Seedlings in Stone

Inspired by Candy

2012-01-26T17:04:00.004-05:00

I have become enamored with candy. Funny, because I am not a candy-eater. But the colors, the colors have really taken me.

So of course now I am looking at everything through candy-colored glasses. And today, when I needed to buy new notebooks, I settled on these...

candies.

On, In, and Around Mondays: Collecting Words

2012-01-21T07:33:00.007-05:00

I open the Eighth Day Books blog to find this...

"An instinctual poet, Barkat revels in the physical reality of words."

Eighth Day is an amazing bookstore in the Midwest. It supplies the Calvin Festival and The Glen Workshop. How sweet to be mentioned (and stocked on their virtual shelves).

What strikes me now is the odd tension of the phrase 'physical reality of words.'

So suggestive.

This week, someone asked me what makes anyone want to return to a poem, read it twice. The same question could suffice for any piece of writing. What makes us return?

I thought seriously about this and developed many answers. But perhaps the central answer is... we return to writing that has the quality of physicality.

And where do we find grist for our own physical reality of words?

We must go collecting. In the back yard, in the kitchen, on a walk in the woods. We must find words on city streets, in the bakery, at the train station.

This week, my schedule constricted, I sat in the green wing-backed chair and collected words from someone else's words.

We can do that too. In an older book by Henry Miller I found Big Sur, men on horseback coming from the Valley of the Moon, a convict's shack on the edge of a cliff. A good writer like Miller can bring us to places we've never been, and we, in turn, can bring others.

We must simply remember. That words are everywhere for the taking. And we can collect them into a beautiful reality.

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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. :)

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

Blue Pearls and Surprises

2012-01-18T16:26:00.007-05:00

Today I loved blue beads, in this post.

Later, I opened my mailbox and received a most precious gift from Karen Eck. She illustrated my poetry book InsideOut and surprise-gifted it to me, filled with her beautiful art.

On one of the pages... blue pearls...

On, In, and Around Mondays: Writing the Come-Again

2012-01-14T10:55:00.007-05:00

It's just another day on the trail. Me, biding my time, while my girl rides the auburn stallion around the ring.

I go off, pick my way around horse droppings, to get some time in the open. I've been here so many times now, and I wonder why I bother to bring my camera yet again. The season is the same. The same grey twigs raise their dryness towards the sky. There are the wineberry canes, still red and leaning. Same indigo berries, a little more shriveled by winter's moisture-absent air.

My fingers around the camera, I'm fiddling with the dark body, figuring it will stay in my pocket, wondering why I weighed myself down with it (I feel every little weight I carry). "Nothing today," I mumble, even thinking back to my red cardinal of a few weeks ago; he's made no appearance today.

"Change the angle and proximity, Laura," I suddenly think. "Do you really think you've seen it all?"

I move to the side of the trail and choose a dry twig that's hanging down from an empty tree. I fool with the settings on my camera, wish Claire or Kelly were here. They'd know what to do. They're the ones who've been teaching me.

I am on my own. Or maybe I'm not.

Their advice guides my vision now, and my fingers. I move in close, blur the background. This twig is no longer the same. Like my writing need not be the same. Though I come again, to the me I am, and the same-old places I live.

Come again. Come again. I feel I have found a secret to play with, to quietly sing.

_______

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. :)

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

On, In, and Around Mondays: Nothing-Doing Writing

2012-01-07T09:13:00.004-05:00

Phone calls (a lot of them!). Projects. Schedules. Business. And two weeks of laundry piled up because of the Christmas vacation.

My head, spinning. (I know where that metaphor came from now, as I sit in the olive-green wingback chair.)

A footstep in the hallway, and my husband comes into the room, wants to know, "Are you okay?"

I am just sitting. I've taken my glasses off, and I'm holding my head in my hands (it feels good). I am doing nothing at all. Books piled at my feet. The round wooden table to my left, lights off except for the Christmas tree (we keep ours until it can't be kept anymore).

I know the way nothing-sitting can fill me up. But I've been reminded by this article, to sit and let the world go quiet.

My writing notebook is in the pile of books, and I consider opening it. But then, I don't even want that.

It is a clear mind that eventually becomes creative. I've written about this process of emptying and filling before. It never changes. The red dress is still waiting. Today, it's under the Christmas tree. And soon I'm hoping the rain will turn to the white-nothing of January snow.

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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. :)

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

On, In, and Around Mondays: Writing the In-Between

2011-12-31T10:16:00.009-05:00

It is an empty trail, black-sand, too-noisy near the highway. Just a passing-through. A means to get from one beautiful place to another. I walk it because it's a place to walk while I wait.

Nothing but nothing here, until a red bird flushes from dead weeds. And I stand still and say out loud, "Oh, you." I'm talking to the bird now, somehow thanking it for catching my eye.

Look. I am talking to myself. Listen. What is the air saying? What hides in the in-between?

I have a camera in my pocket, and I am thinking differently, so I go in search. Find a trinity of red berries. A cloister of the beautiful. I see naked backs of wineberries, bent shivering cranberry spines, sharp in the earth-fragrant air.

No more birds, but it is enough that the red one winged his way into my awareness. Raised my eyes to the in-between places. Beckoned me to measure the distances between me and the clusters of late berries.

I don't know it yet, but I will come home and write it down.

_______

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. :)

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

Named

2011-12-31T09:44:00.004-05:00

Thanks to Englewood Review of Books for naming Rumors of Water: Thoughts on Creativity & Writing one of the Best Books of 2011.

On, In, and Around Mondays: Writing in the Barn

2011-12-17T14:52:00.005-05:00

I do not have a barn.

I wish I had a barn.

Of course a barn is work, and I don't need the work of a barn.

But I need the silence.

Mostly I am good at blocking out the blur of sounds that accost me at every turn.

Not so much this week. This week I have been craving solitude. This morning I even sat outside, the metal chair beneath me burning its cold right through my jeans. I sat and worked on an article until my fingers were so stiff I had to come inside.

And that was when I wished for a barn.

My Littlest rides horses once a week, and sometimes I sneak into the barn while she is out in the ring. I slip in for the warmth of the captured sun, for the warmth of the horse's bodies all kept in their little homes, for the warmth of what I see. Fetlocks, manes, tails, hay, bits of dust turning on air.

Today when I finally had to come in from the cold, back to the commotion of kids, I brought with me a vision of the barn. And somehow it made me feel free.
_______

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. :)

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

On, In, and Around Mondays: Hug to Creativity

2011-12-10T17:53:00.006-05:00

She wanted to go away. Asked me to come and watch her children.

I said yes. I rarely see my nieces and nephews.

It is good that she went away, because that meant I went too— away, to a life so different from mine.

My favorite moments were the ones with the baby. I haven't had babies for a long time. I don't particularly want the work of babies anymore.

But this.

A baby in the lap, blue eyes searching mine. A baby in the lap, playing with my mauve shawl.

"Shawl," I say to her. She pulls it open. Pushes it shut. Manages a sound something close to "sh," but not quite.

I touch her shirt. "Shirt," I say. She touches her shirt. I touch my shirt. "Shirt," I say again. She ventures another "sh."

She lifts her shirt and a white belly sticks out, baby fat. "Belly," I say. She touches her belly, then leans her head against my chest in a sweet baby hug.

We do this again and again. The eyes searching, the shawl opening and closing, the shirts and the belly. The tries at "sh." The hugs.

I kiss her face over and again, and I feel something inside me pulling apart, opening. A creative space. A loving space. Something like a shawl opening and closing around another person. And I feel full. So, so full.

_______

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. :)

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

On, In, and Around Mondays: Write What You See

2011-12-03T15:08:00.007-05:00

The edge of that white blouse, crisp and pointed. That's what she saw. The silk peach skirt. She saw that too. And, put together, it was the *me* she chose chose to photograph, chose to see.

Sometimes writers ask me if they should protect their work. They are nervous about sharing their work freely. They worry that someone might steal their ideas.

No one can steal the way you see.

Write it down. Write it down now...

No one sees like I see... no one can take that from me...

I am thankful for the way Kelly sees. I am thankful that she chose to see a side of me I am hesitant to share. I am so thankful, in fact, that I decided to redo my old website, all with Kelly's photographs. Because I like what Kelly saw, and I am finally ready to come along with that view of me.

Heck, I will even have my name "Laura" right there on the site. Named. Seen. Oh, I'll still be L.L. for the fun of it, the way it rolls off the tongue and tickles the eye. But I will be outright *me* too.

Thank you, Kelly. You teach us this: when an artist sees, it invites us to turn and see too.

_______

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. :)

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

For Your Inner Writer (or Theirs)

2011-12-01T10:45:00.018-05:00

Christmas gets me thinking creatively, probably more than any other holiday, from the creativity of the story itself, to the strange combination of jolly Santas, snowmen (and women), purple candles, pinecones, and pies... my mind awakens.

It only makes sense to me to give "creativity" gifts, then, for Christmas. Here are my Top 10 for 2011. For the inner Creative (or Writer) in you (or in someone you love).

The Artist's Way is a book that literally changed my life. Skirt around the new-age stuff if it bothers you. But don't miss the chance to find parts of your creative self you didn't even know existed.

Rumors of Water: Thoughts on Creativity & Writing. Okay, you know I had to recommend this. But trust someone else's words. Amazing bookseller Byron Borger says, "one of the finest books on being a writer I've yet seen," in his post 12 Books You Should Know.

The Anthologist is one of the funniest books I've read. Part fictional memoir of character 'Paul Chowder,' part terrific insight into the inner workings of poetry. Some off-color jokes, but they are contextually tasteful (if that makes any sense :).

Moleskin notebook. Sounds a little odd, feels great in your hands and under your pen. A nice treat to bring along on your artist's dates (see The Artist's Way for explanation of the artist's date.)

Bose Speakers. For a long time, music was absent from my life. Not sure how that happened. But these speakers have been a wonderful gift to me, bringing sound to my creative soul.

Powerspeak. Learning a language is a terrific boost for creativity and business and even your aging mind (is yours aging? mine is :) My daughter is using Powerspeak to learn Spanish and it's working *really* well.

Knit One, Purl a Prayer. Creative guide to prayer, includes knitting patterns! (I used to knit. Grandma taught me. :)

Leave Your Sleep, music by Natalie Merchant. This music has a fascinating story of creativity behind it. You can learn more at TED talks, or just get the CD set, which I highly recommend.

Every Day Poems. Seriously, one of the best things I ever did for my creativity and writing was to start reading a poem a day.

Tea Infuser for mugs. Because most creativity thrives on a little ritual. I've made mine tea. And loose tea can open you to beauty and the slow life.

On, In, and Around Mondays: The Enchanted Writer

2011-11-26T08:00:00.001-05:00

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. :)

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

On, In, and Around Mondays: Writing Your Way

2011-11-19T10:19:00.008-05:00

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.

_______

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. :)

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

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

2011-11-12T11:52:00.008-05:00

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.

_______

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. :)

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

Would You Give it a Year?

2011-11-09T10:05:00.004-05:00

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

2011-11-05T11:00:00.009-04:00

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.

________

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. :)

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

On, In, and Around Mondays: The Un-Writing Morning

2011-10-29T10:31:00.007-04:00

I want to write a note, but I have no words.

So I begin without them.

It is the only way.

The no-words somehow become halting lines, of something. Apology perhaps. Or questions. Explanations maybe, or invitations. The lines stack up, broken thing by broken thing.

Before I know it, I have a poem. This surprises me.

When I come near to the end of my note-poem, I have no words again. Outside, a bird whistles in just the way I used to hear a certain bird in childhood. I don't know what kind she was, but sometimes in the lilacs, or perhaps it was the tall white firs, I heard her calling. This takes me back, and I am reminded of the power of return.

This is not the first time.

Earlier in the week, I was trying to finish a review of a challenging but intoxicating book— A Broken Thing: Poets on the Line. I had no words.

So I returned to these fragments from just a week ago...

Do the shells still hear the sea, though they are in pieces? How deep does the hearing of the sea enter into bone?

The fragments led me into words, sentences, even paragraphs, until I had a whole review made up of broken things. This was good; I met my deadline.

I had no deadline this morning, just a wish to end the poem I could not begin and later could not end. My tea was waiting, and the poem too. So I returned to the sea, the shells in pieces, the bones.

And I wondered, is that all it ever is, really. A willingness to write in fragments, to struggle towards the whole.

________

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. :)

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

Criticism: Don't Let it Keep You Up at Night

2011-10-26T16:26:00.003-04:00

Criticism can kill. Or it might just make you stronger...

Read more at The High Calling.

Princess & the Pea illustration by Sara B. Used with permission.

On, In, and Around Mondays: Feel Your Way Through Words

2011-10-22T16:55:00.011-04:00

Write the details, I say.

And it's not just a passing writer's tip. It is advice for me. So I stand here and begin, with no sense of where I might go...

Blue notebook with thin-penciled Algebra; red doors near the sidewalk, with wild paint scrawls; sun coming through rippled-glass window... and the maple barely moving today, its leaves like hands probing a tenuous sky.

Test tubes on the table, experiments in cobalt glass, eye droppers and staining solutions, blue gloves and distilled water. A clear plastic funnel on its side.

How long will I have to write before I reach the subtext and the feelings?

Someone left the lights on in the dining room. Brass chandelier with faux candles burning through bare glass. A blue napkin, and a red one, tossed on the dark wood chair.

Anna Akhmatova in a mauve book, speaks of lilies and light through the window. Sugar maples don't grow in Russia; she could not make the same list I am making today. And her children, did they leave the lights on? And was there a study of osmosis near the piano? (Test tubes are everywhere, did I say that? And thin, impossibly thin, dialysis tubing.)

Now I take a cup of tea in the white Princeton set with the dark blue band, and the gold, near the rim. The tea is Japanese. Ban-cha. I am going around the world. Russia, Japan. Soon I will join my husband somewhere in Italy. Is he drinking tea? It seems more like a place for coffee, black and strong.

Out the back window, I see white shells broken in the little garden. Begonias, fragile pink, lean away. Do the shells still hear the sea, though they are in pieces? How deep does the hearing of the sea enter into bone?

The sea is between me and Italy. Between me and Russia. Japan.

Red oak beneath my feet separates me by a continent—from Anna's earth and where she wrote her poetry, from misty mountains that grow tea high above the sea, from Italy.

And I wonder, is this my subtext?

________

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. :)

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

The Vindaloo Guide to Great Writing

2011-10-20T12:07:00.008-04:00

A sparrow nesting in the air conditioner, vindaloo curry, and other tricks of the writing trade that might just get you published (or cultivate your wild side)...

Check out this High Calling interview about Rumors of Water.

Tea Photo by Claire Burge, used with permission.

6 Things Your Writing Must Have to Wow Readers

2011-10-18T11:44:00.006-04:00

Is your writing missing something vital? It might be.

Over at AdAge, in a discussion of consumer behavior, Kevin Hartman discusses six emotions that advertisers track. It might make you a little uncomfortable to know that marketers are Stealing Your Diary to probe if and where you get emotionally attached.

But don't be too mad (or surprised).

The best writing actually revolves around the same six emotions, often experienced in readers as a physical reaction (tears, sighs, gasps, clenched teeth)...

Anger, Love, Sorrow, Joy, Fear, and Surprise

Interestingly, Hartman notes that "the most unfortunate news for brands over that last year was the lack of the emotion 'Surprise' in the consumer conversation. Logging in as a distant sixth place, the dearth of 'Surprise' clearly indicates that few brands have mastered the art of building anticipation into their consumer relationships."

Surprise isn't easy to come by for a writer. Hasn't it all been done before?

It's not necessarily about presenting a surprising idea (though it can be). In In Pursuit of Elegance, Matthew May notes that humans have an attachment to symmetry.

So if, as a writer, we use solid details to create a very clear picture but we leave something in that picture ambiguous or uncertain, this will create intrigue. Or, put another way, our readers will begin to desperately seek symmetry.

When writing a short article, one of the easiest ways to introduce uncertainty is to begin with a question, stated or unstated. In a longer work, we can include a thread that hides the "punchline" until the end.

It stands to reason that if you can create this kind of surprise in conjunction with at least one or more of the other 5 emotions, you'll create an even bigger "wow" for readers.

So why not begin thinking about how to write for emotional impact? You could steal some of the best writer's diaries as a place to begin.

On, In, and Around Mondays: Embrace the Shape

2011-10-15T17:57:00.012-04:00

I was all alone for lunch. I didn't want to be alone.

The waitress sat me facing the wall. She set the maroon menu down on the brushed stainless steel table, and placed a white cloth napkin and large utensils before me.

Is this how a restaurant seats those who are alone? Maybe the wall is supposed to make the lonely diner feel closer to something. Maybe it gives a sense of safety and connection to something, if only a decorative picture of Eleanor Roosevelt.

Let me see the room I am alone in, I thought. Let me embrace the shape of this time. I picked up the leather menu and switched sides. The room was large. I saw groups of people laughing together, a set of businessmen pushing pencils, waiters moving from table to table.

Maybe I'll write, I thought, and went reaching for my purple notebook. But no, I thought. Embrace the shape of this time.

So I watched. I watched the candle burning in foggy rose-colored glass. I watched a man outside in the courtyard, talking, talking, talking on his phone, head bobbing, hand in jeans pocket. He talked through my focaccia with olive oil. He talked until I noticed the watermelon shape of my goblet and its sweat dripping down and the cubes melting inside. In his red and white striped Brooks Brothers styled shirt, he finally walked away when the burrata on bread with prune jam and basil arrived.

I cut small pieces of the burrata and moved it slowly up to my mouth. I let the fragrance of the jam and basil meet me before I put the bite on my tongue. It is like a spiritual experience, I thought.

I did the same with the tiny sweet potatoes covered with brown sugar and pecans. Slow movement, fragrance, take it in. I watched how the waiter who served me smiled. What's your name? I asked when he came to me again. It was Christian.

Finally, I took my phone out to check the time. How much longer would it be until I had my next meeting? I might need to go somewhere else and wait, pull out that paper and pen I'd been after.

But the time was gone. Somewhere in that hour and a half, I'd melted into the embrace.

________

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. :)

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

On, In, and Around Mondays: What's Your Happiest Moment?

2011-10-10T10:21:00.010-04:00

We are sitting on a tapestried couch in a castle-like hotel. The side of the couch is high and velvety. I didn't think I liked high-sided couches.

But here we are, my Littlest and I, lounging together. Her head is on my chest and I am feeling the absolute smallness of her hand, and how soft are her fingers.

"What is your happiest moment?" I remember the question I'd seen somewhere just the other day. This must be it, I think. Then I recall my Littlest child's birth, how she came when no-one was in the room but me, and the nurse had rushed in just in time to catch her and toss her onto my chest, and my new baby's bareness was against me, warm and silent and motionless. And she blinked and I looked into her eyes for the first time, and I whispered, "You are *so* beautiful."

Now I am remembering other times, rooms where I was alone with just one other person. And I think, "Maybe that was my happiest moment." But then my writer-self interjects with grammatical thoughts about the "est" ending making it impossible to have more than one happiest moment.

Still later, I watch my Eldest touching the Fall-dried grasses. The castle-hotel is a memory of two hours ago, and other dark rooms are lost to years. Here in the sunlight, on top of a great mountain, I can see for miles down the Hudson River, and it is breathtaking, but it is my girl touching the grasses and her smiling and whirling while she knows I'm photographing her... it is this that makes me think again, "Maybe this is my happiest moment."

And suddenly I know that all my happiest moments are in a space, enclosed or wide-open, where it feels there is no space at all between me and just one other person. I know that the things I've done, like speaking to a crowd of 1,300 people, is energizing in its way, but will never be one of my happiest moments.

I know this too. I cannot choose just one. I will never have a happiest moment, at least grammatically-speaking. Happiness cannot, for me, be counted.

________

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. :)

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

Tracing Words & Rumors

2011-10-06T12:12:00.004-04:00

Thank you, Kelly Sauer. For tracing my words with your lens. Then finding your own words too...

Why Leave a Hole in Your Marketing?

2011-10-05T13:42:00.005-04:00

Everyone’s got something to “sell.” It might be a product, like a book. It might blur the lines between product and service, like a blog. It could be a new process in a workplace setting. Or maybe even a bowl of green beans, to a fussy toddler.

What’s a writer, a manager, a parent to do?

Matthew May, in his book In Pursuit of Elegance, suggests that a good “salesperson” will leave a hole in his marketing—some missing piece, some mystery, a space for others to add their voices and creativity.

About a week ago, I decided to try May’s idea for myself. I was getting ready to “market” this series, and instead of simply announcing it, I engaged people in a missing-pieces game.

It worked.

Between comments at the blog posts where the game was played, and comments on Facebook, about 100 game-related comments were generated altogether. Not only did the game create more response than usual on my blogs, it also increased traffic and, most importantly, it created a space for readers to make their own meaning— resulting in delightful jokes, banter, poems, and philosophical musings (no one did a Cheetos sculpture in response, but Cheetos did eventually enter the conversation, as they are wont to do when Duane is nearby).

The challenging part of leaving a hole in our marketing is that we can’t find one “game” and continue to play it. Mystery resists formulas. Still, there are some principles to help guide the way. What are they? I probably shouldn’t say, ‘til next time.

(Got ideas? I’d love to hear them.)

On, In, and Around Mondays: The Long Way

2011-10-03T10:29:00.009-04:00

It is after my poetry session, at the Laity Lodge Writer's Retreat. I skip lunch, take the long way back to my room. I do not feel hungry, just tired and round-about.

The path is crushed red stone. The sun presses down.

Mindless, I walk slowly. Then something catches my eye. A yellow flower in the midst of otherwise dead vegetation. I photograph the flower, turn back to the path, then notice my shadow across the dryness. Or is it a dryness across my shadow?

I stand still and look, suddenly taken with the way something of me is captured in this scene. A slight breeze keeps tugging at my skirt. I watch it and the turn of my hand, in shadow. Then I begin to be more deliberate, embrace the moment. What would it look like if I turned this way, then that? I photograph myself in shadow, or perhaps the shadow in myself, for a long time.

And I feel alive.

***

Only under certain circumstances of constructive stress or in certain states—great love, for example, or religious ardor, or the courage of battle—do we begin to tap the depth and richness of our creative resources, or the tremendous reserves of life energy that lie sleeping within." (Ellen Langer, from Mindfulness)

Care to join us for a bookclub discussion of Mindfulness, by Ellen Langer?

________

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. :)

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

Do Your Ideas Have Something Missing?

2011-09-27T13:35:00.008-04:00

I wanted to try it out. Matthew E. May had claimed that the best ideas have something missing. Of course, making something go missing doesn't assure a good idea. But I wanted to test his theory.

So we played a game.

There were no stated rules, just loosely-related pictures (all with something missing and all from May's book). Beyond some peripheral conversations on Twitter and Facebook, there was no explanation of where it was leading. It was pure experience, more powerful than if I'd said, "Hey, did you know that missing pieces make things more interesting?"

That's what Matthew May believes. As an opening example in the book, he recalls the ending of The Sopranos. "Instead of receiving a concrete answer to the big question [of whether Tony Soprano would get 'whacked'], viewers sat shocked as, during the final seconds of the show, their television screens went black." And that was it. After a few seconds, the credits rolled.

There is more to the story, and you can read it in May's book. But, as he notes, "the point here is that no straightforward conclusion would have engaged viewers with the same intensity and debate."

So, is it worth it to make sure your ideas have something missing? I'll talk about that more in upcoming posts. But for now, I'm going missing until next week. :)

On, In, and Around Mondays: Guessed

2011-09-24T22:11:00.000-04:00

On Friday I asked people to take a guess. I absolutely *loved* the ideas that were generated. And I promise it is all going somewhere (simple revelation coming soon. :)

During the guessing game, I spent some time in peripheral conversations with people. "Did you look at both sites before making your guess?" I asked them.

Some said yes, some no.

It's not like there were any instructions that said it was absolutely necessary to take mulitiple perspectives into account. And the links between sites were very small. They just said, Here or "today's other clue." So it's perfectly okay that some people made their guesses from a single perspective.

As it turns out, this particular result of our guessing game provides a very nice illustration for this week's High Calling introduction to Mindfulness, by Ellen Langer.

Acting from a single perspective is one of the reasons Langer says we sometimes miss making the meaning we need to make.

Of course, in our guessing game, I stacked the deck a little, giving out a narrow perspective to begin with and only increasing it over time. (Also, it's no easy riddle, so everyone who participated should be pleased with their guesses (I was completely tickled! :)

In the end, somebody who took in multiple perspectives did finally, guess what... guess.

________

Coming soon: a revelation of the simple reason we played our guessing game. In the meantime, care to join us for a bookclub discussion of Mindfulness, by Ellen Langer?

________

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. :)

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

Guess Again

2011-09-24T08:00:00.003-04:00

?

today's other clue

yesterday's clue

Guess

2011-09-23T11:06:00.002-04:00

?

here

On, In, and Around Mondays: Marketing to Your Sister

2011-09-19T08:44:00.008-04:00

I am remembering an afternoon when my Littlest wanted her sister's attention.

She chit chatted, poked, whirled. Nothing worked.

So she stole away and found a Shel Silverstein poetry book. Then, she looked up an excerpt of Sherlock Holmes on the Internet and translated it into Italian (goodness only knows why! :) Then she printed the translation and carefully trimmed it, so the size would fit nicely into Mr. Silverstein's pages.

"Look," she held the book under Sara's nose.

Now this was something that warranted a glance. A book!

Sara opened Shel, and Sonia helped her flip to the Italian Sherlock Holmes tucked within.

"That is so cool," Sara said, when she realized what Sonia had done. After all, Sara loves Holmes, even, I guess, if he's speaking Italian.

I sat on my bed and chuckled. Now that, I thought, is how you market to your sister.

____

Do you have an amusing event, or some simple thoughts on laughter? It needn't be laugh-out-loud funny. We would be happy to have you share a chuckle. Check out our Laughter Writing Project, at The High Calling.
________

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. :)

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

Rumors of Buttons, If You Like

2011-09-16T17:13:00.005-04:00

Some of you asked me for a button. Here it is, if you'd still like to have it for your blog sidebar or a blog post series or whatever else you might have been thinking of doing with it (maybe if you are Nancy Franson or Duane Scott you might even want it for a post on laughter. ;-)

Thanks for your encouragements, by the way. I have greatly appreciated them.

What's Your Spiritual Practice?

2011-09-14T16:14:00.003-04:00

Over the next month or so, for a special project, I'm making my way through a few books on spiritual practice. If you want to join the exploration, I'll be going through each book from cover to cover at my Love Notes to Yahweh blog.

The world seems full of books on spiritual practice these days, so it should be interesting to see if any of the ones above have something unique to offer. And, of course, along the way I'd love to have you share about your own spiritual practices—how they seem to either parallel or not parallel the ideas set forth in the books.

What's your spiritual practice? If you don't actually have any or you'd like to share some established ways, come along.

On, In, and Around Mondays: What's Your Geography?

2011-09-10T12:37:00.011-04:00

"We each have a personal geography," I wrote in Rumors of Water.

I think of this today, as Sara sits at the dining room table, reading her new history book. Before reading, she looks at the pictures. That's my girl. Pictures are part of her personal geography. She's been looking closely at art since she was a little girl. She thinks in pictures, can explain the world in images. Maps are a favorite. So are diagrams.

Yesterday we went to Linsay's farm. I brought the new book along to show her, since her teapot tree and strawberries and duck eggs are part of the story I wove together. She turned the book over to get a closer look at Sonia's designs. "They look like henna!" she exclaimed. I hadn't thought of it that way, but of course they do. Sonia has seen henna designs on the hands of the women at many a family wedding. These are part of her family geography.

Today I sit outdoors to type. My yard is wild, the grass going to seed. Honeysuckle, jewelweed, and purple clover are full with bees gathering nectar. This yard has a geography that is, for the most part, characteristic of a Northeastern yard; its plants are regional, but its wildness owes a little to my own childhood geography: I traversed fields for hours on end, feeling the freedom of bent grasses and blue skies.

You have a geography too. Personal, familial, regional. Are you letting it design your words?

________

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. :)

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

On, In, and Around Mondays: Is Your Mind Full?

2011-09-05T09:17:00.007-04:00

What does it mean to be Mindful? (My mind is always full, it seems. Does this count? :)

Maybe it is the ability to dream beyond what seems possible....

Or maybe it is a willingness to take in new information, to change even a lifetime of habits when we see the potential benefits...

Perhaps it is the openness to change one's posture—mentally, physically, or spiritually...

I'm excited about the potential answers to the question, "What is Mindfulness?" I'm pleased that The High Calling is going to explore this topic through Ellen J. Langer's book Mindfulness. Join us? :)

Alien Sculpture and photos by Sonia, 12. :) Used with permission.

________

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. :)

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

Rumors Together

2011-08-31T12:16:00.006-04:00

I put the first copy in my bag, wanted to bring it along to show my sister.

About an hour into the trip, I heard my girl laughing in the back seat.

"What are you reading?" I asked.

"Your book," she said.

She'd quietly pulled it from the bag when I wasn't looking. I'd been driving, listening to music, admiring the field grasses now purpling at their tips. I'd been noticing twin bright lemon butterflies dancing on air, and I'd been feeling a longing for the connection that these air-dancers seemed to speak of.

My girl read the whole way, sometimes laughing, sometimes pausing to tell me more about some story I'd told (and had only known the half of).

When I pulled into my sister's driveway and turned off the car, my girl didn't move. "We're here," I encouraged her, wanting her to put the book down.

"I'm on the last page," she said.

I waited quietly, looking out into the pines and the wild-flower yard.

"It's not exactly what happened," she said. "But it's perfect."

"I understand," I said. Then I whispered the last line of the book to her and added, "It's for you too, you know, not just for Sonia. It's my love letter to both of you."

She leaned forward and hugged me, and we sat there holding each other for a long moment. My heart, in its way, danced butterfly-bright on air.

_____

Available at Amazon Retail.

Floral designs by Sonia, 11. Sara in the car (snapped in transit... I pointed the camera backwards, clicked, and hoped for the best :)

On, In, and Around Mondays: What's Your Klout?

2011-08-29T09:03:00.008-04:00

Last week, my High Calling team got into a conversation about Klout. I went to the Klout website to see what the buzz was about...

"Everyone has Klout. Discover yours," says the site tagline.

I thought about this a lot. Klout's definition of clout is something like... how much you tweet and Facebook and get retweeted and shared. It's about who you influence and whether someone "important" influences you. Klout can even put a number on it.

But a number can't describe depth of influence. It can't say who is actually changed by knowing me (or you). And it can't measure how.

On Sunday, because of the hurricane, I stayed home with the girls. Sara had recently told me she misses how we used to learn hymns together. I never would have known, if she hadn't spoken up.

So here we were home on a Sunday, and the logical thing presented itself to me: why not learn a hymn together?

"Could you be our researcher?" I asked Sonia.

"What do you mean?"

I asked her to find out more about the hymn writer's life, the music, the history, the symbols. I think I'll write about that over at Love Notes to Yahweh; after all, she did teach us some very interesting things, some of which I suspect she and her sister will carry forward into their lives.

Mostly, this rich hymn experience on a rainy Sunday morning reminded me that clout cannot truly be measured. Mine, Sonia's, or yours. We never know what the influence of our words, our hands, our song might be on even one heart. It cannot be tracked like a tweet or a Facebook share.

________

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. :)

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

On, In, and Around Mondays: Rumors • Sneak Peek

2011-08-22T08:00:00.000-04:00

If you'd like to see a sneak peek of Rumors of Water: Thoughts on Creativity and Writing, and the final cover (photo by Claire Burge and floral designs by my little girl Sonia), stop by this quiet place.

And thank you to everyone who shared thoughts and support, from the beginning of the whole writing process, right on through the discussions of the cover. I appreciate your love.

_____

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. :)

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

On, In, and Around Mondays: When the Compass Tilts

2011-08-15T08:00:00.001-04:00

"It's a beautiful place," I told my girls. "Antiques, flowers, classical music. A painted chess board in the sitting room."

They were intrigued.

"The tea is delicious. And the breakfast is simple but elegant."

They were ready to go.

"Because I made the reservations late, they actually threw in a room just for you girls. You'll have your own."

It would be our follow-up vacation to last week's few days in New York City. This time we'd go back to Manhattan, but to a quieter place. A place I love and wanted to share with my girls.

"She's going in for a bypass."

I got the call. We turned our car north, instead of hopping on a train south.

"We'll go to the hotel with the fun breakfast," I told the girls. (Holiday Inn Express!) "It has a pool, remember? We'll be together. You'll see your cousins."

(Bypass, six-way. It was a silent heart attack. She's a good candidate for surgery.)

I canceled the antiques, the tea, the chess table. I embraced the visits, the drive, the thought of being, perhaps, a comfort to my mother.

The girls got an unexpected invitation to my Aunt's house. "You'll love it," I told them. "It's, I don't know how to describe it. It's whimsical. It's eclectic. It's like your own personal art museum."

My Aunt taught the girls a glass-painting and transfer technique. They had cream-cheese and jelly sandwiches together. They explored the gardens and played with the collie dog.

I spent days with my mother. More than I have in years. We began in silence, as she slept and recovered. But soon she regained her color, her voice. We spoke of her growing-up times. How had I missed that she grew up on a farm? We talked about how they ate duck eggs and walked the orchards in spring. "There's nothing like the smell of all those blossoms," she told me.

I felt I'd been propelled back in time. And somehow, forward.

The days passed. We turned our car back to the south. The girls, for the first time in a long time, sang together. A round.

Artwork and Home shots taken at the house of Gail Nadeau, by L.L. Barkat.

_____

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. :)

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

The Glinda Guide to Creativity

2011-08-10T07:23:00.008-04:00

Absurdity breeds creativity. At least that's what Psyblog claims.

And I think they might be right.

While many of us wish that life would come with a map, it's the unmapped experiences that often seem to spark the most new thinking. The dynamic? Absurdity is a meaning-threat that causes us to want to... make meaning. This can be good news on the Creativity Front, especially for parents of toddlers and teens, don't you think? :)

This past weekend we went to New York City. It was a whirlwind trip, barely planned.

Teen girls in tow, we mostly let our days unfold. The city is its own brand of absurdity. The show we attended (Wicked) was too. I came home in a kind of bubble, my mind filled with rainbow magical thoughts, my creativity lifted.

Psyblog doesn't follow up with it's assertion about the relationship of Absurdity to Creativity, but I'm guessing it's important to have a rhythm in place. I'm guessing that non-stop absurdity might not be beneficial (and this is why we must put our toddlers and teens to bed at a reasonable hour :). I'm guessing it is also useful to extend our Creative ideas over time, after our absurd experiences.

So here I am, thinking about Glinda again. Three's a charm, so they say.

On, In, and Around Mondays: Art is a Touchdown

2011-08-08T09:15:00.004-04:00

Implicit in any art, says Luci Shaw, is a "certain unpredictability, an element of surprise."

Can a mini-vacation, then, be a form of art?

Maybe. This weekend, we sneaked away to New York City. It is the kind of place where you can lose yourself, let yourself be carried by a certain unpredictability. Make plans, then change them when you see a line with a two-hour wait to view the fashions of Alexander McQueen at the Metropolitan.

This morning I am too tired to do what Luci says art also requires, and that is a gathering of the "watered wrinkles" of time, into "prisms refracting the light."

Perhaps I will wake up by tomorrow. Or the day after. And take you with me to the Russian Tea Room, Central Park, The Highline, or Wicked.

For now, like Glinda, I'm still traveling a bit by bubble. Finding it hard to touch down...

_____

Over at The High Calling, we're walking beside each other, discussing Luci Shaw's Breath for the Bones: Art, Imagination and Spirit: A Reflection on Creativity and Faith. Want to join us?

_____

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. :)

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

Rumors • Book Cover, Take Three

2011-08-03T09:54:00.005-04:00

The back cover is a place to do things too. So I'm thinking this might be a way to keep my dear Little One's designs— even give them more play.

I felt there still needed to be a nip of hand-drawn design on the cover. It adds something of the human. I am still undecided about whether I should go with the nip or the ribbon across the bottom.

Click to see large nip cover.

Click to see large ribbon cover.

Well, in any case: Take Three. :)

Take Three and a Half:

Click to see large image of Whole Leaf cover

Ready for an Onion Date

2011-08-03T08:00:00.002-04:00

How to stay creative?

There are so many answers.

I like Julia Cameron's idea. The Artist's Date.

Yet my life doesn't easily accommodate such goings-on. I have two girls who I home-educate. I take care of my house (okay, I try :) — mowing, clipping, cleaning. I work as a writer and manager.

When would I possibly plan a date? It's hard.

Thus, my boy-scouts (girl scouts?) approach: always be prepared. There are dates lurking around unexpected corners, if only we are ready for them.

On Saturday, for instance, I ended up needing to take my daughter to a friend's house, far away. Spur-of-the-moment sleepover invitation. I had meant to spend the morning writing, but suddenly...

I saw my chance.

Camera, notebook, Luci Shaw. Into the bag. Water bottle, tissues, and banana muffin (in case I needed a survival kit)— also into the bag. And Lady Gaga, of all people: into the bag. Her music inspires me, despite that her risque lyrics, triangle hair and dresses are... what shall we say... creative.

Gaga in the speakers, the hours before me, I made a date with the day. I stopped on the side of the road to capture a little cottage.

I found a barn full of antiques and... corn, squash, onions, tomatoes.

As part of my survival plan, I stopped at a park that has a bathroom with running water and a brass lock on the door. Along the way to tile floors and paper towels, I found pinecones new-minted, red leaves flaming against blue skies, and bare-faced wildflowers that Lady Gaga could never rival with plastic or pop. On the way home, I did, however, turn up the music and dream.

The creative life doesn't hand itself to us. We hand ourselves to it. One creative date at a time.

Wordle by Sonia. Used with permission.

Rumors • The Book Cover, Take Two

2011-08-02T21:00:00.003-04:00

Listening to your feedback, I wonder if this might work...

:)

___

Maureen, here it is with the other text :)

Rumors • Help Me Choose a Book Cover

2011-08-02T17:26:00.009-04:00

I always come to this place, of wanting to know. What do you love best? If you like one of these covers but have ideas about how it might look better, I'm ready to hear that too.

This is a book about creativity and writing. It is held together with threads of memoir.

You'll see how a writing life unfolds when shared with two daughters. You'll see the undersides of how I work and what I hope, when it comes to the art of writing. You'll see different sides of me: mother, writer, manager, editor, small-press publisher.

Mostly I hope you'll see some kind of beauty and grace. And a way to embrace where you are and where you want to go with your own writing.

On, In, and Around Mondays: Always-a-Butterfly Writing

2011-07-30T15:37:00.007-04:00

"It has been said that faith is a certain widening of the imagination," notes Luci Shaw.

I say that writing is a certain kind of faith that thrives on *releasing* the imagination.

You have felt the release, I'm sure: those moments when something inside you returns to the child-time of life, when your imagination could take you to a fisherman's boat on the Yangtze, as well as it could take you to worlds where girls in red capes conquered violence with a basket full of violets and gold-warm biscuits.

Must we wait for the feeling? The release? The return? Or can we urge it onto our souls?

The other morning, sitting with my Christmas Tea (yes, in July! :), I glanced up the unruly hill of my tiny back yard. Two years ago, I planted a purple Butterfly Bush near the hemlocks.

"There is always a butterfly," I thought, tea in hand. And indeed there was a yellow swallowtail clutching blooms.

"There are things we can do," I thought. "Things that make our creative life swell open. Things that will almost always guarantee a butterfly."

I am not one to recommend guarantees. Yet I suspect that sitting outside with Christmas Tea or picking one's way through the woods is a kind of guarantee. I have seen even small forays into nature transform writers again and again. It's as if the breeze pulls open shutters, or the morning unzips a raven. Or maybe a yellow swallowtail draws nectar up from places we'd long forgotten.

You could try it on faith, for a week, a month. A daily sojourn into morning air, or afternoon shadows, or moon-sung night. And let us know if you find the Yangtze, a red cape, or always-a-butterfly.

_____

Over at The High Calling, we're walking beside each other, discussing Luci Shaw's Breath for the Bones: Art, Imagination and Spirit: A Reflection on Creativity and Faith. Want to join us?

_____

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. :)

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

On, In, and Around Mondays: Writer Asking for Much

2011-07-23T11:02:00.009-04:00

When writing a book, an article, even a blog post, we must choose an angle. We must offer the reader something he or she wants. I know that. Still, I find it hard.

I find it hard, because I write for a questionable reason: the desire to connect. And when I choose an angle, I risk that connection. Somebody isn't going to want to hang around for a 12-week course, for instance. So the relationship I've been cultivating with a reader suddenly has a little hole in it.

I should not care about this, but I do. Every writer has her struggles.

Can I be honest? I wish that my readers would seek a body of work, not a particular angle. I wish that they would read the beginning of the story, even though it doesn't come with formulas. I wish that they would read the poetry, so they could see the small moments inside the larger ones. And I wish that the promise of a 12-week course wouldn't scare them away from the story of the yard itself. I wish to be understood as something of an oak tree, like the one that grew on Luci Shaw's front lawn— which had its many parts, visible and invisible, as it moved through seasons and even to its death.

I think what I really want is for readers to take the metaphorical view that Shaw speaks of, that "sees the world not as reducible to verbal proposition but as multi-leveled, complex, rich, its mystery capable only of being pierced and presented as imagery." Yes, I want my readers to forget about writing-angles and simply come for the stones, the yard, and (soon) the water.

This is idealistic, I know. It is asking readers to commit to a long-term relationship, the way I have committed to it as the writer who serves them. The Market does not promote this kind of relationship, nor does it necessarily focus on art, imagination, and spirit (breath for the bones).

I am asking for much. But maybe this is what makes me an artist— asking for connection that penetrates surfaces and tangles with earth... like Luci's oak tree.

_____

Over at The High Calling, we're walking beside each other, discussing Luci Shaw's Breath for the Bones: Art, Imagination and Spirit: A Reflection on Creativity and Faith. Want to join us?

_____

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. :)

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

The Space You Need for Writing

2011-07-19T15:25:00.003-04:00

Today I had a sweet conversation with a writer friend. Among other things, we talked about Writer's Block.

After hanging up the phone, I moved on from the conversation, ate some Kettle Corn (which I love), made a cup of peach tea, and sat in the dining room.

The dining room is sunset yellow. I kept the lights off; the color of the room is enough to bring me light, as I hoped it would when I chose the color.

Sipping my tea, I glanced towards the living room. This morning, the floor had been completely empty. We'd moved the coffee table last night to have a dance party (just the girls and me). It took less than a day for this to appear...

And this brought me back to thoughts about Writer's Block. This, this filling of space by my girls. It always happens. A space, a filling.

If you are feeling a sense of Writer's Block today, maybe you need a space. I don't know what kind. Maybe it is a space of permission— to feel what you are feeling but have been trying to ignore. Maybe it is the space of time. Or the space of a piece of paper that you don't intend to fill with words but rather with water color dreams. Maybe what you need is to stop caring about trying to achieve something with your writing.

Writer's Block is an apt term. It says you have forgotten to make space and are now blocked from the possibility of words. What space do you need today?

Painting by Sara B. Floor covered with beads, by Sara and Sonia. :)

On, In, and Around Mondays: Breath on the Water

2011-07-18T08:00:00.001-04:00

There are places we go that are undeniably artful. They give us what Luci Shaw calls "the sudden flash of understanding" that causes souls to cry out to other souls, "This is what I see and how I feel. Can you see it? Can you feel it too?"

Innisfree Garden is one of those places.

On Saturday, I went to Innisfree with a friend and my girls, and the day was like a peeling back. Look here, and here, and here. Can you see it? Can you feel it too?

The air saturated blue. Petals pink, folding and unfolding. Rocks that echo forever. New life on the path, trembling on baby legs. Water bubbling up or skating before the wind.

Shaw says it is the recognition of God's hand in nature that can inform our own art—mystery, glory, power... encountered. We see and respond.

Today, if our art feels devoid of response, perhaps we are in need of an encounter. Or someone beside us to whisper, "Yes, I feel it too..."

_____

Over at The High Calling, we're walking beside each other, discussing Luci Shaw's Breath for the Bones: Art, Imagination and Spirit: A Reflection on Creativity and Faith. Want to join us?

_____

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. :)

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

On, In, and Around Mondays: Writing in Other Puddles

2011-07-11T12:45:00.005-04:00

I am late here today. You know that. And you also know how quiet I've been overall, here and at my other blogs. This is what happens when I go off to another writing puddle for a while. I just can't sustain words in too many places at once. Forgive me? Please?

See, last year I thought about writing a book on writing. Yet as the months went by, I thought more about NOT writing the book than I thought about writing it. In the meantime, some fun people kept nudging me, "When are you going to write again?" And I kept saying, "I'm tired. I have nothing to write about."

Then I went to a picnic this spring, where all that changed. I had woken up that day, not writing a book, but by evening I was. Sometimes this is how it goes. Someday maybe you can read about how it happened. It involved a request to my daughter, to get me something to drink.

I have learned from past experience that I can stall my writer-self if I share news of a big project too early in the process. I need the freedom to write without thinking I'll be letting anyone down if it doesn't work out. I need the freedom to play in the rain, so to speak.

I am almost finished writing, so I thought to come and tell you: Maybe I'll find more words here again. I'm not sure. Either way, know that your presence in my life is a big part of what sent me to another writing puddle. And for that, I thank you...

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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. :)

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

On, In, and Around Mondays: Writing with Luci Shaw

2011-07-02T06:36:00.011-04:00

I open my computer today and notice Friday’s red umbrella. It belongs to Luci Shaw.

I have Luci's umbrella, because I have her picture. I have her picture because I used it to create a background for her new Twitter account. She has a new Twitter account, because on Thursday she will be coming to a Twitter poetry party.

Just yesterday I listened to someone deride Twitter. There are those, I suppose, who make it something to deride. But even with talk of heavy rain or indigestion or lost keys, I believe that Twitter is a red umbrella— a tiny space in which to work, to express oneself on the way, to move through crowds in the crimson shadow of words.

Once I took a writing seminar with Kay Marshall Strom. The thing I remember most was her assertion that the good writer benefits from writing small. "Limit yourself to a few sentences," she said. That feels to me like red-umbrella talk.

If you are going to say something of worth in a few words, you will be forced to concentrate more carefully on details. If you don't concentrate on details, it will seem you have said nothing at all, except perhaps heavy rain, or indigestion, or lost keys. Details make the rain like needles or like a sky of white nectar. Details make the indigestion burn the esophagus, like an old woman with a kerosene lamp, winding her way back to the sea. Details remember that the keys were on the counter at the bakery, just when you were choosing to splurge on a chocolate-filled croissant.

On Friday, over the phone and online, a friend and I helped Luci open her red umbrella on Twitter. We wrote about fishermen and red bobbers, casting lines and car hats. She laughed and played and saw the possibilities. She found her keys.

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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. :)

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

On, In, and Around Mondays: Imagining What We Need

2011-06-27T09:39:00.006-04:00

The deck is empty of toys. Just grown-up things are placed here and there. A table with black-armed lawn chairs. An old mop. A pillow for grandma to lean against. A faux black-iron pot, which once held flowers. Twine, rope, a suitcase carrier. A plastic blimp whose function is undetermined.

My Littlest senses this won't do, for young cousins in need of diversion. She proposes a carnival.

Mop becomes pony ride, rope becomes tether. Blimp becomes hanging boxing toy. Pot, a receptacle for a tossing-the-twine game. Suitcase carrier is suddenly trolley (only for the youngest, my girl tells the cousins). Chairs, in a row, are a roller coaster. "I'm the dwiver!" shouts the tiny boy cousin. "Okay, you're the driver!" shouts my Littlest in return.

Children become players in a play. Cowgirls are attacked by a tiny cowboy. "It's a bandit!" cries my girl. "I'm a band-aid!" he cries in return.

When it is time for supper, grandpa tries to put the chairs back, undo the blimp. The tiny cousin protests, "No! Don't. We worked hard on dis!"

And they did. I sit in the family room, watching all. Learning from the children, again. To laugh and imagine.

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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. :)

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

Secret Red Shoes

2011-06-21T08:00:00.001-04:00

The Secret

for Kelly Sauer

When I was a girl,
I wanted shoes like Dorothy's.
Red sparkled, to fend off
witches, grant my wishes.
Mine were leather,
with a strap.
I walked into life
anyway, where I found
a red-lipped me,
a star-like you.

This post is also being shared with One Shot Wednesday.

On, In, and Around Mondays: Listening to the Past

2011-06-20T07:13:00.007-04:00

"What is it?" my Eldest asked.

She was standing in a used bookstore, in front of a showcase of old music albums, touching one of the covers lightly. She liked the colors and the idea of whatever this thing was. An album. It felt strange, that she would not recognize what I grew up with. But I smiled.

Last night, at a friend's house, we noticed an old mahogany phonograph. No electronics. Plays hard vinyl and ceramic records. I remembered that day in the bookstore, and it was as if we were touching time-past again. This time, 1911.

"Can you play it?" we asked the owner.

He pulled it out, cranked it up, opened the doors in the base (that was the volume control), and played Carmen. My daughter and I stared and listened to an opera we love. The sound was faraway, oddly bright, yet oddly scratchy and muffled.

"See? The needle vibrates and sends the vibration to this disc, which sends the sound up the arm and down into the base of the casing," instructed one of the older friends among us. My daughter peered underneath, through the open doors, as if she would be able to see the sound.

I closed my eyes and listened, held back tears. "I don't know why this makes me want to cry," I said. "Something about the sounds."

"I want one," said my daughter. This, the girl who has no interest in IPods or Kindles.

In that moment, I wanted one too. And I could picture my daughter and I held close, just listening.

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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. :)

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

On, In, and Around Mondays: Red on the Farm

2011-06-13T11:02:00.006-04:00

I went back. How could I stay away, when Sparkle strawberries were calling, and the teapot tree.

Also, I am on a hunt for red, because, Claire sent me looking. And I was sure there must be red at Linsay's place. There was.

I can see I will need to write things down before I go, because I am utterly distracted when I'm at the farm. This time I got lost in talk about Jemima the duck, as I was trying to remember to buy sugar snap peas. I went home without the peas. But I bought duck eggs, which apparently have more protein and something or other. For my part, I kept thinking about Beatrix Potter's duck in her little blue bonnet, and this disrupted my ability to memorize nutritional profiles.

I did get greens that were so Linsay. Graced with rose petals, marigolds, clover flowers.

Now I know I will be back here each week, wondering what will turn up next. The raw honey I drizzled into my mint water would almost be enough. The sweetness of Linsay's vision, and her whimsy, makes me promise my Friday afternoons.

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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. :)

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

2011-06-06T08:13:00.006-04:00

We pulled in to the shady drive— fields and hills opening out beyond. Amber mares, and chestnut. Faun and dappled.

"They say he's like a steed, Mommy!" my Littlest said, pointing to a midnight black horse in the distance. "That a knight in shining armor should ride him. They say we should see him run. He goes so fast."

My girls wanted me to come here, had been here just yesterday with others. And I see why. I am only just taking it in and already I want to come back again.

We park and walk to the stuga ("That's what they call it in Swedish... not a cottage, Mommy!"). The stuga— let me get that right— is shaded by an old apple tree. Wooden benches and tables are crowded with potted herbs for sale— parsley, sage, rosemary (I don't see thyme). There is an heirloom variety of strawberry ("Sparkle," says Linsay the proprietor) and heirloom tomatoes. The farm has been in this family for 103 years. There is Linsay's house and grandmother's. There is a brother.

Linsay has been up since 4 a.m. picking kale, strawberries, lettuces, and putting out glass cups with minted, lemon ice water. The mint clings to the side of the glass pitcher. I want a glass of this green.

This space is only open two days a week, for four hours. "I worked 70 hours a week last year and didn't make a profit," says Linsay. I'm doing it different this year. I want it to be about the experience."

There is water boiling on the stove up at her house and she needs to shut it off, but she's hesitant to leave us. Finally, her friend goes off to save the kettle from sure demise.

Beyond the apple tree are the gardens. At the fringe is a teapot tree. It is a huge, weathered branch that Linsay rescued from the saw after a storm. She dug a hole, placed the branch upside down and hung it with kettles— ultramarine blue, yellow, red, white. Maybe these are the ones that didn't make it on her stove.

I do not want to leave. The horses, the water glasses, Sparkle strawberries and Sweetie tomatoes. I do not want to leave this day, this hour, and the way that Linsay rescues things.

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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. :)

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

Taking Back the Morning

2011-06-03T20:10:00.005-04:00

I found this fun prompt via Maureen Doallas. It was supposed to involve a post-it note. Mine involved a morning.

Reading all these God in the Yard posts, I've been jealous of my own past experience, thus the mornings. Sitting on the back porch at 5:30 am, watching the sun come and touch all the things I've left unmown. Buttercups and field grass. And the Lamb's Ear watching from the garden.

Anyway, my mornings have been bringing back questions, and poetry. Thus, the answer (the questions) to the prompt...

Existential

How can I
how can you
how can we?
Maybe the answer
lies in poetry.

On, In, and Around Mondays: Giving a Little

2011-05-30T08:00:00.003-04:00

It started with a tire. I was at the library and saw my neighbor.

"Darn it, my tire is going flat," I complained to her. "I can even see the nail, and it's still got a piece of shingle on it! (The guy next door to me is getting his roof replaced.) Any recommendations where to go for this? Not too far?"

"Oh, I always use J & J for that kind of thing," she answered.

J & J is just down the street from me. It's easy to see and easy to miss. I have passed it a thousand times on the way to other places.

I dropped my girls at the house and drove on to J&J. Within a few minutes, it was all better.

"Fifteen dollars," Joe said.

"Um, I only have twelve dollars and seventy-five cents. Or I could pay on a credit card."

"No problem. Just give us the $12.75."

I did.

This past week, I needed the very same car inspected. Where do you think I went? Yes, J & J. And two days later, my husband's car started making a distressing noise and smelled like something was burning. I went to... [you fill in the blank].

Since J & J is walking distance, I left the cars both times and walked home. Past the flower place with the sun on its sign. Well, after stopping to buy some thyme for my littlest daughter's garden. When the nice Italian man behind the counter heard I was walking home, he made sure to offer me a simple brown paper gift bag to carry my herbal surprise.

I felt suddenly connected to my community in the dearest of ways. People had shared their talents with me, their generosity. They'd given me slack, and it brought me back within a week. It rooted me here just a little bit more.

Online, where "next door" is anywhere in the world, there are very real places, nonetheless. Places we pass a thousand times on the way to somewhere else. Places that are as easy to miss as they are to see. Then one day we find we have a reason to stop in, to come again, to get rooted. TheHighCalling has been one of those places for me.

How about you? Have you found TheHighCalling next-door yet? There's no Italian man behind the counter, but there's a Canadian Farmer, an Iowa Farmer, a Drupal Architect, a South-African photographer, a Texas mom, and so on and so on.

No one behind the counter is going to charge you $15.00, or even $12.75. It's free for the stopping-in. But it does take a whole lot of resources to maintain.

Maybe you would like to say thanks in some small way? You can give a little (as little as $10), or tweet or Facebook these stories about others who did...

Ann Kroeker, Jennifer Lee, Deidra Riggs, Bradley Moore, Laura Bogess, Charity Singleton, and Glynn Young (where you can still get a poem in your honor if you give to THC)

Speaking of giving, I need to follow up on my offer to give away Sacred Rhythms as part of our celebration for TheHighCalling's Give Campaign. It goes to Darlene, of Simply Darlene. Congratulations! And thanks for all you give to me and to TheHighCalling community. If I get a virtual flat tire, I might just stop by your place. :)

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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. :)

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

Ghost in the Appliances

2011-05-27T09:53:00.005-04:00

I have never been one to like guns. My stepfather displayed his rifles on the living room wall (which frightened me), and I watched my mother pull a trigger once (the shotgun kick-back threw her to the ground). We ate deer all winter, claimed by buckshot; I couldn’t look when the deer lay silently in the back of the baby-blue pickup truck.

Despite my feelings about firearms, I am just now thinking of buying a pistol. Because, today, my stove unilaterally changed its clock to military time. I don’t remember this option in the user’s manual. (Just what, I ask, must a stove be planning, to take such measures?)

continue reading, at Curator Magazine

On, In, and Around Mondays: What to Do About Writer's Block, 2

2011-05-23T08:26:00.008-04:00

I said I liked her question about writer's block. And I still do. Here are more thoughts on the matter...

Now that you have tried going nowhere to deal with your writer's block, it is time to get out of bed. More than that, it is time to leave the house. Maybe for a whole weekend.

You could go listen to live music. I love the energy of Joy Ike. She was in New York City on Friday night. I was supposed to be there too, reading poetry. I dressed in New York black, put a red ribbon at my neck. I dressed my girls up too. Black and red and dark blue jeans and onyx necklaces. And we were a trio, striding down Madison Avenue, laughing in the night.

"The sky is like a brown-purple painting," said my Eldest. "I've never seen it like that in all my life."

"Take a picture," pleaded my Youngest. I didn't want to stop and maybe miss our return train, but then I thought, "Why not?"

My girls mingled with artists, poets, musicians, guests. They talked about philosophy, food, art, and bare feet. They loved every minute, and I was so glad I'd decided to come.

The next day I turned to country things. Killing poison ivy, planting lavender-flower bulbs I'd forgotten since winter in the fridge. With my shovel, I created hopeful spaces in wet earth and dropped in little brown teardrops of life. At night I made popcorn and declared it a movie night. And my girls and I watched an old comedy. Ground Hog Day. And again we laughed.

Sunday came and I slept in. I stayed in bed just long enough to finish the amazingly lyrical The Blind Contessa's New Machine. Then I took the girls to church, then on to their grandparent's house, then off to an outdoor birthday party. The rain stayed away for the first time in a week.

My Youngest went off and played. My Eldest stuck close, wanted to listen to conversations. We talked to a neuroscientist who is also a musician, another musician who has learned how to play every instrument in the orchestra. We talked books, escapades, philosophy, life.

The weekend gave me so many things I could write about. The brown-purple sky, the Norwegian paintings on the wall at the IAM space, tiny little quail eggs, my Youngest playing hide and seek in the night, a red ribbon at my neck to match the red thread in one of the poems I shared, and my Eldest dancing...whirling by the bonfire.

RELATED:
What to Do About Writer's Block

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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. :)

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

On, In and Around Mondays: What to Do About Writer's Block

2011-05-16T09:13:00.007-04:00

What do you do when you don't have words, she's been asking. I might answer this more than once. I like the question. Here's an idea for today...

Choose a morning. Stay in bed. This is not going to take all day. Grab a notebook (the one you keep by your bedside, or will after today).

Leave the curtains closed. Mine are faded yellow with leaves, lilacs, and unidentifiable pink flowers that could pass for peonies if you let them. I like these curtains all right. They were our first real purchase as newlyweds, in search of a matching bedroom set. By now, the curtains don't match the comforter, for two reasons. One, the old comforter got tossed (I think it was too hot for one of the people who sleeps underneath it). And, two, I am allergic to Bed, Bath, and Beyond— both the little white price stickies and the candle section.

If you leave the shades down while you write, it will be hard to see the lines in your notebook. Maybe that is just what you need. Maybe you've been too attentive to the lines lately.

My shades, by the way, are of the Room-Darkening Power Level. As I recall, the little white price stickies proved it. Which would be perfectly fine if the shades kept me asleep through sunrise. Who wouldn't pay extra for a good night's sleep?

The sun begins its rising at about 4 a.m. I know this, because the super-hero shades are no competition for my body's Light-Awareness-Sensors. (I am wishing I could patent these sensors for some useful purpose, package them in pink peony paper, and sell them at Bed, Bath and Beyond.)

Besides developing a great potential product for sleep-deprived middle agers, you have now almost filled a page in your notebook with confessions of your losses and your superpowers. It is no doubt messy, the curtains are still drawn, your bed isn't made. But there are two good outcomes: you've finally written something, and nobody can tell that the curtains don't match the comforter.
---

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. :)

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

Make Your Own Wordle

2011-05-11T08:00:00.004-04:00

Over at T. S. Poetry Press, we're making a Wordle by giving answers to three questions:

1. one of your favorite poets?
2. one of your favorite poetry books?
3. one of your favorite lines from a poem?

Along our wordling way, one poet made his own Wordle, based on his poetry book, and shared it on the Wall. I liked this idea, so I made a Wordle based on my poetry book InsideOut (see above). It was fun to discover that I have "colorful" tendencies.

How about you? Would you consider Wordling, using some kind of poetic grist? What would you use?

If you decide to try it out, post your poetry Wordle on your blog, with an explanation of what kinds of material you used to create it. Then share your Wordle with us by next Wednesday, May 18th, for definite links and possible feature over at Tweetspeak Poetry. Just drop your link on the T. S. Wall.

So many ways to play with words... :)

Finding the Metaphor in Maples

2011-05-10T08:00:00.006-04:00

Confidence, says Ted Kooser. That's what a metaphor communicates.

But it isn't easy to deal in metaphors. They can get silly rather quickly, when we push the relationship between one thing and another too far (Kooser cites a poem about the ocean, which successfully compares the ocean to cows. The poem works because it doesn't go too far, like trying to say that the waves "Moo.")

This week, over at TheHighCalling, we're trying to revive dead metaphors. I might still do that, but here's a live one I found outside my window one evening...

Little Japanese ladies
walk to the edge
of every path,
dip their lace-green parasols
into the golden waves.

I am not going to say that it was good to be confident about this particular metaphor. Someone else surely could have done it better. What I can say is that the little confidence I had with it came from a very sure impression that the maple flowers looked like little parasols all tipped upside down. And for some reason I felt compelled to tell you that in a poem.

Well, at least you can be thankful I didn't have the ladies sing and serve tea to the sky. :)

___

Got a metaphor poem to share? Join Random Acts of Poetry, to share your link and possibly be featured.

(Also sharing today with One Shot Wednesday.)

On, In, and Around Mondays: Of Warrior Squirrels and Weeds

2011-05-09T08:00:00.001-04:00

"It's your nemesis!" I kidded her. "Every gardener has a nemesis!"

Hers is Bishop's Weed, and it has invaded the garden beds. For the last two years, I gave up trying to fight it. The possibility of yielding six string beans for my triumphs against a marching weed just didn't seem worth the effort. (The two beds are small and my gardening skills are less than enchanting.)

But I am feeling a bit revived for the Great Bishops Battle, now that I gave a garden bed to each of my girls. The girls have already planned, dug, planted, watered, and erected security measures against fat-bellied, seed-eating squirrels.

Puttering in the yard, cutting chicken wire for their security needs, I could hear the girls singing while they weeded, laughing while they watered.

And whatever nemesis I thought was ours seemed suddenly conquerable— if not with wire, wooden stakes, and pepper spray, then at least with our laughter, each to each.

---

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. :)

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

Come Write with Us (While I Eat a Little Pasta)

2011-05-06T08:42:00.003-04:00

While I was writing about Guy Kawasaki, the Business of Poetry, and your next RAP prompt, my girls went to the store, bought me flowers, and got ingredients to make dinner.

Then they actually made the dinner.

Talk about enchanting. :)

This Makes Me Want to Give

2011-05-05T11:45:00.008-04:00

Over at TheHighCalling.org, we're thinking about giving.

Just a little goes a long way, to create a thoughtful and beautiful community— right in the middle of a crowded, sometimes competitive-feeling online world. So this morning, I hopped over and did a little giving. I don't say this as some kind of pat-me-on-the-back thing. I just think it's important for you to know that I'm willing to give to what I believe is a beautiful thing (I bet you and I may have even met at TheHighCalling... see how beautiful that is? :)

After I gave my little gift, I was pleasantly surprised to see Sam's smiling face pop up, with a thank-you blurb beside his picture. I even listened (that was pretty cool) to him say his thank-you, because there was a little button you could push to hear his pleasant voice.

Anyway. This got me thinking: how fun would it be if I gave something to anyone who might consider giving a little to TheHighCalling.org? (Okay, I can't give to everyone, but I could give to a giveaway winner, so here we are.) For the giveaway, I chose a book that has impacted my life in a Sabbath kind of way, just as TheHighCalling.org has impacted me in a Sabbath kind of way.

And you don't have to do this to enter the Sacred Rhythms giveaway, but I would love it if you'd consider doing one of these things before adding your name to my comment box:

- tweet TheHighCalling.org's give page
- Facebook TheHighCalling.org's give page
- give $10 to encourage 5 people at TheHighCalling.org
- write a blog post telling what TheHighCalling.org has meant to you (and include a link to the give page)

Let me know if you do any of these things and I'll try to retweet, share, and link to your own sweet gifts.

Comment by Thursday, May 12, for a chance to win Sacred Rhythms. And thanks for being a gift to me. :)

On, In, and Around Mondays: Walking Me Back

2011-05-02T11:17:00.003-04:00

We are on the couch, and she is reading Clarice Bean to me.

It's been a while since we sat so close. Is it because she's the younger child? Does that put her last in line? Sometimes I think it does.

Today her sister is not here, and now we sit, and she reads. Bit by bit, she moves closer. Her elbow is in my side. Now it's her back against me. Her head rests on my shoulder.

She's a wiggler, so the position keeps shifting. Now her legs are on my shins. Now she's walking me with her feet as if I'm a landscape.

I breathe her in, and my body feels strangely whole. I remember, suddenly, when I was her world. When, as an infant, she'd nurse and walk her feet up my torso, up to my shoulder, up to my neck, then back down. I was her river, her sky, her land.

Just for this moment, it is like nothing at all will ever happen again. Nothing but this walking. The earth, surely, has stopped its spinning. Or I have simply stopped mine.

---

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. :)

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

The Note

2011-04-28T14:03:00.013-04:00

Bring in rose, it said.

I looked at my note to myself from earlier in the day, and my mind said, Who is Rose?

Then my brain went searching and turned up an image of an old schizophrenic lady I'd once cared for at a psychiatric hospital. If Rose was going outside (or inside, for that matter), she first turned her raincoat completely inside and out. The coat was a must, in any weather. Her umbrella was a must too, and she dutifully opened and closed it three times before making her transition in or out.

You can imagine my surprise when my brain conjured up Rose and tried to parse the command to bring her in.

A moment later, I laughed out loud. Bring in rose!

I had bought a little red bush-rose way back on Valentine's Day, and I've been planning to transplant it outdoors. In an effort to tackle my GDD (Garden-Deficit Disorder), I'd tried to prepare the rose for a smooth transition from house life to yard life, by setting it outside in the daytime to get some sun, to "harden off," and to develop an immunity to the cat next door.

Unfortunately, the first day I did that, I forgot the rose and left it out all night. It only lost about a third of its leaves as a result.

To steel myself against further mishap, I penciled a reminder-note on the second day of my battle for the roses. Now I read the note again. Bring in rose. Why yes, I can do that, I thought. Though, for good measure, I considered opening and closing an old umbrella— as a charm to make sure we'll get red roses come June.

Before We Know Their Names

2011-04-26T08:00:00.002-04:00

I wrote this for a friend whose child was in the hospital, and somehow it seems like the perfect poem for Mother's Day...

Ours

We call them to the world
before we even know their names,
before we understand
what it will mean
to lean beside their beds
on breath-thin nights.
They teach us how
to hold their hands,
shut the lights,
pray for dawn.

Got a Mother's Day poem to share? Join Random Acts of Poetry, to share your link and possibly be featured.

(Also sharing today with One Shot Wednesday.)

On, In, and Around Mondays: Do it Just Because

2011-04-25T10:32:00.005-04:00

We drove to the store in her blue sports car with the white interior. She put the air conditioning on too high. It was the one thing we always quibbled over.

In the store, we chose fabric, lace, ribbon, thread. She loved to give me things I loved. She loved to help me learn.

This time it was an expensive sewing project that required pearl buttons, a complicated pattern, and fine trim. It was an outfit that I didn't need, and it was beautiful.

Twenty-nine years later, and my grandmother is gone.

There are those who say we should be careful about what we do, only work on that which serves the pressing needs of the world. There is not much room for flowered fabric and needless lace.

Today I sit in our Easter service, and I hold hands with my girl. I touch her cotton skirt and run my fingers over ivory lace. The very same.

Twenty-nine years later, and my girl is greeting Easter day in a skirt I only made for me—the gift of a grandmother who splurged, the work of young hands making beauty, just because. And how could I have known?

---

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. :)

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

Questioning on Good Friday

2011-04-22T09:42:00.004-04:00

Asking Joseph of Arimathea

Who of us
has not gone
away
stone-blind, sealed
to the thought
of another day
where wounds
would be closed as tight
as this tomb,
who of us
has remembered
to wait...
to stay.

---
Thanks Gordon, for inspiring me to this poem.

RELATED:
Mary Asked Martha

Can Cabbage Make You Write?

2011-04-20T10:10:00.007-04:00

Today I am feeling the pressure of cabbage. Really, cabbage. The opaque vegetable reminds me of a fat baby-faced candle you keep peeling back, only to find it has no wick, just a ruffly heart that, at the last, clings to a core of root flesh and holds nothing but air.

It is not particularly in the nature of cabbage to pressure people who have too much to do and too much on their minds. Cabbages are rather humble things, yielding to knives for the sake of coleslaw and to peasant hands for a laying open to receive stuffings of onions, rice and ground beef.

Continue reading, at The Curator...

Painting by Linda Dallas, from Cover of Englewood Review of Books.

Finding the Poetry in Tea

2011-04-19T10:43:00.005-04:00

I was reading about Betjeman and Barton's Polka Tea and discussing it with a friend. The catalog description just begged to be turned into a poem.

Makes me wonder how many catalogs have little poems in them, waiting to be extricated.

Morning Tea with Julie

Fruit, more fruit,
a real combination of fruit:
you and me,
on a subtle base of Ceylon and China teas—
cherry, strawberry,
peach and orange,
a whirl of flavour.
And. Outside our window,
scattered sunflower petals.

Post in honor of One Shot Wednesday.

On, In, and Around Mondays: Sharing the Mystery

2011-04-18T11:05:00.008-04:00

I made a start, but I always seem to falter when it comes to fiction. She knows this about me.

"Did you ever finish?" she asked.

"I'm on chapter two."

"I can read it to you," she said.

And so she did, this weekend. On my bed. In the kitchen. On the deck at her grandparents' home.

Sometimes I would catch myself daydreaming. About work or bills. About taxes or my poets. Her voice never faltered. She laughed, sighed, caught my eye, touched my hand. Sometimes she turned to the back of the book or to the footnotes. "Chopin never wrote anything for solo violin, isn't that funny? I love these notes!"

Then she told me this is why Doyle didn't like the Holmes stories. They were inaccurate, unlike his other works which he spent far more time researching. But no one liked the other works much. Who cared about accuracy, when the Holmes stories were better?

I type these words and I suddenly wonder, "Was it taxes I daydreamed about, while my dark-haired girl shared her beloved Holmes with me? Or am I making that up? Did she really touch my hand? Or was it my arm? When we remember, we alter memories. We cannot know for sure what happened. Only approximations.

But I remember this, surely. Very surely. She took the time to read to me. I listened, I watched, and... we loved.

---

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. :)

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

On, In, and Around Mondays: Dragon Heels and Jewels

2011-04-11T11:26:00.006-04:00

"What do I look good in?" she asked me.

We were picking through clothes at an upscale store where we wouldn't ever actually buy anything off the rack.

"You'd look good in anything," I told her. My older daughter has honey skin and long dark hair. She's on her way to being tall.

At a jewelry counter, we discussed how chunky the styles were. (I'd have to do a bit of weight lifting just to carry some of the pieces on my neck and wrists.) We'd handled $3,000.00 Parisian stilettos covered in rainbow jewels from the base of the heel to the top.

"No one can really bear those without hurting themselves," I told her.

"Dragons can handle it!" she said. "At night they come and wear the shoes when no one sees."

When we were rejoined by my Littlest and my husband, we went back to the shoes. My Littlest became the dragon and tried the shoe, her white cotton sock an odd contrast to French fashion. ("You break it, you buy it," pressed into my mind, and I pressed it back out.)

We took my little daughter's hands, so she could stand in the stiletto without falling. And we laughed.

A woman moved past us and remarked to me, "What a beautiful family you are."

And I felt bejeweled.

---

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. :)

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

How to Work Like a Genius

2011-04-08T17:17:00.004-04:00

I walked into the dining room and gasped. Oh my, what a two-year-old can do in a brief space of time! While I'd been chopping, frying, and boiling, she'd been stringing, draping, and wrapping. The room looked like some kind of Picasso-bent spider had sneaked in to claim an opportunity at artistic re-engineering.

In the years since that messy dining room day, I've done my share of ill-parenting. But if there's one thing I think I may have gotten right, it's the issue of providing space—both physical and mental, for my daughters to be and do, create and laze, explore and abandon.

Sometimes I've doubted my methods. And as a home educator I've felt particularly pressured at times to prove that I'm not squandering my kids' days... Read the rest over at TheHighCalling.

Writing Forgiveness

2011-04-05T08:00:00.001-04:00

Lenten

I am the hardest person
to forgive;
at night I lie
awake and count my faults,
keep them under my pillow
like hard candy, unwrapped
and stuck
with feathers.

Post in honor of One Shot Wednesday. Also, we're writing forgiveness poems at TheHighCalling. Join us, for links and possible feature.

On, In, and Around Mondays: Come Away

2011-04-04T08:44:00.008-04:00

It is rainy this morning, and a big blue book of poems sits on the table. My girls and I have been reading together, just like we did last year, a poem a day for National Poetry Month.

I'm not sure how it came together, but somehow we've landed on Yeats and all things Irish.

I have read Yeats before, was required to in college, but I didn't read him like this. The section begins with a poem called "The Stolen Child" and I can hardly get the words out to my children...

Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild,
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

My girls and I talk about this (me holding back tears). We talk about how there is a little bit of faery in every parent who wishes to shelter a child, to keep the child a forever-child. We talk about the end of the poem, where the stolen child goes away with the faeries, only to miss...

the calves on the warm hillside
or the kettle on the hob

It is a conversation for both of us— me and my girls: They, sometimes afraid to grow, preferring to be stolen away to the place where...

to and fro we leap
and chase the frothy bubbles
while the world is full of troubles

Me, wanting my girls to live in the place full of berries/And of reddest stolen cherries.

I touch the blue book of poems this morning, think of how my Eldest went off after the reading, to begin her own story of an Aisling who loses her blue ball in a stream pool and asks three children to help her retrieve it. They do, and in thanks she says, "I will give you a song."

She sat cross-legged on the ground with the ball on her lap and started to sing. She did not use words but an eerie wordless melody that seemed to fill the air and the stream...It was unbearably beautiful.

And I am still holding back tears.

---

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. :)

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

On, In, and Around Mondays: The Keeping-Bottle

2011-03-28T10:35:00.012-04:00

The living room floor has been covered with catalogs and papers. I asked her to look through them. She is old enough to take part in such big decisions.

We are trying to choose a distance-learning high school. A next step in our home education life. I can still remember how this dark-haired child called me out of the work-force at a mere seven months old, by going on a hunger strike. She's always been one to know what she wants.

But as she looks through the piles of paper and propaganda, I can see this isn't easy. Her eyes light up at some of the course descriptions. Then she asks, "Do I have to take a language?" Then she talks at length about how kids should have more choices. She starts an essay, sets it aside.

We go walking.

It's a beautiful day to go around the lake at Rockefeller Park. She holds my hand, tells me that today the water is the kind of blue she wishes she could put in a bottle, take home, and peek at whenever she wants.

At the far side of the lake, she takes a detour onto a hill that overlooks the water.

"Mommy come!"

I pick my way to where she stands, watching the water move before the wind. We hold each other. "I love you," I say, my face in her hair. Then I tell her I love the way this hill, this water, this blue feels like forever.

"Yes," she says.

After a while, we go back to the path, and now we walk as one. Her hands are cold and she has her arms around my waist, so she can share the warmth of both my pockets. Our stride must match now, to keep from stumbling.

We are near the final curve of the lake, and she starts storying. The lake weeds look like hair. It is lake people having a picnic. And the brilliant triangles of light that keep emerging and descending must be ice— a visitation from the lake world below. This is a castle. That is a rock for mermaids.

Now the path turns right, and the water falls away. I want my own keeping-bottle. For this blue, and the lake people, and my girl, my girl.

---

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. :)

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

Writing in Fairy Tales

2011-03-22T08:00:00.002-04:00

I liked this idea from Kim Addonizio. Write a poem from the point of view of a fairy tale character. It was supposed to be written at a point-of-decision. Mine doesn't really do that, but I mention it because I think it could be helpful.

If you write a fairy tale poem, feel free to leave your link so we can find it. :)

Cinderella

I pretend at being
poor, disliking this job,
but at night
I eat the ashes
while they are still warm,
and the taste of silver fire
is like nothing
you've ever known.

Post in honor of One Shot Wednesday.

On, In, and Around Mondays: One Name for God

2011-03-21T08:00:00.002-04:00

"You see? That's a little bit of God."

I used to walk my children around the yard and say these kinds of things, pointing to some iridescent petal, or offering a a blade of grass to touch.

Today I was reading about the Gothic builders, who believed that the physical stuff of our world somehow reaches to the Divine. It is why they built as the built. Soaring cathedrals filled with light.

There is no cathedral here. But there is beauty. And this is what the medieval mind equated with God. Indeed, one philosopher of the time claimed that beauty was the only name for God.

As a poet, I see how other words can stand in for the word beauty, just as beauty stood in for God, in the medieval mind.

I look into my teacup, and say blossom-tea, and think of God unfolding into sweet water (thank you, Susan, for suspecting I would find this tea beautiful. I do.) I look outside my back door and say, moss-soft-and-life-green, and think of God.

Roses on the counter. Daughter turning pages. Piano, guitar, flute, waiting in the golden-sunset room. Plum candles. Japanese bowls. Forsythia swelling near my window.

Dostoevsky said that beauty would save the world. This morning, as I say its names, beauty is saving me.

---

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. :)

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

On, In, and Around Mondays: If Only the Table

2011-03-14T08:00:00.001-04:00

"Can we make the table round?" asks my older daughter, on one of the nights we are alone.

I begin to say no, but cannot think of any good reason to persist in refusal.

"Sure."

We pull the dark oval apart, lift out two sections, hide them behind a brown living room chair. Then, body facing body, we rejoin the table to itself, into a circle so small we can easily hold hands around it.

I am reading about medieval spirituality, how it was more embodied than our own. Accordingly, cathedral design focused on the embodied God-in-Christ, rather than the Trinity. The table, or altar, was a focal point for where the Bread of Heaven met people.

I'm also reading the two final essays in The Spirit of Food. Both have the language of bodies and tables. Both have the language of finding and losing. One woman loses her early confidence in love, after reading a letter from her father, who cautioned, "Everything changes... You will bind yourself to someone who will change, and in the very dark moments, you will not know who he is."

The other essay writer lost the illusion that her table could provide a secure seat for a girl who seemed to heal but eventually took her life. This revelation especially arrested me, as I learned this week that a friend's husband just took his life on the first day of March, a day which has always reminded me of spring.

Both writers likewise found ways to join to others and be, at least for a time, fed.

I think about my own daughter's desire for a little round table, and I wonder if she's hoping that the trinity of her and me and my littlest daughter will somehow create an unbreakable circle— where no one is lost forever, and there is always room for another hand to share the bread of earth, or heaven.

---

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. :)

For a Nation, For a Single Life

2011-03-12T15:48:00.004-05:00

I cannot wrap my mind around the suffering that is Japan, a nation. Neither can I conceive of the loss of a single life, at the home of a friend this past week.

Then my little girl brings crystalline purple into the house, smiles. "All the crocuses are open outside!" she beams. I cannot hold the experiences in tandem.

For a long time, I stare at the way the light is coming through crocus petals. The petals are already wilting, and I know that tomorrow they will no longer be a filter for light, for day.

I open pages to a book called, simply, Beauty. (Thank you, Kathleen.) The words console, though at the same time nothing could ever, ever console...

At birth we were awakened and emerged to become visible to the world. At death we will surrender again to the dark to become invisible. Awakening and surrender: they frame each day and each life; between them the journey where anything can happen, the beauty and the frailty...

All the frailty and uncertainty was seen [by the ancients] to be ultimately sheltered by the eternal beauty which presides over all journeys between awakening and surrender, the visible and the invisible, the light and the darkness.

I look at the crocus and see that the light has moved on. And I wait for tomorrow.

Don't Piss it Away

2011-03-10T17:35:00.010-05:00

The last speaker of the IAM Encounter weekend was Dana Gioia. I've tried to read his poetry before and enjoy it, to no avail. But when he gave voice to it himself, I was quite taken. It made me glad that I'd at least purchased his book Can Poetry Matter? before the bookstore had packed up and disappeared.

And I have to say that it is Gioia's particular words, "don't piss it away," that have stuck with me. Imagine, a whole conference come to that simple conclusion.

For me, the conference had been going in a distinct direction: beauty, which I'd recently suggested might be my point of activism.

This is perhaps a "soft" thing that isn't always seen as important for business and success. Yet I'm coming to see it as absolutely essential. Because without beauty, we are droids or zombies or maybe remote-control cars— capable of power and activity in their way, but probably not transformative in the true sense of the word.

Some of the beauty that lives inside me has yet to be given voice. I felt that keenly after this conference. Some of the beauty that lives inside me simply needs to be owned and defended. And some of it is yet to be discovered.

How about you? What is still waiting to be given voice, owned, or discovered? Gioia has four simple words for you and me: don't piss it away.

What's in a Word?

2011-03-08T08:00:00.003-05:00

Parting

I hate the word
goodbye,
the way it tries
to bring God
into the picture—
like a priest holding
the y of a rosary
crossing himself
over yet another
burial.

Over at TheHighCalling.org, we're thinking about words. Wanna play? This post is also in honor of One Shot Wednesday.

On, In and Around Mondays: Encounters are Generative

2011-03-07T08:57:00.007-05:00

We walked North, kept the river behind us, or to the left. We spent a brief evening eating tortillas, beans, rice, salsa. And we talked.

It was the last night of the Encounter conference, and we had... an encounter. I know that, because when you have an encounter, something is always born. Bonnie loves poetry and Brooke sings it.

So it only seemed natural that out of our encounter... some poetry was born...

One for the Boys

You shut the doors
on me,
turned knobs
against night,
against how I sang
our blue-plucked
song.

Night Tune

to Bonnie and Brooke

Cry for me softly,
boys, open the doors
I'll sing of oaken trees

felled for a melodied
striptease of slatted floors
I'll sing of oaken trees

danced like Penelope
near thresholds of worlds
cry for me softly

sing back and echo me
as a river moves towards
I'll sing of oaken trees

girls strumming quietly
memories in minor chords
cry for me softly

hills upon lighted hills, or
faces past this old porch
will sing of my oaken trees,
cry for me softly.

---

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. :)

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

The Difference Between

2011-03-01T14:27:00.003-05:00

There was a time

we met by water, day was light and cool,
the water moved as it is wont
to do. You moved me with your words,
or was it with your silence.
The years have passed and silence too
and words as they are wont to do.
There are days
you can't remember water,
how it moves, or the difference between
silence and our words.

Post in honor of One Shot Wednesday.

On, In, and Around Mondays: Loving Like a Couch Potato

2011-02-28T10:29:00.010-05:00

"Please?"

She's been following me around for days. Asking me to read the introduction to Sherlock Holmes. I don't really want to read the introduction to Sherlock Holmes. I keep putting it off.

The truth is, she doesn't want me to read the introduction. She wants me to read the whole thing. Both volumes. All six inches of detective capers.

I'm not much of a fiction reader. As fiction goes, I'm not much of a mystery reader. What are the chances?

Last night I settled down on the couch. Dim light played across dark green and cranberry paisley. What should I do? Sitting felt good. Maybe that's how I would spend this last hour of Sabbath-gone.

I noticed a notebook on the arm of the couch. I don't usually read my kids' notebooks— kind of a privacy thing. But this one was open. I scanned the page. It was a record of stories from Sherlock Holmes. There were lots of questions, probing questions, and descriptions of high points.

Flipping through, I discovered that the whole notebook was dedicated to Sherlock. Each story, beginning at story one, was commented upon, wrestled with, questioned, sometimes quoted. It was like an English teacher's dream.

The house was perfectly quiet. And suddenly I understood what love needed to do. I cracked open Volume I of Sherlock Holmes, paged to the first story, and began to read.

Somewhere around chapter two, I heard footsteps coming down the red oak stairs. Soft, soft. It was her. She'd been getting ready for bed, I guess, and seen the light.

Soon, her face was next to mine. She was smiling, and her eyes were bright, seeking.

"You're reading it?"

"I am."

She leaned into me, so warm, and her long dark hair fell across us both.

---

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. :)

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

The Road to the Sea

2011-02-22T12:00:00.007-05:00

Aubade

I still want you,
though it hasn't rained
in forever, and we have
lost our sun umbrella.
The road is closed, the one
that leads to the sea,
where no one cares about
the rain, nor the lost umbrella,
nor these words that whisper,
wanting.

Post in honor of One Shot Wednesday.

On, In and Around Mondays: Doubting My Existence

2011-02-21T10:10:00.012-05:00

"I feel like Ma in The Long Winter," said my friend.

Yes.

For me, it is not just the snow (today I looked out the window to find that somebody made more, again). It is not just the cold, and the colds. It is not even just that my spouse has been gone for a month to faraway, unpredictable places. Or that every day another region of the Middle East bursts into flame. It is, somehow, all of it put together, and a sinking feeling that somehow my particular kind of existence does not matter.

Over the past few days, it's been coming to me— this thing about my particular kind of existence. First it came on a sled. (Bring beauty to the world, I said to the open air.)

Then it came in the car: I am a beauty activist...not a chase, root-out, fight-injustice activist. Does the world need such as me?

At certain junctures, I have tried to be the chase, root-out, fight-injustice kind of person. This is the most lauded kind of Christian, after all.

But the other night, the truth of my existence came rushing in. I had listened to a TED talk (the root-out injustice kind) and my Elder daughter said shakily, "I didn't like her voice." I asked why. "She made it sound like something terrible was going to happen any minute." My Elder daughter has always been like this: such experiences disempower her, make her hopeless. But give her a paintbrush and an ugly surface, and she'll wake up and color the world beautiful.

My younger daughter, on the other hand, loves danger. "Isn't life more exciting when people are against you?" she has said to me.

No.

When faced with the prospect of changing the world by chasing, rooting-out, fighting, policing, I (like my older daughter) quickly despair and become paralyzed.

So, you see, here where The Long Winter continues, I'm doing the only thing I seem made for and able to sustain over the long haul... focus on sharing beauty.

This weekend, I picked up Bill Strickland's book again, Make the Impossible Possible: One Man's Crusade to Inspire Others to Dream Bigger and Achieve the Extraordinary. Strickland counters poverty and crime with clay, jazz, and delicate orchids... breaking chains with beauty.

Thinking on that, I felt a small melting into hope... maybe such as me can matter in the world, after all.

---

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. :)

Finding Yourself in Someone Else's Poem

2011-02-15T08:00:00.002-05:00

This morning I sat down with The Poet's Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry, and began reading the chapter on families.

I had no intentions of taking up the writing challenge.

Then I began reading a poem by Li-Young Lee, called "The Gift." One stanza in, I knew that a poem had found me, despite my refusal to engage.

So I put Li-Young's poem (and my curiosity) aside before finishing, and wrote this poem in response. The end of Li-Young's poem actually answered my question to him in my own poem, so I've included it as an afterward.

Li-Young Lee's Metal Splinter

Your father enters the poem
early,
storying past
the metal splinter
in your palm.

I set your paternity, and the poem,
aside,
to reach back
for my mother
and try to remember

what kind of day it was
when I played by
the barn where I have heard
that my own father
raised pigs
(I do not remember this).

And what kind of day it was
when I found the barn,
door open,
silent

and tried to pluck silver
lines from silver webs
long-left,
then tendered my hand
on noiseless silvered wood

until my palms
were rife
with the evidence
of my trying,

and mother
spent the night
with a silver tweezer,
counting as she went...
ninety-eight
ninety-nine
one hundred—

a ritual for my
tears. And now
I wonder,
Li-Young, did you cry,
and who was in the story,
and how many times
have you counted it since,
to forget, and to
remember.

Afterward, from Li-Young Lee's "The Gift"

And I did not lift up my wound and cry,
Death visited here!
I did what a child does
When he's given something to keep.
I kissed my father.

Post in honor of One Shot Wednesday.

On, In, and Around Mondays: The Keeping Phrase

2011-02-14T08:00:00.003-05:00

"I want to be thinking about dancing again, and paper art, and how we will never have enough wall space for all the beautiful art we love," I told my friend.

We'd been talking about something that saddened us both. And it was good to talk. It is always good to talk.

But when we were done talking about the sad thing, we moved on to other things: dance, paper art, and the fact that we both own more art than our wall spaces can accommodate.

For my part, the art comes in a constant stream from my daughters. I was reminded of this as I tidied for a visit from Bradley Moore and his wife. (Yes, we had to have tea, and I had to show them my copy of the beautiful Neruda's Memoirs: Poems.)

Anyway, as I tidied for Brad's visit, I kept thinking...

we will never have enough wall space for all the beautiful art we love.

And suddenly it became this statement I wanted to say again and again. Because, it's so easy to stay with the sad things in life, to focus on the negative, to forget...

we will never have enough wall space for all the beautiful art we love.

we will never have enough wall space for all the beautiful art we love.

we will never have enough wall space for all the beautiful art we love.

---

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. :)

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

All art pieces in this post are by Sara, 13. Used with permission.

Voicing Neruda

2011-02-11T20:25:00.005-05:00

Just lovely, from Diane Walker. She reads the title poem from Maureen Doallas's new collection, Neruda's Memoirs.

Art taken up, from one person to the next, recast and lovingly turned. To me? This is the true heart of poetry.

Waking Up Metaphors

2011-02-08T08:00:00.001-05:00

I was poking through my new indulgence, The Poet's Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry, and came across this statement...

'Love is a rose' would not be high on our list as a poetic metaphor.

Of course if it was not high on the authors' list, I had to tackle it— to see if I could find something different in a long-dead metaphor. Maybe I did, and maybe I didn't, but I had fun trying to do CPR in any case...

Wake

And what of the rose?
That pink shell
we suppose reveals,
through layer
of softness and curve
upon layer of softness
and curve. What of
the rose that morning
drowns, forgetting
all
we supposed.

Rose Clothes photo, by Sara. Used with permission. Post in honor of One Shot Wednesday.

On, In, and Around Mondays: Eternity in My Back Yard

2011-02-07T11:07:00.009-05:00

They have been sledding, and I with them. But now I am sitting on the porch, watching. I don't know what I love better. The way they laugh, or the hot pink gloves, or them throwing snow balls at the house.

My Eldest makes an art of it. "This is clouds," she says. "Mountains. A rainbow. Rain!"

Splat, splat, splat, the snow balls pile up on stucco, stay. She sees shapes. I see a girl beautiful, beautiful.

Now she picks up an icicle from the ground. I am sure she might throw it too, delight in the splintering. Instead she tiptoes to a barren Rose of Sharon, stands looking, starts touching branches to test their curves.

Gently, she places the icicle on a tenuous cradle. It stays. She walks away.

I sit and sip, watch the icicle, think of artist Andy Goldsworthy. My Eldest has pored over his books, seen him play with nature in just this way—unconcerned with how the sun or the water or the wind might reclaim his art.

Ephemeral beauty, somehow speaking of eternity. Like her, like you, like me.

---

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. :)

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

On, In, and Around Mondays: Of Orphans and Lands

2011-01-31T08:00:00.003-05:00

On my counter sits granola. Near the stove, last night's sauce. In the refrigerator, assorted fruits and vegetables: lettuce, broccoli, apples, clementines. It's a good day, isn't it?

But my mind is with the orphans of the world. Hard as I have tried all weekend, I could write of nothing else but the unexpected foodie fashion in which I care for them.

There are myriad ways to consider the issue of orphan care, and we're thinking about a lot of them over at TheHighCalling.org. But this is my way, decided more than a decade ago, because of what I learned and could not unlearn...

Motherlands

Somewhere between
the four pickles
special sauce
lettuce and cheese
on a sesame seed bun,
mother's were trekking
to foreign villages,
tripping their way
under the weight of
brown-skinned babies
who still lived off milk,
not meat, who would
never remember the land
nor the cattle that
moved in to take up
residence where heritage
would have placed these children
until they could chew
and then, after years and years,
not chew,
then hold the babies
of their babies who'd
live off milk (and maybe
a bit of mashed papaya).

Somewhere between news
of that exodus,
and the cattle lowing
'midst remains
of black-girdled trees,
and the pickles
and the sauce and the occasional
unwanted gristle,
I read about
the rains that didn't come,
a world away,
and a widow who
trekked to the land lords
begging for another year
to grow lentils (or was it
jasmine rice?),
but the cost was too high
and there was no more
milk, and no meat
and nowhere to journey,
so she sold her trinity
of children and decided
it wasn't worth
scrounging for wheat
without a table and soft brown
arms and night laughter
and spice (no sauce).
And the land lords probably
didn't notice
when she never came back,
and I wondered if anyone
wrapped her in white linen strips,
spread pink petals across memories,
and what the children would think
if they knew about the pickles,
the sesame seeds,
the white bun that
never fills.
And it was then I knew
I would never eat anything
but vegetables...
for the rest of my
landed
life.

Eaters... must understand that eating takes place inescapably in the world, that it is inescapably an agricultural act, and how we eat determines, to a considerable extent, how the world is used.

— Wendell Berry, "The Pleasures of Eating," In The Spirit of Food

This poem is offered as part of TheHighCalling's Random Acts of Poetry, and also for One Shot Wednesday. And, we're reading The Spirit of Food. Join us?

AND... the new Laura Boggess special...

(You go, girl. :)

---

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. :)

The Ann's at My Table

2011-01-25T12:10:00.012-05:00

"Stare at something beautiful. Stare for a long, long time."

This is the first Ann. The one who reminded me months ago to slow down.

She is practical. She gives me ways.

The first Ann's words resonate with the words of the second Ann. The one who reminded me just a few short days ago to be "happy in all these little things that God gives." The second Ann is leaning over cheese curls with her camera, when her husband walks in the door.

"I do feel foolish," she says. "I mean, it's curls of mozzarella and cheddar piled high in a pond of golden day."

These Ann's, both a part of my fast-paced online world. They visit my thoughts, accompany my moments. Slow down. Note the sunlight. Note the curls of time, the secret tucked-in places.

I decide to stare at something beautiful. How hard could it be?

My first thought is to cheat the experience, work from memory. I know what my great-grandmother's table cloth looks like.

Don't I?

My second thought is to set a timer. But what constitutes a "long time"?

Forget the details, I decide. Just jump in (mosey in?).

I feel the linen between my fingers. The weave is uneven, as I suppose all linen is. What is linen? I realize I don't know.

I don't know if my great-grandmother used a pattern for this table cloth, or if she dreamed it up herself. Oh goodness, are these grape leaves and grapes? I hadn't noticed. Ah, communion sewn into the cloth—a silent, spiritual poetry that sat under dishes and glasses, time and again.

And there is more I don't know. So much more. Is this the lesson of beauty? How much we don't know? Is this what moves us to awe? The ache to know?

I don't know how she chose the thread. It is strong yet silky. Did someone peddle it to her door? Did she walk to a shop on some German market street? Who made this thread that has lasted through time?

The stitches are small, so so small. How many hours did she work to make them? Did her fingers hurt as she moved the needle through nights and days, stitching a love gift for her daughter's wedding? Did she work by gaslight? Electric? Did she get bored, or did this work soothe her spirit?

I don't know. All I know is, thanks to my sweet Ann's, I have looked for a long time. And beauty has left me with questions.

---

Thanks to...

Ann Kroeker, author of Not So Fast: Slow-Down Solutions for Frenzied Families

Ann Voskamp, author of One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are

On, In, and Around Mondays: White Windows

2011-01-24T08:00:00.000-05:00

I turn to put a white plate in the white dishwasher. But I can't help looking out the window on my way. White snow catches my eye.

Or, more truly, it is the shadows on the snow. No other time of year lays itself out quite like this, a sparkle canvas to be blue-shadow painted.

I go outside.

Earlier, we had a guest, spontaneous invitation to our table just now covered with white linen cloth. We ate nachos, salad, broccoli... got talking about creative genius Bill Strickland, who works with the poor, bringing them art, music and good jobs with good pay.

"I can't remember how he got his vision for his amazingly beautiful Center."

"He looked out the window," my Eldest answers me.

Evening comes. I serve French toast. My Eldest touches the table cloth, moves it between her fingers, notes that she had put it on upside down.

"Too bad," I say. "Our guest didn't get to see the beautiful handiwork."

"Is it homemade?" she asks, now tracing the tiny taupe stitches that surround delicate cutouts.

"My great grandmother made it as a wedding gift for my grandmother."

We notice that a few of the cutouts never got made. Cloth stretches blank like closed windows we can't look through.

I think to cut the cloth she did not notice. But they were her windows she forgot to open. I decide to let them be.

---

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. :)

Cherry Blossoms in January

2011-01-18T12:02:00.005-05:00

All yesterday the Japanese music played. It calmed my daughter, helped her do her school work, and later put her in the mood for writing.

I wanted to write a poem about the music. It's not the best poem, but sometimes it's the writing that matters most.

When I think about cherry blossoms, I think of yesterday's music. I think of my little girl too. Twirling pink.

Japanese

wooden flute, bells,
weep and drift—
cherry blossoms
pink against
the ever darkening
night.

Little Girl Whirl photo, by L.L. Barkat. Post in honor of One Shot Wednesday.

On, In, and Around Mondays: Figuring

2011-01-17T09:30:00.008-05:00

"Everything is terrible!" she wails, and leans into my arms.

Everything is not terrible.

There are worse days, worse places, worse lives. But to her, in this moment, everything is terrible. She is our sensitive child. And maybe the past few days of mini crisis, the weeks of us-too-busy-for-her, have piled up.

I understand. I myself am in a time of "figuring." Looking for some way to feel a sense of space. It always comes 'round to this. I empty my life, I fill it back up. I feel burdened. I must re-figure.

Walk away, I think.

So on Friday I go skating .

On Saturday I don't write (thus my lateness here today), but instead keep a promise to make a blog for my Eldest.

On Sunday we go walking. I laugh at my Youngest's way with the world. She is making snow hats for every fire hydrant we pass (and in my laughter I forget to take photos, which is a small regret).

On Sunday evening we take time for my Youngest, the fire-hydrant-snow-hat girl who thinks everything is terrible. Time to figure how to make a Japanese tent (is there such a thing?) that she actually fills with Chinese items. We find some Japanese music and download it; we change my plans for French-toast dinner and order-in Japanese.

Lights down low, she is finally smiling. I am still figuring. But for the moment everything is suspended.

---

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. :)