On, In, and Around: I'll Be There Wishing Good Things for You

I took my girl to this castle-ish place (above) when she was a baby. She does not remember it.

Since then, fifteen years have passed. Six of those years (almost half her life), I have been a writer in this space. To her, I suppose, that must seem a lifetime.

Over that "lifetime," I have written almost 1,300 blog posts, both here and at two other personal blogs. Other bloggers would have garnered more page views over all this time, but I feel satisfied that these posts drew over 250,000 views.

Half a lifetime for my girl.

And what is that in blog years? (Somebody said to me yesterday that blog years should maybe be calculated like dog years. Maybe I've been really blogging for about forty years then.)

This week, one of my authors (I'm a small press publisher) sent me flowers, to thank me for believing in her book. I do believe in it. She'll go far. The National Review and World Magazine have both requested copies. She's going to be on quite a few radio shows. I want that for her.

I no longer want these things for me. If I ever did (I'd like to think I wanted these things as an author; it seems like the kind of things an author should want, to gain a certain level of success. I know I want my authors to want these things for themselves).

Anyway, I guess it's not important to settle this question. What's important is how I want things for other people. And how this has become the focus of my life's work.

 

Why yes, I'll still be a writer. That won't end. It might even grow.

Not that I necessarily want that either. Five books is a lot to care for. (Still, I do seem to have this little compulsion to keep putting things onto pages, where people can take them to bed, or on a picnic, or to their back porch.)

I do not any longer have a real desire to blog. "Forty years" is a long time. Or six, if you want it in human years. Or half a lifetime, if you look through the eyes of my daughter.

My girl is growing up. I want things for her. I want things for my authors.

And look... the sun is going down (or is it, in fact, just coming up). Let's walk into the sunset (or the sunrise), as the case may be. I'm in a good mood (don't let the mini-drama of this post fool you), so if it's okay with you, I'd like us to sing and laugh along the way.

Race you to the castle!

____

You can always find me at llbarkat.com, to see if I do, in fact, keep writing (Oh, I'm sure I will. It's just a question of how and where). And I wish you a beautiful writing and reading journey, whichever you are on (and if you are a writer, it must be both). Thank you for letting me love you so long through the medium of words.

L.L. Barkat is the Managing Editor of Tweetspeak Poetry and co-creator of the quotes-on-photos app WordCandy.me. Give her another six years and who knows. She might be selling chocolate or teas.

WordCandy Wednesday: Behind the Poems

The poems say
maybe we've figured it.

But if we reach
through the words,

we find the ache
that made the pigment

of sound. We find
the white

we know is asking us
to admit silence.

No words can say.

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On, In, and Around Mondays: Her Biography

After the storm, walking.

At 5:30 a.m., when the sky is silver and the moon is adrift in a swath of clouds.

Or, having had my caramel apple tea, walking in the still-fast-moving air, seeing the sun peeking through and then being pattered by rain.

Five days later, up the hill where power is still failed, around the corner, and down the hill, I meet Adam McCrane. Never met Adam before. We are both watching the big white trucks and peering at the snapped electrical pole.

"They say 1,000 poles snapped and need to be replaced," he says.

I like the roundness of that. It is probably not exactly true, but it sounds good in the mouth. 1,000. I learn that Adam has been without power—today, at 10 am, it will be five days. Never been without for so long before, he says. I like the specificity of his tellings, even as that specificity has surely been altered by time and misremembering.

We continue to share stories on the road. He extends his hand to shake mine, which makes me smile.

I think of the book I am still slowly making my way through: The Old Ways.

MacFarlane finds that roads, and paths, and seaways have stories. That a relationship with the land becomes a relationship with people, through words and shared imagination. At one point, on an ocean trip with an old sailor, he gets to hear the story of the boat they are sailing.

"He knew her biography as well as that of any long-term lover, and he told it to me as a story," says MacFarlane.

I am ready to walk back up the hill now, my morning passage barred by the white trucks. "Nice to meet you, Adam," I say, and begin to turn. "Laura, yes," he says. "Nice name. Laura."

He has the beginnings of my biography. Maybe he will go home and tell his wife a story. But for now I am happy to hear my name, so lovely from the mouth of the old man on the hill.
_____

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

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



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WordCandy Wednesday: The Particular Wheel

Photo by Sonia Joie.

I'm enjoying using these wordcandies as poetry prompts. Good language invites more language, yes? A poem then...


It may take months

to find

the way the wheel speaks
itself in circles,

to understand
the particular language—
a whirring, a come-again
before we're through

it may take months to turn

the silent road to you.


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On, In, and Around Mondays: You Want the One-Star

"You're going to want the five-stars and the one-stars," I told her.

It is Karen's first book—a poignant and humorous memoir, Booked: Literature in the Soul of Me.

Karen has been an award-winning professor and a writer for a long time. She knows what it is to be read and responded to. Still. There is nothing so surprising as your first one-star review, and I was just broaching the subject before it happens.

The one-star review is a good surprise; of course, it needs to be generously balanced by five-star reviews if your book is truly excellent. But the point is that the best books will garner reviews in two directions. This is desirable. It means you have a strong, distinctive voice, and that people either love that voice or despise it.

Karen is gracious, and she thanked me for the unsolicited advice. It goes without saying... I am wishing her more five-stars.

_____

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

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



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WordCandy Wednesday: Metaphysics Laced

Photo by L.L. Barkat.

This candy is from the On Poets & Poetry category. Perhaps a poem, then...

Metaphysics
laced with poppies

makes me wonder
how I can be

more or less

red
with black
seeds.


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On, In, and Around Mondays: Walk in the Woods

We stepped onto the pine needles, in a slice of woods barely qualifying to be called woods.

"It's like a carpet," my girl said.

"Yes, I used to walk such woods. My sister and I. How we loved the pine needles so soft under our feet! We could go as far as the eye could see under a thousand trees. It was our secret place."

My daughters' eyes get wider. Is there such a place on earth? They want to believe it, even though we are standing only in a slice, a suggestion of the possible.

They begin to spring up and down, testing a life I can only suggest to them with my tellings.

I can tell of other woods too, like the ones in the photo above. I can give you a slice. This is what I do as a writer. I tell you something you might want to believe. I give you a suggestion of the possible.

It is up to you to go there, if I can just give you a place to spring from. We work together, you and I.

_____

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

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



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WordCandy Wednesday: The Soul

Photo by Kelly Sauer.

This candy, from the Sweet Dreams category, is so lovely. It begs for a poem, don't you think?

The soul
bends down
to wait.

The soul
like fragile lace
lays itself
across the white.

I note
the filagree.


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On, In, and Around Mondays: Writing Landscapes

He walks the old ways and pays a toll in skin. The paths are chalk, and his body writes itself onto the landscape, even as the landscape writes itself onto his body.

MacFarlane has taken a fall along The Icknield Way, and somehow I think of my own skin, and the way I sit, on this day, near my daughter's warmth, and our bodies are making a memory—her landscape writing itself on me, mine writing itself on hers.

She listens to my cadence as I read: magnesian limestone, Permian mudstone, Middle Lias, Great Oolite, cornbrash and, yes, London chalk.

I remember when she was tiny and loved to draw on asphalt—chalk in her small hand, colors and visions set down, now long washed away by rain.

"I could see you doing this," I interrupt my reading, bringing memories forward and on into her possible future. My chalk girl. I can see her walking The Icknield Way.

"You can?"

"Yes, I don't know why. I can see you walking this path."

And I know that in this moment, whether or not she ever walks MacFarlane's London Chalk way, that she could. It is within her.

"Take me with you," I want to say.

But I don't.

Her head is on my shoulder. I lean down to kiss her warm face, let the moment write itself onto my skin.


_____

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

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



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WordCandy Wednesday: Proper Tea

Photo by Claire Burge.

I am loving the new Tea category at WordCandy. This one is great wisdom from Winnie the Pooh. How do you make your tea proper?


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On, In, and Around Mondays: Walking to Love

I am supposed to be reading The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot, by Robert Macfarlane, to review it for Books & Culture.

So of course I've only gotten as far as chapter one, and instead of continuing to read, I began walking every morning.

Macfarlane's journey began in winter, and he claims you can't go anywhere without walking. I am already in disagreement. You might know why.

It's okay. He could be right, in his way. It doesn't change the fact that I went somewhere without going anywhere. Two things can be right. This is something I had great fun exploring in The Novelist.

Anyway. I began walking every morning, and whereas Macfarlane quotes Emerson, "the ground is all memoranda and signatures," I am noticing that the ground is a cradle for love.

And I, like some kind of wandering mother, have the chance to embrace what the ground is holding out to me, if I want.

One morning, the ground gave me an ivory-coated terrier. This little dog would not move until I came to greet him. I held his face between my hands and looked directly into his melty brown eyes. "I see you," I said to this tiny creature named Tiger. "I am so glad you are saying hello to me."

Another morning, the ground gave me a brown-haired girl, skipping her way to the school bus. She raised an eraser to her nose and sniffed hard. "I love the smell of this eraser!" she shouted to the wind. "I love this eraser!" I gathered her words.

This morning, it was two old men. Jamaican, I think, if I heard their deep, throaty sing-song correctly. "You gonna buy this house?" one of them asked me when I walked by. "Oh, just stretching near the driveway," I replied. "Great house, isn't it?" I added. And he nodded yes and turned back to his friend.

Macfarlane is right about walking. It takes you somewhere.

In my case, I feel like I am mother-walking to 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. :)



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