On, In, and Around Mondays: The Enchanted Writer

I have been thinking about enchantment.

My big girl has been carting Bettelheim's The Uses of Enchantment around. And this is part of it for me. I had meant to read the book, but as of yet it's been coming to me through her, this sense that the child in us (and sometimes the big person too), needs some kind of mystery and beauty and whimsy to inspire us.

Let's bring it down to me though. I have been thinking about what I do best. Or maybe just what I want to do best— and that is, be an enchanting writer, speaking directly to readers who want what I have to offer. There are readers who want what someone else has to offer; those aren't the readers I want to try to relate to.

This is important, because it means embracing who I am and trusting that there are readers out there who, in a sense, are similar, and want to obtain an experience of their voice, dreams, visions, and longings being expressed through words.



These readers probably have musicians and artists they prefer too. And maybe the musicians and artists give them something similar to what I give. I have been thinking about this a lot recently. I have love to give. Crazy, tangly, image-rich love. This might not enchant you. That's okay. But if it does, I might just be the enchanting writer you've been searching for in the woods, at the edge of twilight.




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On, In and Around Mondays (which partly means you can post any day and still add a link) is an invitation to write from where you are. Tell us what is on, in, around (over, under, near, by...) you. Feel free to write any which way... compose a tight poem or just ramble for a few paragraphs. But we should feel a sense of place. Would you like to try? Write something 'in place' and add your link below.

If you could kindly link back here when you post, it will create a central meeting place. :)

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On, In, and Around Mondays: Writing Your Way

It's all in the angle, I tell her.

I think of that now, looking back on this photograph. The day was ending golden. The leaves of the wood-winged bushes were a rapturous hue of peach. (They make you feel as if you are drinking a pink wine, or touching a soft hand, or splitting the skin of a new fruit with your teeth. It's a color like no other, and I have never seen it in nature except on the wood-winged bushes.)

Angling my camera, I hoped to capture the hue. And mildly did.

Then I tilted the black body in an unexpected direction and the whole scene changed. Mystery, in a mix of sepia-charcoal, appeared. Click, click. I was mesmerized. Was this the same wood I'd been capturing in peach only moments ago?

It's all in the angle, I tell her. And I am speaking about writing. I'm speaking to my girl, who has been struggling to find meaning in some of her distance-learning-school assignments.

It's not what they give you, I try to tell her.

It's the way you hold it up to the light. Turn it and turn again. It's all in the angle, girl.

Take a shot.



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On, In and Around Mondays (which partly means you can post any day and still add a link) is an invitation to write from where you are. Tell us what is on, in, around (over, under, near, by...) you. Feel free to write any which way... compose a tight poem or just ramble for a few paragraphs. But we should feel a sense of place. Would you like to try? Write something 'in place' and add your link below.

If you could kindly link back here when you post, it will create a central meeting place. :)

<a href="http://seedlingsinstone.blogspot.com"><img src="http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5083/5217906589_c7120874ca.jpg" width="308" height="69" alt="On In Around button" />

This post is also shared with Laura Boggess, for...

On, In, and Around Mondays: Writing Beyond the Picket Fence

I had to read it for a project, but the dullness of it overwhelmed me every time I opened the pages.

What was it? This malaise I felt? I could not put my finger on it. Until this morning.

Here in the Northeast, we are always reminded of seasons. The leaves fall. We pick them up. Seeds scatter. Spring brings milkweed where we had not seen it the year before. A hemlock has broken in winter, but there, look! A new maple at the edge of the yard.

The book, I knew its author from years before. But in these new pages, nothing had moved. The same leaves were on the same tree, and a little white picket fence—though aged—still bordered the property.

Yesterday I was listening to Over the Rhine's newer (albeit, not new) album The Trumpet Child (not sure why the dates are mixed up on Amazon, but this *is* a newer album :). Anyway, part of me still wanted Ohio. How could Karin and Linford leave Ohio? How dare they move? That musical place was just so... right.

Even as this discontent stirred, a surprising respect welled within me. These new songs have ache and beauty and playfulness (hard to find in one place). And I just can't stop listening to them. (Trouble is a current personal favorite.)

As an author, as a person, I want to put my finger on this kind of creative willingness to move. I do.

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On, In and Around Mondays (which partly means you can post any day and still add a link) is an invitation to write from where you are. Tell us what is on, in, around (over, under, near, by...) you. Feel free to write any which way... compose a tight poem or just ramble for a few paragraphs. But we should feel a sense of place. Would you like to try? Write something 'in place' and add your link below.

If you could kindly link back here when you post, it will create a central meeting place. :)

<a href="http://seedlingsinstone.blogspot.com"><img src="http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5083/5217906589_c7120874ca.jpg" width="308" height="69" alt="On In Around button" />

This post is also shared with Laura Boggess, for...

Would You Give it a Year?

Why devote a year to a stunt? Isn’t there something inherently suspect about that? Might it not be a waste of time?

Find your answer (or your questions), in mine at The Curator.


Photo by Maggie Stein.

On, In, and Around Mondays: Re-Covering Time

I place a white porcelain cover on the small white porcelain tea pot. Over this, I place the white tea cozy, with the red and beige stripes and two little red birds, seemingly in conversation. I leave them to their private whisperings, give the tea time to steep.

Loose tea takes longer than a tea bag. I must find a spoon. I must twist the cover off the tea caddy and dip inside, measure out what I desire, and scatter it into the tea basket. I must let the leaves unfurl in the steamy darkness. Is eight minutes—start to finish—too long to wait for heaven?

Now sipping my Christmas tea, the eight minutes already a memory, I peruse two different books. One about tea, one about bread. I turn the pages slowly, write my favorite lines onto colored cards. Tea cuttings, I learn, take around a year to a year and three months to reach a stage where they can be planted in the tea garden. Then they must grow 15-18 inches before they are eligible to be severely pruned, and once again take time to grow into a flat table, a plucking table.

Bread is similar, in regards to time. We can use flour artificially aged with bleach and bromate (bromate being outlawed in European countries, because it is a carcinogen). Or we can use flour set out in the air, where oxygen, the very thing we breathe, will refine qualities, ultimately cultivate taste.

We don't have time for the line, said an essay in the book I reviewed last week.

The line, a single row of words—have we really no time?

If we have no time for the line, we have no time for loose tea. We have no time for the tea bush, gently coaxed to golden bud. We have no time for finely structured bread.

Let me, let me re-cover time... for the single line, the tea, the bread.

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On, In and Around Mondays (which partly means you can post any day and still add a link) is an invitation to write from where you are. Tell us what is on, in, around (over, under, near, by...) you. Feel free to write any which way... compose a tight poem or just ramble for a few paragraphs. But we should feel a sense of place. Would you like to try? Write something 'in place' and add your link below.

If you could kindly link back here when you post, it will create a central meeting place. :)

<a href="http://seedlingsinstone.blogspot.com"><img src="http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5083/5217906589_c7120874ca.jpg" width="308" height="69" alt="On In Around button" />

This post is also shared with Laura Boggess, for...