Word Serendipity – A Baker’s Dozen

A few weeks ago, I wrote about randomly drawing a word from a pool of words each day to count down the days until I see a good friend.  A word advent calendar.  Twenty words have danced themselves through my mind since I started.  I’m having a marvelous time, stumbling into resonances and serendipity at every turn.

Here’s some of what I’ve learned so far:

One day, I found that I could consider inside without pondering outside.  But on a different day, I discovered it’s impossible to separate inhale from exhale.

After a 6-week hiatus, the final term for Cambridge undergraduates started.  I had been dreading plunging back into the mire of thermodynamics, special relativity, classical mechanics.  I knew the students would be starting to prepare for exams, so questions about any and all of the topics we’ve explored this year could pour in.  Getting back into the mind set of teaching seemed just too overwhelming.  And the word I drew for my first day back teaching was ease.

Listen – On this day, I played in a concert.

Reset – I got this word on a Monday.

Rest – During a rest in a piece of music, there is no dimming of concentration and awareness.  It’s simply that you are quiet.

Respond – In the word respond, I see the word ponder, and I hear a suggestion to rethink, reconsider.  Although this etymology isn’t strictly correct, it’s mine.  By contrast, the word react holds the word act.

Smile – The day I drew this, I was annoyed.  I did not want to smile.  I did not want to paint a veneer of cheerfulness on a day that felt like drudgery.  When I wrote about the word in the morning, I ranted about false smiles, forced smiles, surface smiles.  I thought about gargoyles grimacing. I wrote ‘My word this morning is smile, and I just want to kick it across the room.’  On the radio that afternoon, I heard a story about a study into boxers who smile for pictures before a fight.  Apparently, boxers who smile are more likely to lose.

Green – On this day, my daughter needed a green t-shirt to dress as a giant in a school assembly, she choose a green ice-pop to eat in the park after school, and it was the first day it was warm enough to go barefoot in the new green grass.  I was impatient for the word green when I started my word calendar; the branches were not yet showing their suggestive buds, had yet to burst into baby leaves.  Of Dylan Thomas’s famous poem, the force that through the green fuse drives the flower, I recalled only the phrase ‘green fuse’ and I nodded to myself, yes, springtime is a green fuse igniting bulbs and blossoms fed by the grey kindling of winter.  Then, when I chose green, I reread the poem.   And I am dumb to tell the pulsing grass how in its trail I follow, wordless in its wake.

Bravery, a few steps and a few notes at a time

I’ve done something brave: I’ve arranged to take a cello lesson at the beginning of May.

Even though I’ve played the cello for close to 30 years, over the past twenty, I’ve had exactly one proper lesson – almost 8 years ago in Seattle. (Thanks Mary!)  I’m sure there’s room for improvement.

For much of this time, the cello has been a means to an end:  to play in an orchestra.  But lately, I’ve been wanting to play cello to play cello.  I want to improve my intonation.  I often guess, I’m frequently close – as in, closer to an ‘A’ than an ‘A-flat’ but not exactly an ‘A.’  And I’d like to work on my tone being smoother and richer, with less hesitation and fewer rough edges.  Less guessing. More listening.

So, on the recommendation of a friend from my orchestra, I’ve arranged a lesson.  The teacher sent me a list of exercises to look at.  Exercises.  When I first started playing cello, I dreaded exercises.  Dull.  Repetitive.  No soaring lines or playful melodies.  Enough to make me lose my appetite for practicing.  In a recent conversation my cello-teacher friend, Mary, remarked that exercises can be helpful because they remove the pressure of the larger context of a piece.  I think she said something like ‘It’s just a string of eight notes.  Play them loud, soft, fast, slow, in one bow, in 4 bows, 8 bows, dotted rhythm, triplets, and then, when you’ve had enough, move on.’

Our most recent orchestra concert was a performance of Elgar’s The Kingdom.  It’s a really difficult piece.  When rehearsals started, I was bewildered. The rhythms confounded me, the notes were tricky, the key signatures were constantly changing from too many sharps to too many flats.  I couldn’t figure out the melodies.  When I listened to a recording, it sounded opaque and rich. There was too much to take in, too much to understand.  I wanted to shut down.

Instead, I picked up the exercise book and played 8 notes.  And when I was done with those 8 notes, when I had played them well enough, I went to the next 8 notes.  I didn’t worry about how one string of notes connected to the next, and if I should be listening for clarinet cues, and where this all fit in to the scheme of 50-60 other instruments and 100 voices in a 40-page oratorio.  It was just 8 notes.  I recall reading that Yo-Yo Ma learned to play cello by learning 2 measures of the Bach Cello Suites a day.  I figured I was in good company.

I know it’s probably been said before, but, practice does help.  Even if you practice different music, it helps!  The week before the concert, we had 3 rehearsals: the evening of Monday April 15^th, Friday the 19^th, a dress rehearsal on the 20^th, and the performance the evening of the 20^th.

On the 15^th, the music started to reveal itself to me.  I could hear the melodies!  I could play the melodies!  The grandness was emerging, the emotion, the motion, the intensity were coming into focus .  I left the rehearsal humming the music, it was sinking in through my pores.  Halfway home, I turned the radio on: Boston.  That evening, while I was finally beginning to understand this music, in the Cambridge across the pond, there was chaos, disbelief, discord, tragedy.

The events in Boston affected me on many levels.  Massachusetts and Boston is to my mother what New Mexico is to me.   I’ve married into a family of runners and become one myself.  For many runners, Boston is the marathon to aim for.  My in-laws were visiting the UK that week, with plans to run the London marathon on the 21^st.  There is always a story behind each marathon, propelling each marathon runner – why they run, what motivates them, their ways of going through the alternating drudgery and satisfaction of the many miles of training, their final inspirations for those last miles.   It’s not the winners of marathons who inspire me.  It’s the finishers.

I’ve run a few marathons and they, too, are really difficult.  They, too, loom over you at the beginning with an imposing distance of 26.2 miles, and make you want to sit on the couch and read a book instead.   But, the only way I know to do something as big as a marathon or find an entry into something as grand as The Kingdom is to go a few steps farther each run, to string together a few more bars of 8 notes each practice session.

For Boston, the days of April 15 -20 were filled with drama, anger, sadness, heroism.  Underneath the toll and tenderness of the week’s events, the music for my orchestra concert was growing clearer and clearer in my ears.  I would wake in the morning to majestic themes from the prelude.  I thought I could hear the lovely lines of the second part with the arrival of spring blossoms.

Through the final rehearsals, and culminating in the concert itself, the threads of the music wove themselves together.  Agony and sadness crossed with joy and determination. The warp and weft of a musical tapestry that told the story of Pentecost, a story of building a great faith from a profound loss.  The crowning glory is that we played at King’s College Chapel in Cambridge.  I’ve always found this building astonishing.  I’ve written before about playing in this chapel.  Given that week’s events, it was especially poignant to spend last Saturday evening in King’s, swathing the soul in a vast statement of human experience, Edward Elgar’s The Kingdom.

Here’s a review of our concert: http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/Whats-on-leisure/Reviews/Cambridge-Philharmonic-20130422104939.htm

My cello lesson is in a few weeks.  I’ll let you know how it goes.

32 Words

In mid-May, I am going to Paris to see a childhood friend.  She lives in Vienna right now and we want to meet up, spend time walking, talking, and seeing where we have wandered since we last spoke.  We have been friends since sometime after second grade, when we decided it was better to be friends than rivals after we fought for the friendship of a mutual playmate from Japan, Noriko.  While Noriko was in the US, the three of us played happily.  When she returned to Japan, my friend and I missed her desperately, but the friendship between the two of us has been both steady and fluid ever since.  It has weathered elementary school blisters on our palms from the monkey bars, middle school track and the smell of cafeteria food, driving lessons and formal dances in high school, the wandering twenties, changing families, homes, states, and countries.

Last week, as we finalized our plans and I got my train ticket to Paris, I counted: there were 32 days until the trip.  32 days until I would slip away for the weekend and see someone who has known me through all the shifting contexts of my life.  In my journal, I quickly wrote down 32 words.  To mark the days until my trip, I decided that each morning, I would choose one randomly, write about it for 5-30 minutes, and let that word be a bellwether for the day.   At the end of the day, I might add one last thought.

Here are my words: green, light, hope, acceptance, ease, stumble, smooth pebble, strong, deep, outside, inside, intuitive, listen, breathe, rest, trust, courage, support, respond, reset, clear, in-tune, resonate, buzz, smile, leap, joy, exhale, inhale, story, bells, quiet.

So far, I’ve had courage, smooth pebble, leap, and deep.  These are my day’s end thoughts for each:

Courage – Doing something new always takes courage.  Even if it’s a simple action with desirable results, it still takes courage.

Smooth pebble – When you stand on a bridge over a river and toss in a handful of worries, some will float and some will sink.

Leap – Frogs, deer, lords, dancers, faith, willingness, jumping in a forward direction.

Deep  – I don’t believe the opposite of deep is shallow.  Perhaps it is fast or dense or noisy.

Who has known you always?  And how many words will you explore until you meet again?

Playing Along – Interview of Rory Samantha Green

Rory Green

Today’s blog post is my first interview on the blog!  My guest is author Rory Green.  Rory and I crossed paths in the ‘blogosphere’ about a year ago and have been happily visiting and commenting on each other’s blogs ever since.  It’s great to find a kindred spirit in cyberspace.   Last autumn, as Rory described her decision to self-publish her novel, ‘Playing Along,’ I knew I wanted to read it.  It was great!  ‘Playing Along’ is a playful yet thought-provoking novel about an over-the-pond romance between Lexi, the American highschool cheerleader who grows into a disillusioned 30-something and George, the English schoolboy who becomes a reluctant indie rock star.  Quirky and soulful, it is peopled with a delightful combination of madcap characters and characters I wanted to be my friends.

After reading it, I asked Rory if I could interview her for my blog.  She most graciously agreed, supplying answers to my many nosy questions. We imagined the interview in a nice café (or possibly at a kitchen table) over tea and a biscuit.  So, get yourself a cuppa and join in! And when you’re done with the interview, jump over to the Amazon kindle store (US link, UK link) and download a free copy of ‘Playing Along’ – free for 48 hours starting 20 March.

Now, for the interview:

 Hi Rory, Thanks so much for being my ‘guinea pig’ interviewee.  First, let me tell you how much I enjoyed ‘Playing Along’:  I loved it -  it was just the pick-me-up I needed to make it through in January in the UK!  Also, reading about it from your blog and knowing a bit about you as a writer made it even more interesting to me.  Can you tell us a little about your process in writing this book? 

‘Playing Along’ was a drawn out process and was written over a number of years. I began by writing it in the background of my life because I was training to be a psychotherapist at the time and I needed a light antidote to the heaviness of the work. I initially wrote the book for my sister, and emailed her instalments! In the middle of writing the book, I moved my family from London to LA! I was so busy and stressed about the move that the book went on hold but after settling in Los Angeles, I turned my attention to the book again and began dedicating days to writing while my kids were at school. I wouldn’t say I actually had many drafts, but I did make multiple changes and edits before publishing.

You’ve shared on your blog about the decision to self-publish ‘Playing Along’.  Now that the book has been out for a few months, how have you found the experience?

Self-publishing is very empowering! I loved the freedom of designing my own cover and deciding my own font and taking my work into my own hands.  Initially I attempted a more traditional route and submitted to publishers via an agent. I had so much positive feedback from editors, but the sales teams were just not on board. At the time my manuscript was submitted, women’s fiction sales were apparently in decline. I’m not sure how factual that really was, but it impacted the sale of ‘Playing Along’. I made the decision to self-publish, because I believed my book had energy and appeal and I really wanted it to have a life outside of me. The hardest part now is getting people to read it and trying to build some momentum – but I have faith that it will happen!

I definitely think people will read it and the momentum will build.  It’s such a vivid and entertaining story.  I agree with the reviewer who was ‘certain this would be adapted into a movie in no time.’  It would make a great film.  Before writing ‘Playing Along,’ what was your experience in the book world?

I had a children’s picture book called ‘Charlie’s Checklist’ published many years ago. It was the story of a dog who puts an ad in the newspaper looking for an owner – sort of like puppy Internet dating! It’s no longer in print but it was a complete thrill seeing my book in shops and I still hear from parents how much their children loved Charlie. I have such a soft spot for children’s literature. I adore the interplay between the image and text and the possibility of the story being read over and over again delights me.

You mentioned that you wrote ‘Playing Along’ as you were training to become a psychotherapist.  Can you tell us about your professional background?

I studied screenwriting at university in America and went on to become a book buyer in a children’s bookstore. When I moved back to London in my early twenties – I began a degree in children’s literature and then went on to write ‘Charlie’s Checklist’. After that experience, I became very blocked creatively and felt so much pressure to be published again, which I found extremely frustrating. I became so curious about the nature of creativity and how it is both fostered and suppressed that I began to study it. My studies led me to a Masters Degree in Integrative Arts Psychotherapy, where I learned how to use all art forms to access and heal the psyche. During my studies I began writing again – for myself, rather than for others, and the process was liberating!

Therapeutically, I have worked with both children and adults.  I have begun facilitating workshops that I call Write To Be You. My workshops embrace the creative process and challenge the inner critic we all harbour within. I passionately believe in the healing powers of writing! I also write a blog to support this passion www.writetobeyou.com

 What have you learned from the workshops?

I feel it really is a privilege to guide people on the Write To Be You journey. Every week I am lucky enough to witness people taking risks, daring to be vulnerable and finding the courage to share their words and stories. It is a very fulfilling job and I am always profoundly impacted by the people who enroll in my workshops. They teach me to remain open and curious and non-judgemental – all crucial qualities in life.

The workshops sound marvellous.  I have a background in teaching secondary English and I found the most delicate part of the endeavour was creating safe spaces for students to write, think, and play.  On the rare occasions we got to that point, it was as if everyone was floating with trust.  Hard to manage and maintain, though!

You and I seem to have found each other on the opposite sides of the looking glass: You were born in the UK, but have spent big sections of your life in the US, where you currently live.  I am a born and bred New Mexican, but have been living in the UK for the past 6.5 years.  George Bernard Shaw is quoted as saying ‘England and America are two countries separated by the same language.’  What do you think of that? 

I was born to a parent from each country so I think I came into the world metaphorically hovering somewhere over the Atlantic! I have lived in both places for years at a time, but still feel that the cultural differences are significant and I always feel a heart tug back to the UK when I am in the States and visa versa! Sometimes I feel so grateful to have two homes filled with people and memories who mean so much to me, but other times it feels incredibly painful and complicated. I purposefully wanted to explore the relationship between London and LA in ‘Playing Along’ because it is such a running theme in my own life.

How does being a non-native living in the US give you a different lens on daily life there?

I am definitely identified as an English person living in LA – I have an English accent, but because I spent many years here as a teenager, I also have an insider’s knowledge. LA is unlike many other parts of America and is uniquely isolated! Sometimes I feel like I am a million miles away from reality living here! But on other days I recognize that it is a city full of possibility. Many people have moved here to pursue a dream or seek out some sort of magic, and if you look carefully and retain your sense of soul and self I think it’s possible. There is a bleak side to LA of course, as there is to all cities, but I try not to focus all my energy on what isn’t working and instead dwell upon what is. I have had such a warm and welcoming response to my workshops here and I’ve attracted wonderfully intelligent, insightful participants who are self-reflective and open to change. Plus – Americans love an English accent – so that helps!

Yes, you’re right about the accent!  My kids have English accents, so they can get away with murder when we visit family in the US.  Is there anything miss about the UK?

Number one on my missing list is family and friends. Number two is the seasons – I hate to say it, but endless days with no distinction in the weather can be disconcerting. I miss tracking the cycle of the trees and the sky. I miss having different clothes for different months. I miss the potential for snow or daffodils. Number three on the list is walking my dog in the park. LA is a police state when it comes to dogs – they are all tightly bound to their owners and not very well socialized, plus there are very few large public spaces. In London, walking my dog on Hampstead Heath and watching her run with the wind in her ears was my idea of bliss!

Well, I’m happy to report that outside my window last week we had BOTH snow and daffodils.

 I find it amazing that we’ve been able to connect over the internet and would probably never have crossed paths in ‘everyday life.’  How has social media influenced you as a writer? A promoter? A person?

I have a love hate relationship with social media! I am a person-to-person junkie so social media scares me sometimes! However, as a self-published author I am dependent on it to help me spread the word. Meeting wonderful, talented, soulful people like you, Melissa, has definitely been one of the benefits. At present I’m desperately trying but failing miserably to get people to like my ‘Playing Along’ FB page! It reminds me too much of being at school and not being accepted by the ‘popular group’! If you are reading this and feeling sorry for me(!) please go and like the page immediately! www.facebook.com/RorySamanthaGreen

Maybe they’ll like the page because they genuinely like it, too, you know.…So, what’s your next writing project?              

I’m writing the sequel to ‘Playing Along’! Everyone asks me what happens to George and Lexi when the book ends. I often hear from readers that they missed them when they finished reading! I missed them too and I am thoroughly enjoying exploring how their journeys continue – together and apart.

Excellent!  I’ll look forward to that, and I hope you have a great adventure finding out the rest of their stories.  

Lastly, what’s the question you hoped I would ask and didn’t?

I didn’t actually anticipate what you would ask me – it’s been a pleasure answering your questions over our imaginary cup of tea! I am incredibly grateful for your support and interest, and as you know, I adore your blog and your writing! You always find a way of touching my heart.

Thanks, Rory!

Reminder – Rory’s novel ‘Playing Along’ is free in the Amazon Kindle store for 48 hours starting from 20 March.  Here’s a link to the UK version, and here’s a link to the US version.   Grab a copy and enjoy!

To be honest

‘To be honest’ is a phrase I rarely heard until we moved to the UK.  Perhaps that’s why it caught my attention and eventually became a pet peeve.  ‘Omit needless words!’ is the style commandment I hold dear from Strunk and White’s Elements of Style .   ‘To be honest’ can usually be jettisoned with that decree in mind.  It is a filler, a mannerism, a waste of half a breath.   On hearing it, I think, ‘Argh!  Why not simply say what you want, instead of padding meaning with an empty phrase?’

But then I started thinking about the phrase.  What does it mean to be honest in conversation?   It occurred to me that a soft spot in my years of teaching was how often I veered away from bald-faced honesty.  In trying to navigate the fast-moving waters of genuine criticism, helpful advice, and encouragement, I may have taken shallower, easier routes around obstacles.  I know I skated over possible disagreements.   I held back, fearing that the white-water rapids of an unqualified opinion would drown my students.

As a result, I think we both lost out.  I underestimated us.   We could have dared deeper exchanges; we might have travelled farther towards understanding.   But I chose not to be honest, and opted instead for vague safety.

About a year ago, I started working on a project with a company called HeyMath!  We are creating resources that will be used to teach physical science in South Africa.   Once the product is released, it will be in many schools, helping hundreds of students.   And once it is seen by all those eyes, we can’t get it back, we can’t make any more refinements.   With time, we’ll learn from the users and make a stronger version based on their experiences.  But the first version needs to be as good as we can imagine with the understanding we have now.

Which means that as a developer, I’ve chosen to be honest.  To be satisfyingly ruthless in sharing my opinions and ideas without disclaimer, filler, apology.  Not without tact, but sans the smokescreen.  Perhaps it’s the tone of respect and collaboration set by the project lead, perhaps it’s everyone’s careful phrasing of and attention to real feedback.   Who knows the precise alchemy of a strong team?  But it works.  The conversations about our material feel like honest assessment, not personal attack, and the quality gets better and better.

I am so excited about this project.   We hope to bring it to classrooms in a few months.  I’ve written 25 short interactive animations about Newtonian dynamics and helped with many others on various topics.  Each animation goes through a rigorous review process by multiple content developers and animators.  Although I may have had the initial idea for an animation, by the time it passes through the creative and critical attentions of 5-6 other passionate minds, it’s always different and greatly improved.  I love being surprised by what my colleagues see that I have missed with the myopia of origination.  There is a wonderful synergy of creativity, innovation, and patient problem-solving.  I have been having a great time. I can’t wait to see how it works in the classroom.

Much of the satisfaction, I’m convinced, is because I have not held back in reactions and feedback.  And, from what I can sense, neither have the others.

To be honest, it’s the best teaching and learning move I’ve made in a long time.

One Foot After The Other – repost

This morning I ran the Cambridge Half Marathon.  I love that distance and it was great to be running through a city that’s become so familiar to me over the past 7 years, a city my children call home.  I had a great run, a good time (I’m not sure if it’s a PR, since I stopped keeping track of these things, but I was pleased – faster than I thought I would be), and really and truly enjoyed every step.  It feels great to be able to run.  I had a small cheering section at mile 11 and afterwards joined them for a ‘Mothering Sunday’ roast dinner for families at my husband’s college.  Such a nice day. 

I thought about reposting this blog entry on Friday in anticipation of the event.  But sometimes I’m a bit superstitious about these things and I wanted to wait until I had actually done the run.  This afternoon, I looked at the post again and realized it was my very first post (beyond the ‘hello world’ pages to clear one’s throat).  It feels like I’ve come miles since that first post.  But the sentiments still ring true.  

3 June 2011

I’ve signed up for a half-marathon.   The last one I did was 3 years ago.  It marked the beginning of a chapter – an episode about teaching a subject I love (physics) in a country where I am a guest (the UK).   In the end, I think I learned more about the unwritten rules of navigating another country’s educational system than my students learned about physics.  I guess not all exchanges can be equal.  But that chapter has ended for now.   My final teaching day was last week.  So, another long run, to mark the end of the chapter.  Or perhaps the beginning of a new one.

I’ve run 5 marathons.  For the first, I counted all the training miles.  I wanted to run from a point where I felt lowest and farthest away from myself to a point I could call home.   At the time, that distance was about 2,000 miles.  It worked.  Running 2,000 miles did bring me closer to home.   During the long runs – somewhere about 10 miles in – I feel like I’ve finally reached my stride, I’ve entered a sacred space.  It’s the training runs more than the race-day that I become addicted to.  Marathons 2,3, and 4 punctuated that addiction.  I loved the deep fatigue, the solitude, the independence and feeling of strength.  And somewhere between marathons 4 and 5, my son arrived.  Motherhood enlarged my world, changed my running.   I stopped counting miles, timing practice runs, keeping a log.  I ran for release, for joy, with the jogging stroller and without, to marvel at the world.  I laced up my shoes and ran through blueberry fields, up big hills, through leafy suburbs, along old train tracks.   When my son was almost two, he and his cousins cheered me on as I ran my 5^th marathon.  After a transatlantic move and the birth of our daughter, finding time to put on my shoes and do up the laces was scarce.  But somehow, I still ran.  Running acquired yet another dimension.  It became a space to redefine myself and my boundaries.  A time to dream a bit while my feet went on their merry way. A brief escape into anonymity.  Perhaps I was slower because I wanted to savour the steps.   And when I returned to teaching, the running gradually slowed, eventually stopped.  I missed it.

And now?  I’ve stepped out of the classroom and I stand at a crossroads. I’m not sure what comes next.  Instead of waking early to prepare a lesson or mark papers, I wake early and put on my shoes.  I slip out into the dawn chorus and head down the street.  Soon I’m on a gravel lane, and then by a river.  Above the sound of my shoes on the stones, I can hear the wind’s chords through the fields and the trees.   Although the day may bloom into summer warmth, the morning is cool and easy.   My legs are happy.  They know this routine, they love this kind of play.   They welcome me back.  Even though it’s 5000 miles to the point I first ran towards and I’m headed in the opposite direction, I’m running towards home.

February Post

February is about to slip off the calendar and I haven’t written any posts here this month.

What have I been doing?  Aside from work and teaching and family?

I’ve been running a lot. I’m preparing for the Cambridge Half Marathon on the 10^th of March.  I like it when my long training runs get up to about 10 miles and more.  It’s a good distance and amount of time to be in a moving solitude, sorting through the days.  I usually do the long run on Sunday morning as a way to end and begin the week.  Though it’s been a cold winter, spring is steadily arriving – admittedly one step forward, two steps back sometimes – and I see the changes in the landscape. (I’m also fundraising for Cancer Research UK with this run.   If you’d like to sponsor me and support their mission, please consider donating here)

Oh, and we have two new family members.  This is Pandora.

Pandora

She lives up to her name nicely, getting into the bathtub, falling into the toilet, climbing up the bunk beds, taking her bell and collar off.  As the expression around here goes, she’s full of beans.

This is Zelda.  She’s Pandora’s sister.  She lies around looking lovely.  Let’s hope she’s better for my writing than the other Zelda was for F. Scott Fitzgerald’s!

Zelda

They are both pleasingly black.  Not a spot of white anywhere on them.

And I’ve been reading – David Whyte’s, The Three Marriages.  Wonderfully written and very thought-provoking.  I’d recommend it.  And I just picked up a collection of Nadine Gordimer’s  short stories, Beethoven Was One-Sixteenth Black.  Wow.  Stunning.

Although I haven’t been posting on the blog, I’ve been writing.  I looked through my journal and I have about 120 A5 pages of writing from February.   What do I fill these pages with?  Sometimes questions that struggle across the page, inarticulate and clumsy, left unanswered.  Sometimes I’m trying to organize my time.  Occasionally I’ll follow a writing prompt from a book.  Frequently, I sit down with the only directive being Natalie Goldberg’s ‘keep the pen moving’ and I see how far I travel in thirty minutes.  I’m always surprised where I end up.

What, then, is the work of writing for me?  Is it a form of meditation, played to a soundtrack of jazz in moments of solitude?  An hour of escape on a weekend afternoon?  An easier descent into sleep?  An exploration of that liminal land between waking and dreams?  I don’t know.  It changes.

Much of my writing lately has been a voyage inward.  It’s the practice of paper.  The main purpose, the bones of it, is to write.   I go a bit cross-eyed trying to think of audience or product at the moment.  An essay, a poem, a story – these might grow from the compost of words I am creating and turning these days.   I am scattering seeds and improving the soil of my garden.  Writing inwards to dig up old roots, separate clumps of bulbs that are too close to each other to breathe and grow, clearing last year’s dried leaves and stalks.

I read a quotation recently that was something like ‘writers are the only artists who must generate their raw material before shaping it.’  This is a season of creating raw material.   So, I’m not really writing pieces with a beginning, middle and end. Or bothering much about development, meaning or even general coherence.  I’m simply showing up at the page because it’s a guaranteed doorway into the unexpected.

Flowers will bloom later – they always do.