Literature.

Woman’s search for image simmers on the back burner as I unpack more boxes to fill the new bookcases J built for me. I find Dove by Robin Lee Graham, a yellowed, dog-eared souvenir of my teenage reading taste.  “The true story of a 16-year-old boy who sailed his 24-foot-sloop around the world.”

dove

Sailboat?  Closer.

I unpack a stack of freshly printed copies of dirtcakes, the literary journal I founded. I remember when I first hatched the idea of birthing a journal and asked around for  inspiration. A friend told me his favorite was Kayak Magazine.  George Hitchcock, Kayak’s founder, used to say,

A kayak is not a galleon, ark, coracle or speedboat. It is a small watertight vessel operated by a single oarsman. It is submersible, has sharply pointed ends…It has never yet been successfully employed as a means of mass transport.

“…operated by a single oarsman…” J and I kayak together and I’m a terrible backseat paddler.  Yet a daytrip to Venice Beach finds me walking along the canals, thinking of vessels, maybe boats with only one seat, not “a means of mass transport.”

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Did you know almost 100 years before George Hitchcock started Kayak Magazine, another man took off alone to explore Europe in a canoe, selecting that vessel because,

…in the wildest parts of the best rivers…these very things which bother the “pair oar,” become cheery excitements to the voyager in a canoe. For now, as he sits in his little bark, he looks forward, and not backward. He sees all his course, and the scenery besides. With one sweep of his paddle he can turn aside when only a foot from destruction.

He can steer within an inch in a narrow place, and …can shove with his paddle when aground, and can jump out in good time to prevent a bad smash. He can wade and haul his craft over shallows, or drag it on dry ground, through fields and hedges, over dykes, barriers, and walls; can carry it by hand up ladders and stairs, and can transport his canoe over high mountains and broad plains in a cart drawn by a man, a horse, or a cow. (From A Thousand Miles in the Rob Roy Canoe on Rivers and Lakes of Europe by J. MacGregor.)

Kayak. Canoe. Canoe. Kayak.  Some websites say the words are interchangeable, others cite leg and seat position as defining characteristics between the two.  Kayak is a palindrome, a word that reads the same from front to back. It moves only through human effort, glides silently, is open to the sun and moon, the breeze and stars. So too, the canoe.

Kayak

Maybe for once the word matters less than the image. Kayak. Canoe. A noun. A verb. A vessel wherein the wildest parts of the river of life can, “become cheery excitements;” a vessel wherein the paddler “looks forward, not backward…and can jump out in time to prevent a bad smash;” a symbol to take along into the big wide open year.

With wobble and strength,
~Catherine

Précis:
An image can remind you to stay on track with the life vision you set for yourself.

Practice:
Explore things you love – books, places, people – for ideas to create your own personal  image.  Settle on this image/metaphor for the year.  Post it in a spot you see every day.

Play:
Read about others’ adventures where a single object becomes metaphor.  Herman Melville’s Moby Dick immediately comes to mind. What, that doesn’t sound like play to you? OK, fine; go out and kayak. Then send us a focused photo.

Through the open window…

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A coyote yips and howls. I don’t know what time it is, still dark. The Siamese jumps onto the sill, presses her body against the screen, hackles raised.  She emits a low moan. In the distance an owl hoots and the dog rumbles a half-hearted growl. J still sleeps, so I get up to close the window and notice a pinking sky over the mountains.  The cat and dog settle back down, tightly tucking into furry curls against the January chill. But for me, the night is over.

Today, this not-the-first-of-the-year, but this ordinary-Thursday-when-the-holiday-rush-has-finally-faded is my annual Life Visioning day.  It begins when I light a candle against the dawn.

Candle

Actually I begin every day by lighting a candle and spending moments deep in reflection.

What am I grateful for from the previous day?

Gratitude Journal

a little dancing after dinner
candles on the hearth
neighbors who share homegrown oranges

With a smile and fortitude from recalling all that’s good, I next invite my sacred heart space to be bathed by a divine floodlight where I cannot hide, not even from myself.  I think back to the day before, and remember ways I did and didn’t act in alignment with my values and intentions.  Can I repeat what went right? Can I correct the imbalances that caused failure?

I set me intentions for this day, write my to-do list within this womb of new dawn freshness.  Then, I pray. I trace the presence of my family and friends upon my hands, using one index finger I begin at each fingertip recalling a name, a need, until the faces and the names of all those who are close to me are joined in the center of my heart-side palm.

Hands

I leave this meditation time by rejoining the entire human chain with an invocation for peace and love, “For those who will be born today, and those who will die.”  Each month I also add a special intention.  My January focus is, “For those who struggle with addiction or mental illness and for those who care for and try to love them.” I join my hands together, press them to my heart, bow to the sunrise and begin my “real” day.

Oh my goodness, telling you all this was difficult.

I’m an intensely private person by nature. There were years and years and when I didn’t even tell my own husband that I prayed, let alone that I meditated and lit candles in the dark and drew his name upon my palm.

Why change?

Maybe I’ve decided that being myself is something I should do publicly.

Maybe I wrote, be yourself out loud on my to-do list this morning and it’s too early in the year to break promises to myself.

It is, in fact, right in the middle of the month the Backyard Sisters have dedicated to focus and while Susan will tell you how to focus your camera, I am relegated to suggesting ways to focus your writing life.

I learn today that the word focus comes from the Latin focus, meaning “hearth, fireplace.

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focus (n.) 1640s, from L. focus “hearth, fireplace” (also, figuratively, “home, family”), of unknown origin, used in post-classical times for “fire” itself, taken by Kepler (1604) in a mathematical sense for “point of convergence,” perhaps on analogy of the burning point of a lens (the purely optical sense of the word may have existed before Kepler, but it is not recorded). Introduced into English 1650s by Hobbes. Sense transfer to “center of activity or energy” is first recorded 1796.

Inspired by the connectivity to the word focus and home, as nurturing my family ties always rises to the top of any priority list, I reread my last year’s life vision and adjust paragraphs or sections that no longer seem important.  I focus on the lines that have followed me from year to year to year.

Write a book. Write a book. Write a book.

I realize I am. I have. Written the book(s). I just haven’t pushed hard enough for publication.  I cross out the line. Write a book. I revise: Send out book.  We are only in control of our own actions, I realize. And now is the time to act with focus, with fire, with the kind of fierceness you would use to advocate for someone that you love.

With light and love
~Catherine

Précis: (This is a lovely new word I discover today. It means a summary.)
When you sit in peace, quiet self-truth speaks loudly. Pay attention to what you’re trying to tell yourself.

Practice:  
Can you create a vision for your life?  Nothing fancy, just write about the life you want to live.  I live in a house small enough to vacuum in an hour.  Date it.  Remember to include all the elements of nature: Air-spirit.  Fire-ambition.  Water-refreshment.  Earth-body.  Space-mind.  Focus on one action for each element that you can accomplish within the next month or so.  Write that down too.

Play:
Create a scene of dialogue between two characters, one whose inner and outer life is aligned – think Atticus Finch from To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee – and another who projects a false outward image – think Fermina Daza from Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez. Now what would happen if they end up in a story together?

“Get up! Get up!”

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I dream last night of my grandmother, my mother’s mother, the one my sisters and I call Gammy.  She was one of the original Backyard Sisters, the youngest of four girls born in an  Illinois small town.  She always wore high heels and a silk petticoat, carried a patent leather pocket book, and never pierced her ears.

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Gammy, far left

No one laughed like Gammy, or danced like Gammy, and lord knows no one loved or was loved quite like Gammy. Our mother, an only child, and we, her four granddaughters, were the sun around which she revolved. She was the kind of grandmother who, with each hello or goodbye, would clasp her hands around both your cheeks, pull you within inches of her own face, and with her eyes drink you in like whiskey the first night Prohibition was lifted.  Not that Gammy ever drank. She was a confirmed teetotaler.  Her giddiness bubbled purely from joy at being alive, surrounded by family.

We girls loved her back with reckless abandon.

Gammy has been dead now for almost 12 years.  But last night, when she leaned over me, right there in the moonlight, white lacy dress fluttering as she circled her hands over my head and cajoled, “Get up! Get up! Get up” I was only slightly surprised.  See, even though I use the term “dream,” to name these occasional encounters, it feels like a much more substantial spirit than my subconscious.  The other sisters will tell you their own stories about Gammy visits.  It’s like she was right there, right there in the room… The only difference between our stories is what she tells us.

“Get up! Get up!”  Oh my Gammy knows I’m struggling with rising out of the holiday stupor of too much food and too much fireside reading and too much nothing-to-do.  It’s January 4 and I haven’t yet set my intentions for the new year, haven’t decided yet what to focus on.

_MG_8208 focus

And focus I must. Why?

Because, like the holidays, my to-do list is rich with too many good things and I’ve been acting like that squirrel in the headlights, unwilling to say yes to anything because I’ll have to say no to so many others.

There is one sacred rock.  Family. There are 22 of us now, our parents, we four sisters and mates, our own children and in-laws. We gather at least once a month to celebrate birthdays, or graduations, or holidays.  We bake Gammy’s cake recipes and roast chicken like she did and never say we’re too busy to sing and dance in the kitchen.

But work projects are essential.  Our writing, teaching and photography sustain us and pay our bills.  And then what is life without trying to leave the world a little better for someone else?  Nothing! Gammy would say.

So in honor of what would have been Gammy’s centennial year, the Backyard Sisters decided to challenge ourselves.

We’ve selected 12 photographic terms, one to concentrate on each month.  These words convey a message, or capture a moment, a mood.  We’ve picked expressions that easily become inspiration and metaphor for family, for creative projects, for our place in the human collective.  They’re essential to saving life’s ordinary moments from the brink of oblivion; without these intentions meaningful art and life become difficult.

Our theme for January is focus. Works for photography.  Works for poetry.

it is out of focus

“It Is Out Of Focus” by Joel Lipman, (Poetry Foundation)

Ansel Adams once said, “When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence.” (LensWork, Issue 55, page 33.)

The Backyard Sisters welcome you to 2013 with words, with photographs, and yes sometimes silence, just to remember.

Each day we all travel one step closer to the inevitable endless silence of death.  The challenge then is to leave behind the words, images and memories that when recalled will reflect our best efforts.

Are you with us?  Then “Get up! Get up!”  The program begins on Tuesday. Until then, think about what deserves your attention this year.

With focus,
~Catherine and Sue

“It is difficult not to write satire.”

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Dear Family and Friends,

Christmas Angels

It’s seems almost impossible that one whole year has passed without a call, letter, e-mail, or text from you.  I’m sure you’ve been as busy as we have.  Let me tell you all about our wonderful year.

santa man

Ed captured the Western Hemisphere Sales Director VP and Marketing Consultant, Business Generator title at First Corporation Corp.  He’s catapulting into position to be the First Second Man!  He flies between Hong Kong, Australia, Singapore, Taiwan, Beijing, Boston, Fargo, and home on a regular route. He always appreciates the tender touches of clean underwear, socks, love notes, and credit card bills I slip into his carry-on.  Our 20th wedding anniversary was special.  We rented the Anniversary Suite at Punta Pacifica in Costa Rica. It’s a beautiful country with gorgeous beaches and many English-speaking people.  It was perfectly romantic and the two days, one night just flew by.

The blessing behind that little February interlude was Edward Jonathan III.  He’s beautiful. He’s a boy! He looks just like me even though I know he’s squinting in the picture.  He was, after all, just 12 hours old. I wrote this while nursing in the hospital since we wanted you all to get the fresh, fresh news immediately!

fuzzy angel

Elizabeth turns 3 tomorrow.  Her favorite activities are singing at Sunday School and playing nicely with other children.  She was chosen to be preschool helper at the So Good Academy twice already!  By the way, please don’t ask for any more references for your children’s applications to So Good. The Director requested that even though we are the largest donors it might be nice to let other families on the west side have a chance at the 12 spots for the ’13 and ’14 admission classes.

Grace is now 4. She’s very sweet and social.   She has many girlfriends and is invited to birthday parties often.  This trait, (guess who she takes after?) coupled with the gymnastics classes she’ll begin in January, should make her the undisputed Captain of Cheer when she begins Old Fashioned Fancy Crest as a freshman in 2021!

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Lauren turned 8 on the fourth of July.  Her lemonade stand on the holiday parade route brought in more sales than any other child’s! Our little firecracker still wins all the spelling bees, geography quizzes, and mathematics derbies in her classroom.  The biggest blessing about her new age is that she can finally compete outside of the Good Academy for city, region and state honors.  You’ll probably see her name in the paper just after the first of the year.  Please don’t call and congratulate her.  We’re trying to keep her humble.

Anna Mary turned 10. Her hair is finally growing out after the great candle and scissor debacle in art class so she once again looks like she belongs in the family, Ed’s side, of course.

Edwina began Old Fashioned Fancy Crest in September.  She took her first SAT exam and earned a near-perfect score of 2150, so she has three years to get even better!  Her greatest achievement was acceptance into the Big East Coast Ballet Summer Intensive Workshop.  Can you believe I sent my child across the country to spend six weeks in the company of prima ballerinas?  She was placed in second level which is incredible for someone her age! I made it to the gala extravaganza finale so I could clap and throw roses from the front row.  It was magical.

My work is really quite wonderful and exciting. I love it! I’ve been working full time on the same deal – worth $300 million! – since I started in May;  I work 80-90 hours a week, but I find out next week if the contract goes through, so, I’m hoping I’ll have a nice Christmas bonus. I spent my birthday in Toronto, Canada, on business. Last month I went from there, to Plano, TX, to Seattle, to Philadelphia, to San Francisco, Atlanta and Chicago, but now I’m on maternity leave through the holidays so I can be well rested when it’s time to ramp up again on January 2.

Anyway, do keep in touch.  We’re too busy to reply, but we count our long Christmas card list as one of life’s greatest gifts.

Air kisses!
~The Naughty Alter-Egos of Nice Catherine and Sweet Sue

Christmas Card

p.s.  Juvenal, the Roman poet whose quote titles this post, is one of history’s great satirists.   To find a fine discourse, written by Roger Kimball in The New Criterion, on Juvenal’s style, perspective and the nuances of his enduring legacy, click here.

Here a word, there a word…

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“Did I forget to look at the sky this morning / 
when I first woke up?”

Dawn

So begins Jim Moore’s,”Twenty Questions,” one of my favorite poems to read as a reminder to live attentively. When I take Moore’s attitude of inquiry into the day, I’m frequently rewarded with a high word count of odd snippets which I hoard like gold to incite new projects. And then I lose my words within the dozens and dozens of journals I’ve kept for years.

I once attended a reading where Charles Simic and Laure-Anne Bosselaar stood in front of a large audience and spun magic from their tattered leather journals, taking rapt listeners from first jot to finished poem like sure-footed adults leading children over stepping stones in a rushing river.

My process is infinitely messier.

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I keep journals everywhere.  Stacks of filled Moleskins pile up in a purple silk-wrapped box on my bookshelf. There are three journals on my bedside table, one in my purse, another in my messenger bag, and a water-spotted, sandy one in my beach backpack. There’s a slim brown journal in my car, a hardback one in my upstairs office, and the smallest journal of all waits downstairs by my muddy shoes.  I slip it into my jeans pocket before every hike.

Writing is the easy part.  Keeping track of my observations is the trick. Yet I find that randomly picking and choosing to read from this year or that, from land observations or seaside ruminations can be weirdly fun.

It’s never a good thing to be a cautious trumpeter, I wrote while listening to music at San Francisco’s now defunct Jazz at Pearl’s club.

Do not ever show an oak a photo of a pine. When you write about the aspen, don’t let the birch read a word about it, came after a late fall walk in the canyon near my house.

I’d rather lose an armpit than a finger, was gleaned at the AFI Film fest while riding the elevator from the parking garage to the ArcLight Theater in Los Angeles.

And then, my most promising:
”                                                         ”

This emptiness  lies within the small leather book, decorated with with a botanical pomegranate image, that I picked up at Charta an exquisite book bindery in Venezia.

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The proprietor, whose name I’ve sadly forgotten, warned me that I’d never write in this book.

“No one ever does,” he said as he wrapped the small book in gold paper.  “But just so you know, I offer free refills.  When you fill this up, you send me a letter and I will send you more pages.”

“Oh, don’t worry, I’ll fill it up. I’m a writer.”

He nodded sagely, patted the package before he handed it to me.

“You’ll be the first.”

I think of this – self-fulfilling prophecies and keeping track of journal notes –  as I bid my students a semester’s-end goodbye.  They tell me they’ve turned into writers now and they want to know how to continue the practice.

Off the top of my head, I offer my own best advice.

* Write frequently, at least 1,000 words a day.
* Save your writing in documents titled by month and year.
* Take a journal with you everywhere. (Shhh, I didn’t tell them the story of what happens to mine.)
* Make a regular practice of transcribing your journal notes once a month. (Now there’s a thought.)
* When a new month rolls around, open a new document and begin again.
* At that time, make a regular practice of reading the previous years’ journal entries for that month. For example, every December I read all the December documents from previous years.
* And lastly, don’t ever let someone tell you that you won’t write.

I always miss my students, for their optimism, their tenacity, their freshness, and finally because without them I’d have no occasion to hear myself say aloud things I know to be true.

“Don’t ever let someone tell you that you won’t write.”

It’s time to face down the Pomegranate journal.

bare feet
low sun
blue in the afternoon

There. In pencil, with eraser marks, a far from perfect entry.  And then I remember my second favorite line from the poem “Twenty Questions.”

“Wouldn’t it be wrong not to mention joy?”

I scribble joy! in Pomegranate journal, just to remind myself.

Joy! I tell my students instead of goodbye.  And then, because a statement offers no possibility for dialogue, I ask a question.

Will you remember to look at the sky at dusk?

DSCN2182

With joy,
~ Catherine

P.S.  Jim Moore is an American poet and recent recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellowship.

He writes in the his fellowship profile about spending time in prison and learning that his fellow inmates were poetry lovers.

I discovered that a big notebook was kept secretly (passed from inmate to inmate so the risk was shared)  and at some cost (its discovery would have resulted in the loss of good time, which meant a longer stay in prison) in which inmates kept poems—poems of their own and poems by poets whose work they loved, mostly Black poets, but I remember Neruda was there, Whitman, and Longfellow, of all people.

You can read the entire poem “Twenty Questions” here.

 

View from the lower rungs

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This write a novel in a month promise…
like climbing a twenty foot ladder to the sky.

an excerpt:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Rachel
May 2003

Let me not propagate words. It’s not what I do best.

I am, rather, a breeder of children, the keeper of remembrances.

My success is measured in a flip book of time, hinting at a future.  I have raised up five children. Mine don’t die.  The last child, a pudgy boy, starts first grade and rounds the years until now, as a new teenager, we find a hint of hair upon his upper lip.  School pictures, arranged all on one page, are glued, acid free, in a circle like the numbers on a clock. They tick off the moments, the years. This boy still has four blank circles.

The lady in charge of scrapbooking parties insists we do not be afraid to trim.  Snip out the refuse with zigzag scissors! Crop! Discard the unimportant!

That is a blessing. I think it’s why I took to scrapbooking.

I take horrible pictures.

A woman with her eyes half-closed.
A child with her new eyes fixed.
I always catch the mouths agape.

Grimaces. Laughter bubbling over into rapture.

A teenage girl, head tilted back, mouth thrown open so wide it looks as if she’s biting the universe. Only I remember the joke that caught her so overcome.  I snap a moment too early. Maybe too late.

Babies caught in the intake of breath become a tempest. Scowling infants. Toddlers with tears streaking their cheeks. Not cute sadness. Wretched sadness. Sadness with a conical birthday hat to top it all off.

A boy with his eyes half-closed.

So I crop. I save shoes. Food. Hands. Necks. Elbows. Eyes. Mouths. Noses usually turn out fine. Knees are pretty good.

I know who wore brown and black cowboy boots on Christmas Eve 1979. I don’t need to see his face.

It matters a lot, what I can remember. My lawyer tells me this.

So help me God, I’ll try to tell you what really happened.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Writing is the first step. Editing is more like what happens at the top of the ladder where the steps are narrow and far from the ground. The only thing worse than ascending air is having no one to keep your foundation from wobbling.  For now I’m getting strong support from 300,000 others at NaNoWriMo.

With steady gaze,
~ Catherine

Desire, expectation, and surprise

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Autumn Afternoon

A startled flock of coots.
At once a chorus!  Wing beats rise upon the reservoir, soft like a stadium full of children wearing mittens.

I close my eyes. Can you pretend it’s angels clapping? 

(October 29, 2011)

I find this in my journal and decide to return to the reservoir this morning to snap a quick photo to illustrate my words so I can get back to today’s real task of beginning that novel I will write in a month.

An overcast sky creates a muted light, fitting for this day-after-Halloween hush hanging palpable as the clouds. We pass a few smashed pumpkins and I pick up empty Three Musketeers, Peanut M&M and Snickers wrappers that I find littered along the way.  They crinkle now when I reach into my pocket to grab the camera before we crest the ridge to the reservoir overlook.

Chester pulls on his leash. He’s not used to being confined out here but I don’t want him to  dash into the water and scare the coots like last time before I can focus on:

Four unruffled ducks, utterly unconcerned about our arrival.  Aren’t I a lame one. I should have known better than to expect a repeat performance from something as serendipitous as an entire resting flock of coots which flapped away to my poetic enjoyment.

I give myself permission to skip writing a post today and decide to return quickly home when streak of white flashes on the far shore.

A heron! I’ll admit, I thought it was crane until I got home and learned that cranes fly with necks extended, while herons fly with necks held in a crook. Somehow I find great comfort in knowing that nature allows, in her wisdom for diversity, for both those who stretch as far as they are able in every single flight and those who keep their reach a little closer to their hearts each time they glide.

There in the distance are more herons, an egret, and yes, a few coots.

Chester sits on my foot. Is he telling me not to rush away? We pause and watch the herons swoop and drift and soar. There are no angels clapping but if I squint, it’s easy to imagine, on a day so fresh from memorializing death, that here at dawn we can witness angels flying.  Is this enough for one ordinary day?

We pull ourselves away.
There are words to write and “…miles to go before I sleep.” Chester is used to me quoting him lines of poetry when we walk.  For one brief moment he stops tugging on his leash. He looks over his shoulder and I swear he smiles.

With enchantment,
~Catherine