Does the page still bleed?

via Austin Kleon

Let us now travel back in time:

Remember when you wrote on paper, and your teacher/boss/editor would mark up your work with so much red ink you'd go dizzy? "The page is bleeding" you'd say, sigh, and then gather strength to make the changes.

Remember this? 

Recently, I marked up a manuscript and the young writer stared at me with a mix of horror and confusion. I had ruined her work with the ugly marks of a mysterious language.

Is this editing shorthand — long used by reporters and editors — now extinct? Does anyone write on paper anymore?

It's okay, you can tell me: Am I the last one out, and it's time to turn off the lights?

 

Thankful Thursday: What's a typewriter?

People give me things.

This week my husband gave me the thrill of ebay, and I promptly scored a pair of knee-high, leather boots (in camel — my favorite neutral).

Reb gave me the word temperance. Not the Ken Burns Prohibition sort requiring rash abstinence, but a gentler form of the word that suggests that of the middle way, of calm. The minute she presented the word, it fit. I've been wearing this word all week, as mantra, as reminder.

Dee gave me this necklace, and an explanation that made me sigh:

"I was in a small store where these were displayed. A mom was talking to her daughter about how these necklaces looked like typewriter keys. Typewriter keys! the daughter responded. What are typewriter keys? The mother shrugged off the question and went on looking through the store.

I wanted to grab the little girl and tell her that typewriters are where secrets are kept and you have to be very special and very talented to uncover the secrets of the keys . . . The necklace called to you."

On this Thankful Thursday I am grateful for gifts, and the people who give them.

It's Thankful Thursday! Please join me in a weekly pause to express gratitude for people, places, things and more. What are you thankful for today?

 

How I Learned: Books that Teach

Can poetry be taught?

What's the best way to encourage others to write?

And where do I start? 

When I led my first writing workshop nearly 10 years ago, I didn't know much. While equipped with  enthusiasm, I wasn't a teacher. I didn't know how to manage a classroom, or even a handful of youngsters, but I was eager and energetic. So I did what I always do; I looked to books to show me how.

Since that first workshop, with a group of teens, I've worked with writers from age 8 to 80 — in schools, homes, art centers and summer camps. We've written together in classrooms, in parks, in restaurants, on bridges, and on mountain trails, and I'm grateful for books that provided me the confidence and knowledge to teach.

Wondering how to infuse your classroom or community with poetry? Read these!

Books that Teach the Teacher


The Adventures of Dr. Alphabet:
104 Unusual Ways to Write Poetry in the Classroom and the Community
by Dave Morice

This zany, inventive book is an excellent guide on taking poetry to the streets — and everywhere else! It's packed with easy-to-accomplish projects that will ignite writers of all ages, especially children. Want to prove that poetry is lively, accessible and fun? These are my favorite Dr. Alphabet  activities:
BananaVerse — Yes, that’s right, banana as canvas for poetry!
Rock Poetry — Write on a rock, a leaf, a stick, a stone.
Poetry Poker — This is my all-time favorite, and always a hit with kids.

 

Poetry Everwhere
by Jack Collom & Sheryl Noethe

Where Dr. Alphabet is wacky and wild, Poetry Everywhere is more measured and reflective. This bestselling book is a valuable guide for those working with children. It's packed with 65 proven writing exercises, and more than 450 example poem by students, teachers and accomplished poets. As a teacher, this provided me with a solid understanding of writing prompts and tips on how to lead a poetry session. My favorite prompts include: I Remember Poems and Going Inside Poems.

 

Poemcrazy: Freeing your life with words
by Susan G. Wooldridge

My copy of this book is so loved and worn that I can barely make out the words for the post-it notes marking every other page. I've given this book as gift more times than I can count, and when I'm feeling lost in the literary forest of "why bother?" I turn to this gem again and again. Offering a gentle blend of writer's reflection and practical prompts, this guide is, in the words of Anne Lamott, "smart, wide-eyed, joyful, helpful, inspiring." 

Wooldridge's first-hand experience as a poet-in-the-schools provides practical knowledge, but these exercises — and the spirit of this book — extend far beyond any classroom assignment.

 

Awakening the Heart:
Exploring Poetry in Elementary and Middle School
by Georgia Heard

Both inspiring and practical, this how-to guide goes deep. Teaching poetry is more than teaching terms (stanza, iambic, etc) and Heard understands that young writers need to first feel comfortable and safe. She shares tips and tricks to create an environment that encourages self-expression, and then introduces poems and activities that will engage young writers. Equipping the teacher with tools is the first step, and with a heart that can open other hearts is the next.

Do you teach? What books have you found helpful?

 

Thankful Thursday: Out of Luck?

Jessica Hagy - Indexed

You set up a structure: Be thankful. Be bright. Cheer on. Cheer up.

But some days you're cranky. Luck has left, and your bootstraps are broken. Some days are weeks.

I'm short on gratitude today. Yes, yes, I appreciate what I have but my thankfulness is tired and dull.

Still, the show goes on. Show up. Shine on.

This week, kids, it's up to you.


It's Thankful Thursday. Please join me in a weekly pause to appreciate people, places & things.

What are you thankful for today?



Why I don't write love poems


It’s hard to write love poems because the tendency is to swoon, and it’s hard to swoon in an original way.

— Cecilia Woloch
(who shows great restrain in the poem below )

 

On Faith

How do people stay true to each other?
When I think of my parents all those years
in the unmade bed of their marriage, not ever
longing for anything else—or: no, they must
have longed; there must have been flickerings,
stray desires, nights she turned from him,
sleepless, and wept, nights he rose silently,
smoked in the dark, nights that nest of breath
and tangled limbs must have seemed
not enough. But it was. Or they just
held on. A gift, perhaps, I've tossed out,
having been always too willing to fly
to the next love, the next and the next, certain
nothing was really mine, certain nothing
would ever last. So faith hits me late, if at all;
faith that this latest love won't end, or ends
in the shapeless sleep of death. But faith is hard.
When he turns his back to me now, I think:
disappear. I think: not what I want. I think
of my mother lying awake in those arms
that could crush her. That could have. Did not.

— Cecilia Woloch
from Late

 

Thankful Thursday on Friday


What can I say?

It is better to have loved and lost

Than to put linoleum in your living rooms?

 

LeRoi Jones, aka Amiri Baraka, has died. 

As a white, middle-aged woman living on the West Coast, I have nothing in common with the African-American male, beat poet and political activist, who, after the death of Malcom X changed his name to Amiri Baraka.

But here's where poetry bridges, rather than divides.

When I met Baraka, I was 21, alone, broke and living in New York. Searching for free entertainment between a (unpaid) college internship and a ticket-taker gig at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I spotted a few lines in the Village Voice announcing a poetry reading.

It was one of those early-dark evenings and, not a skilled navigator, I walked in circles until I found the address — which, it turned out, was a tony Upper East side home. A private home! What was I doing here, in an intimate and well-appointed living-room like setting? I didn't know much about poetry, and had been to only one reading (a dim coffeehouse, wrenched in creative desperation).

I don't remember many specifics — what he read, wore or said — just that we sat, audience style, in rows of  upholstered chairs, and he filled the room with a poetic and powerful radiance. No joke. He had presence. And it didn't matter that I was young, white and poetically and politically naive. I was moved; In that room, I felt the power of poetry.

A few months later, my internship concluded, I headed back to college in Colorado. With poster board and magic marker, I copied the lines above, and fastened them, wall-to-wall mural style, to my spare studio apartment. Although I didn't "get" the poem, those words stirred me, made me want to push into that mysterious and lofted space where language, message and emotion so beautifully mesh. 

Thank you, LeRoi/Amiri, for opening the door.

In Memory of Radio 

Who has ever stopped to think of the divinity of Lamont Cranston?
(Only jack Kerouac, that I know of: & me.
The rest of you probably had on WCBS and Kate Smith,
Or something equally unattractive.)

What can I say?
It is better to haved loved and lost
Than to put linoleum in your living rooms?

Am I a sage or something?
Mandrake's hypnotic gesture of the week?
(Remember, I do not have the healing powers of Oral Roberts...
I cannot, like F. J. Sheen, tell you how to get saved & rich!
I cannot even order you to the gaschamber satori like Hitler or Goddy Knight)

& love is an evil word.
Turn it backwards/see, see what I mean?
An evol word. & besides
who understands it?
I certainly wouldn't like to go out on that kind of limb.

Saturday mornings we listened to the Red Lantern & his undersea folk.
At 11, Let's Pretend/&we did/& I, the poet, still do. Thank God!

What was it he used to say (after the transformation when he was safe
& invisible & the unbelievers couldn't throw stones?) "Heh, heh, heh.
Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows."

O, yes he does
O, yes he does
An evil word it is,
This Love.

— Amiri Baraka


It's Thankful Thursday (err, Friday), a weekly pause to appreciate the people, places and things in our lives. What are you thankful for today?


Bruce, the Unexpected Poet

Streets of Philadephia, written and performed by Bruce Springsteen, from the 1994 Oscar-winning movie Philadelphia.

A few times each year, often during the bleak midwinter, I revisit this song. I'm not what you would call a Springsteen "fan" but this song stuns me every time. It's such a powerful mix of melancholy music, plain-spoken language, and gravelled voice. 

It happens with other singer-songwriters too, usually drawn from the long corridors of my past: Jackson Browne, Sarah McLaughlin, Tracy Chapman. . .  I am shaken and taken, hushed.

Do you have a song that stills you and fills you, a song that moves quietly in you? 

What Did You Give?


A book is a gift you can open again and again.

— Garrison Keillor



Is there any gift better than a book?

Aside from cashmere, books are my favorite gifts — to give and receive. As the new year approaches, I'm happily curled up and reading. It seems the ideal way to wrap up this year, and roll into the next.


What I Gave

Tiny Beautiful Things:
Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
by Cheryl Strayed

This is the book I wish I had in my struggling 20s and early 30s. In this tough but tender book of "advice" Sugar — the anonymous online columnist at The Rumpus — offers compassion, insight and unvarnished honesty. Sugar's (aka Cheryl Strayed) got wit, warmth and a winning writing style.

Wild
by Cheryl Strayed

I didn't want to like this book. All the hype turned me away. But I finally gave in, and — surprise! — loved it so much I gave it as gift. It's good, really good, and worth Oprah's every gush and cheer. Read it now, before the movie comes out (starring Reese Witherspoon).

Note: I didn't intend for this to be the Cheryl Strayed Christmas but, really, she is good. See my other Strayed fave, from 2008: Torch

Blue Nights
by Joan Didion

Don't you love when you're mindlessly going about your day and trip upon a book that takes you back? When I spotted this book in the used section, I recalled a dear friend who introduced me to the great Joan Didion. The essays in Slouching Towards Bethlehem revealed to me the timeless power of "literary" journalism, and The Year of Magical Thinking broke me open with its truth and power. And so, I had to buy this book for my friend. She probably has it already. But that's okay. Sometimes a book is a tool, an object of thanks.

Tune In - The Beatles: All These Years
by Mark Lewisohn

At 944 pages, this tome either serves as absorbing tell-all or an overly researched snooze. I'm not ambitious enough to find out where it falls, but the recipient of this book — the first volume in a biographical trilogy (yes, that's three!) — tends to enjoy challenges of literary endurance.

What I Got

Faber & Faber Poetry Diary
Yes, I still keep a desk calendar, as in, a paper book with pages and dates. I adore my new day planner, or diary, as the British say. A treasure from one of the last great publishing houses in London, the Faber & Faber planner features 40 poems from writers ranging from Chaucer to contemporary poets. This is such a great gift, and I can't wait to fill its pages with deadlines and dates.

Ex-Boyfriend on Aisle 6
by Susan Jackson Rodgers

The best books have an inscription. A handwritten note tucked inside the first pages harkens to days when books and friendships were more permanent, less ephemeral. I'm eager to read this collection of short stories by a professor at Oregon State University, but not because of the engaging title or the contemporary writing style; I'm most touched that this is a gift from a student who, having enjoyed this book, wanted to share it with me.

And really, isn't that the best gift of all?

last of the great independent publishing houses in London - See more at: http://www.faber.co.uk/about/#sthash.kxroObGg.dpuffeatures 40 poems from Chaucer to contemporay poets. And here's a bit of new-to-me literary trivia: Founded in the 1920s, the Faber poetry list was shaped by the taste of T. S. Eliot who was its guiding light for nearly forty years.

 

How about you? What books did you give, and what books did you get? 

 

Rush & Hush: Notes on a Season

1.
When Silent Night plays through scratchy speakers, my arms are full of ribbons and wrappings and stuff that seems both necessary and not.

I know the music is canned, played over and over to wrench mood and money from frazzled shoppers like me. In this elbowed crowd, my resistance is low and I’m broadsided by children singing, sweet and serene.

Sometimes a music box version turns me inside out, my knees buckled in a gentle sort of grief. I am in a church, or driving a dark road, or in the center of a busy store. I am washed in a soft yielding. Today, under fluorescent lights, I am near tears, aching.

2.
You know this too, don’t you? A song. A gesture. An everyday act that, in this season, delivers a mix of longing and love. While everything threshes and thrums, it's a gift, really, to hold tenderness as it carves through you.

3.
I find myself repeating these words: “There’s no rush.”  

But, of course, there is. Everything is verb: shop, wrap, pack, prepare, cook, wash, dress, drive, eat, drink, smile, repeat. When we slow enough to feel, we feel too much. The power of quiet is in what it reveals, a crystalline quality that clarifies.

4.
Almost always, I’m hungry for quiet. On road trips and day drives, my eyes search the landscape for library and church. I like them modest, small. And empty. I don't usually go in, but I like to know calm stands still and willing.

“Chapels are emergency rooms for the soul,” writes Pico Iyer in Where Silence is Sacred. “They are the one place we can reliably go to find who we are and what we should be doing with our own lives—usually by finding all we aren’t.”

5.
Tonight, fishing boats dot the winter horizon, and I find comfort in bright lights against a pitch sky.

6.
How to quiet the mind from its endless babble? How to still the flutter, the caw? To just be is difficult. Is essential. Quiet has its pull.

“My feeling is that the paths of poetry and of meditation are closely linked,” says Jane Hirshfield. “One is an attentiveness and awareness that exists in language — the other an attentiveness and awareness that exists in silence, but each is a way to attempt to penetrate experience thoroughly, to its core.”

7.
In these days of early dark sets a nest of sadness, and one-by-one we place our hearts in the spot tangled with loss, and longing, and grief.

Silent night, indeed.

8.
“I try to take time to let go, to listen, in much the same way that I listen when I am writing,” writes Madeleine L’Engle in Walking on Water. “This is praying time, and the act of listening in prayer is the same as listening in writing.”

Increasingly, I seek this intersection.

9.
Driving home last night, a brilliant light hung low in the sky. Is it a star, we wondered, or plane, or planet, or god? I wanted to believe it was the north star (though we were heading south) and that it carried meaning and message.

Star of wonder, I whispered, wishing.

We traveled through the dark, the light leading us home.

 

West of 101 - Winner!

Congratulations to Trish Bailey, winner of West of 101, the newest book of poems by Ruth Harrison.

Thank you — each and every reader and writer — for taking part in this book giveaway. In my world, you're all winners.

What now? After the fun & falderal . . .

You can buy the book here.

You can read interviews with Ruth Harrison and other writers, here.

You can go forth and write your own poems.

Thankful Thursday: Richard Scarry


Mother Pig. Grocer Cat. Farmer Alfalfa. Lowly Worm.

Didn't you love this book?

Richard Scarry's wonderfully busy and oversized What Do People Do All Day? taught me to delight in life's details.

Published in 1968, Busytown was bustling and I was whisked into a world in which illustrations and text were energetically entwined in vignettes of endearing anthropomorphic animals building houses, sailing ships, flying planes, keeping house, growing food, and more.

This classic encouraged inquiry: What do you do? How do you do it? Coupled with Joan and Roger Bradfield's Who Are You?, my life as a writer — probing, poking, pondering — is rooted in these, my first books.

Scarry wrote and illustrated more than 250 books. By the time he died in 1994, he'd sold 100 million books worldwide. Over the years, his works have been updated to reflect changing social values, an alteration that is occupying original readers and increasing the value of the first editions.

Can a book change your life? Maybe not. But as a child I spent hours poring over Scarry's sprawling work, learning words and worlds. This book shaped my mind and, in turn, my life. Thank you Richard Scarry. Thank you.

It's Thankful Thursday. Please join me in a weekly pause to express appreciation for people, places, books and more. What are you thankful for today?

 

Fast Five with Ruth Harrison


Because a few questions can yield great insight, please join me for Fast Five, short interviews with great writers. Life may be full but let's make time for five questions — and the chance to win a great book (see details below).

Ruth Harrison was born in Kansas, grew up in Colorado, and has lived in Oregon since 1950. She is a retired professor of medieval literature (teaching at Portland State University, Linfield College, and Oregon Coast Community College) whose poems have appeared in regional, national and international publications. She is author of two textbooks, three chapbooks, and seven poetry collections. Noting her value to the writing community, the Oregon Poetry Association, the state’s oldest and largest poetry organization, recently honored Harrison with a lifetime membership.
 
You primarily write in traditional poetic forms. Is there a particular form you favor, and why?

Well, the sonnet — because it is old and mossy, and lovely in its song-like qualities, hallowed by time — and by users like Shakespeare and Keats, leading the way. And the villanelle, which I attempted as soon as I learned its name (in a college class), in part because it sent me looking for a poetry handbook, which led me on to many other forms; and in part because it's a challenge to make the required repetitions not thud on the ear, not seem repetitious and boring. And the triolet because its repeat lines are not so many as the villanelle's, and because it's small and must convey its impact in a short space . . . There are many many short forms Madelyn Eastlund's Poets' Forum had introduced me to, that I have enjoyed no end. The cresset comes to mind for its lovely symmetry and slight rhyme requirements, just enough to make a poet work to get the exactly right word to make meaning and to suit the formal requirement. The struggle is good for us as writers and as craftsmen. And I enjoyed trying a form Lew Turco told me about, the rubliw (named, I think, for Richard Wilbur—?), that he and his fellow poets have enjoyed playing with at Iowa and later.
 
At what age did you begin to write poetry, and how has your writing changed over the years?
 
I was told I made verses from about age two, but of course was not yet writing, just making. And I made an occasional attempt in school years, fifth and sixth grades, and so on. Then a few efforts in high school and college classes have survived . . . some college efforts made it into a college anthology. My teaching years mostly put an end to the writing, because teaching is so all-consuming, but sometimes when my students were busy with an in-class writing project, I sat writing also, to add to the work-filled intense quiet atmosphere as much as anything. But I didn't give it concentrated attention until I retired from my final teaching position, in 1994.
 
You formed Tuesday, a writing group that has met every week for over 20 years. How has the group influenced your writing life?
 
Tuesday has been a singular blessing. It carries an automatic weekly deadline to have material ready for the next meeting; it encourages revision and craftsmanship; and it takes the loneliness out of the writing life. It provides a first audience for untried work, in an unthreatening setting — a good testing ground.
 
What’s the best writing advice you’ve received (or given)?
 
Keep writing.

Will you please share a favorite poem from your new book, West of 101.
 
This is one many hearers or readers have liked [in unrhymed iambic pentameter]:

Night Lights

It’s 2:13 and she is not asleep
but trying. She’ll go warm herself some milk,
sit with the quiet, and look across the waves,
inhale the pine tree scent, and pause before
returning to her bed . . .   Take Christmas in:
plug in the lights, enjoy the silence, night,
the distant sound of surf, here near the glass.

The pane exhales a cool light essence, fresh
against her face.
She seems the only one
alive, awake here long before the dawn,
and watching the deep waves she knows are there
only because it’s west— that's where waves are.

Across the black . . . nothing alive in sight.
And moments pass in solitude and dark

But now a spark appears and disappears,
appears again. A crabber out there in
December’s endless night, his worklights bright.
On impulse, she unplugs the Christmas tree
and plugs it in again, to say hello
to light that speaks to her across five miles.

Three times the light blinks back, and she repeats
her greeting to the worker in the cold
before the boat is hidden by a surge
and swell of waters.

She lets go that breath
when light appears again, and sparks in sign
of living presence in that larger earth
the darkness opens.
A repeat flash says:

We’re all right here because the land is there
And every soul’s alone, but that is how
life is for all of us who’ve had the luck
to be born, and will have the luck to die.
We know you’re there, the only spark in sight
this holiday. And thank you for the light.

- Ruth Harrison


Win this book!

To win West of 101 by Ruth Harrison, simply add your name and contact info in the comments section below.

Your name will be entered in a drawing, and the winner announced on Sunday, December 15, 2013.

 

 

 

Four Great Books

I go to sleep reading, and wake up wanting more. I'm reveling in a buzz of really good poetry. Mind if I share my latest favorites?

 In the Kettle, the Shriek
by Hannah Stephenson

In her debut collection, Stephenson writes in direct language that ushers you in. Like origami, these seemingly simple poems are taut, smart and beautifully complex. In poem after poem she masters the killer last line. (She also keeps The Storialist, a blog in which she writes a fresh poem daily).

You Can Do This

You have parallel parked in a space
just five inches bigger than your car,
smoothly. You know Queen Anne's lace
from poison hemlock. You are
adept in remembering names,
and people's small quirks, you know
who has cats or dogs, who trains
them. You know an Aries from a Virgo,
a Libra from a Taurus. You have worked
at 4AM, or for 15 hours in one shift,
spoken cheerfully while your life jerked
and jolted. You found a gown in a thrift
shop, and it is beautiful. You are learning
to call to what you love, to see it returning.

— Hannah Stephenson

Ninety-five Nights of Listening
by Malinda Markham

I'm over my head here but I can't stop reading. Markham's evocative, unexpected language is matched with a quiet, lonesome tone. Even when I don't "get" these often-opaque poems, I am moved by one stunning line after another. Here, see what I mean:

Once I told you
everything I knew in a language
you did not speak. This is love, is division,
a pile of memories catalogued like stars.

— from Postcard - Without Grace

I like simplicity, its single weight
I like the word fault for its power
to fit within the hand and consume.

Here is my arm and shoulder,
my throat and every word.

— from Mistranslate (Because Meaning Is Not Enough)

A Tongue in the Mouth of the Dying
by Laurie Ann Guerrero  

Vivid and visceral, this first book of poems by Laurie Ann Guerrero is consuming. From turnips to cow tongue to a playful ode to el cabrito (goat), Guerrero's work is both hungry and tender, carrying taste and memory, culture and loss. In choosing these poems for publication, Francisco X. Alarcon hails Guerrero's work as "the poetry of saints and sinners . . . rooted in the best Latin American, Chicano/a, and contemporary American poets."

One Man's Name:
Colonization Of The Poetic

vii.

My grandmother embroidered huipiles.
Named me the color of stone, lavender
in the sun. Wore a herd of elephants
on her middle finger, the baby always
almost dead. In white cotton thread on pink
cotton dress, she stitched swans to their heads,
made bloom red roses and white-flowered
Mala Mujer. She birthed nine children.
She now sits in a room where the faces are familiar
as snow and the hands that feed her are not her own.

She wears your name, a crown, Cortez:
queen of a tongue no one understands.
What have you done?

— Laurie Ann Guerrero

The Crafty Poet: A Portable Workshop
by Diane Lockward

Do we really need another how-to-write poetry book? Yes, if it's this rare find. Packed with prompts, this book rises above others with sample poems, insightful interviews, and beyond-the-basics advice. Here's how I know this book works: I've marked every other page with a sticky note, have written notes in the margins (something I haven't done since college), and I'm writing a flurry of fresh poems.

 

Your turn: What are you reading? Have you read these? What books have you abuzz?


Thankful Thursday: The Fever of Life

Everyone in!

From pebble to peak, from profound to profane, it's time again for Thankful Thursday.

Because attention attracts gratitude and gratitude expands joy, it's time to slice through the ugly and get to the good.

This week I am thankful for:

1.
A sappy, glossy, implausible but entertaining movie.

2.
Chlorine, baby powder, fresh towels — the smell of clean.

3.
My sister's laugh, recovered.

4.
A friend sends a prayer that I take for poem. We share a history and love, and the thread connecting us seems prayer itself:

Support us all the day long, until the shadows lengthen, and the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our work is done. Then in your mercy, grant us a safe lodging and a holy rest, and peace at the last. Amen.

5.
A good run.

What are you thankful for today?


 

Missing: Journal

I lost my journal.

It's not inside, outside, in garbage, or car. Not under the bed, in dresser or drawer. It's a sick and sinking feeling, akin to losing a wallet, with just a little less panic.

And yet. It was only a journal. Not fancy, not leather, not handmade or gifted. Just a cheap grocery store book of blank pages. Like a glass, it was half empty, or half full. And, really, the writing wasn't great.

Still. I'm distraught. And guilty.

I've been lazy. I haven't been running, or eating greens, or doing planks (like I promise myself every other month, and achieve for about three days). I've been a slacker.  And it is with this mindset that just two days ago I went to my journal and carefully copied a passage from Walking on Water by Madeleine L'Engle:

If the artist only works when he feels like it, he's not apt to build up much of a body of work. Inspiration far more often comes during the work than before it.

Like a child, I drew big loopy stars for emphasis.

I've kept a journal since I was a kid. And while I've culled and tossed evidence of the early years (the fourth grade diary, the seventh grade confessional), I've kept the tomes chroncling my turbulent 20s and maturing 30s, carting the heavy boxes across time and states. They are damp, musty, tattered, and mostly unread.

A few years ago, I inadvertently opened one of the boxes. Instead of finding a string of Christmas lights, I encountered a menagerie of admissions. For several hours, I sat huddled and squirming with an uneasy realization: All these years later — more than 20! —  I still carry the same insecurities and sing the same refrain: "not good enough, not good enough, not good enough." Time has just made my worries deeper and more defined. It was sobering, and I immediately wanted a new me.

Why didn't I, then and there, declare a fresh start? Why didn't I drive to the dump, and like old clothes, bad boyfriends and poor choices, toss them out? Novelist and poet Sherman Alexie has a theory:

I think every writer stands in the doorway of their prison. Half in, half out. The very act of storytelling is a return to the prison of what torments us and keeps us captive, and writers are repeat offenders.

While searching for my journal, I kept saying, It's not the journal, it's just . . . It's not the journal, it's just this gloomy sky. It's just this extra weight I carry. It's just became every sad and sorry thing. 

In my mix of agitation and despair, I told my husband (who was patiently searching the cavity of every appliance as if the journal had raced to the refrigerator for refuge) that I thought this was my punishment.  Y'know, use it or lose it, I explained. I'd been lazy and my writing tool disappeared as a sort of vague but very-real-to-me karma.

Yes, I was over the bend, but my mind wouldn't stop spinning.

I recalled a recent poetry class in which the instructor asked, What must you have to write?

My favorite pen, said a woman.

Coffee, said a man.

A desk.

Smooth, lined paper.

These writers with their particulars, I thought. Let's not get precious about it. C'mon, who hasn't jotted words on an envelope? Or, while driving, rooted around for the back of a receipt? I've written in crayon, in big fat Sharpie, and even with chalk.

And so, my smug came back to smack me. What do I need to write? I needed my specific, half-completed pages of mediocre writing. I was frantic for my journal.

As the day wore on and more pressing matters arose, I gained perspective. Perhaps the message of the missing journal is not punishment, but reminder: Words are fleeting. Show up. Hold lightly.

Today I went to the store and bought a new, not-at-all fancy journal. Once filled, the journal will join its companions in my history boxed in the closet.

I lost my journal, I wrote on the first smooth, blank, page, and now I start again.

 

Housekeeping: Notes

Hello!

The world is big, time is short, your life is full — all of which swells me with gratitude for your attention. Thank you for reading my blog.

I’ll try not to waste your time, but instead stir your head, pry your heart. Together we’ll stretch our writing minds and build creative muscle.

Where you'll find me
In this big world, I'm so happy you found me. How'd you wind up here? Do you use a blog organizer, such as Feedly or Bloglovin'? Or do you bookmark this site and dip in on occasion?

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Talk to me, baby
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Whadya wanna read?
So, tell me, what turns your crank, floats your boat, gets you revved to write? I'm eager to please (though not desperate, no really) and I want to know what you'd like on the menu. More meat, less dessert? Dim light, more wine?

What makes you tune in, or — gasp! — turn away?

But first, and again, thanks for meeting me here. The world has much to offer, and the pull and tugs are many. I appreciate you, and always enjoy our time together.

Write on,