Consider the hands
that write this letter.
Left palm pressed flat against paper,
as we have done before, over my heart…
from “Consider the Hands that Write this Letter,” by Aracelis Girmay
Tag Archives: WriOursWhoMo
the patient work of the garden
the responsibility of the writer to say yes
Monday was our first meeting of this spring’s Write Whole: Survivors Write group. For the second of our writes that night, I offered a series of three sentences/fragments — the idea is to choose one (or let one choose you), and let your writing flow in response. Here were the prompts:
When was the last time I told my story?
It is the responsibility of the writer to…
I don’t want to write about…
I used the second of those for my own writing; that fragment was inspired by Grace Paley’s poem “Responsibility.” Here’s what I wrote:
These days I take what comes and do not push in
These Days
whatever you have to say, leave
the roots on, let them
dangle
And the dirt
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Tagged morning write, radical self care!, trauma aftermath, WriOursWhoMo
good morning to this skin and these muscles
(I am not a fast runner)
Outside, the city is still quiet at this pre-five-o’clock hour. The wind haggles all the trees, tossing them around, telling them dangerous stories. Yesterday when my sweetheart and I were out for a mid-morning run, we looked at the bruised-cloud sky and said, doesn’t it seem like rain? But, of course, it’s California — we all know it doesn’t rain in springtime. Oh, wait. Surprise.
that our living is not guaranteed?
dreams and driving and springtime
We are far too busy
to be starkly simple in passion.
We will never dream the intense
wet spring lust of the toads.
– from “Toad dreams,” by Marge Piercy
In my dream, I am preparing for a workshop in an unfamiliar space — I’d been planning to move the group to another place, my office or something, but then I woke up from a nap and the group was meant to begin in under an hour, so I had no choice but to set up where I was — and anyway, that’s where the people were coming to; I’d never mentioned to anyway that I might move to another location; how would they know where to find the group if I moved? So I clean up, set up snacks, and put the poems and other handouts down on the writer’s chairs. Then I go downstairs to wait for folks to arrive — down into a warehouse space, filled with boxes. It’s a small group, only four or five people. One man arrives, and he says he’s changed his mind, thanks anyway, but he doesn’t think he’ll be joining the group. Someone else hears him and tags along out of the warehouse back into the night. I wonder if I’ll have enough people to write with, whether I’ll have to cancel the group after all.
The next Write Whole series begins this evening — I’m not surprised that I’m having this sort of anxiety dream. These are the concerns of facilitators: do we have the space set up right? Are folks going to join us? Will what we offer be enough to keep people in the room?
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Tagged NPM14, remembering, SAAM, workshop write, WriOursWhoMo
being without a soundtrack
Good morning, good morning. It’s a Saturday and I let myself rise without an alarm. In my dreams — I can’t remember my dreams, actually. Maybe they will come back as I write. My hands are dry and rough from gardening last night, and my body is a good kind of sore, the sort of sore that says I’ve been working in it. Yesterday I found pea and clover sprouts when I went down to water the garden — and the zucchini’s already putting out flowers — things are happening down in that good dark. I dug up a patch of hard-packed yard out in front of the house, added some planting soil to the clods that I broke up by hand, and then planted poppies, zinnia, and the native gardenia that I got from my friend Alex and have moved now three or four times. I clipped some pieces of salvia, lavender, and mint from the backyard and have put them in jars in the kitchen window to see if they will sprout. Once they’re ready, I’ll add them to this little garden coming together out front.
When I fell asleep last night, the house smelled of actually-sour sourdough bread — I made a couple of whole-wheat oat loaves yesterday, and though they didn’t rise as much as the white-flour loaves have (and are still nothing close to the chewy, holey sourdough that I get in restaurants or from the market), they have a tight crumb and taste fantastic. I will admit that when I opened the oven door to peek at them toward the end of the baking time, my heart fell — they looked like the sad, dense (and inedible) loaves I always got when I tried to bake sourdough in Maine. But these turned out to be actually tasty — they just weren’t terribly fluffy. I guess that’s not surprising with whole wheat.
So there’s the garden and bread update.
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Tagged coping mechanisms, listening to the body, NPM14, radical self acceptance, SAAM, WriOursWhoMo
what poetry I need today
as far as I remember, changed
in no detail, the moment
vivid, intact, having never been
exposed to light, so that I woke elated, at my age
hungry for life, utterly confident—
– from “Vita Nova,” Louise Glück
“What matters in life is not what happens to you but what you remember and how you remember it.”
― Gabriel García Márquez
The puppy is in her sleeping place and I am in my morning room. The passion flower vine bursts open with a new face every daybreak. This morning I have thin decaf and an achy body that wants to move. This morning I am ready to go dancing. This morning I am ready to give everything up. It is late — the sun is already well up over the hills. The sourdough starter bubbles on the countertop, the birds push their morning songs into the traffic-clotted air. I am a tangle of nerve endings and possibility. Something inside me is ready to jump. I put dry fingers to the keyboard, then pull them away. The pen sits idly on the blank paper, ready for me to try another way. What majesty do we have to offer into the world? What sunlight can issue forth from us that can compare to the sharp dazzle of the hummingbird’s rubythroat flashing alongside the green knives of the firecracker lily? How can poetry find you if you’re not interested in sitting down? Give me a poetry with musculature, with tendon and bone. Give me a poetry that moves, a poetry that crowds itself all the way off the page. Give me a poetry willing to run alongside me, willing to catch up, willing to take my hand and pull me on when I’m tired, give me a poetry that can keep up. Give me a poetry that wants leaps in in the air, fissures morning, tears all the assumptions asunder. Give me a poetry that haggles the bees, that tempts the mockingbirds, that horns in on shame, that will whisper louder than the voices of loss clotting my eardrums. Give me a poetry that drapes itself about my shoulders, that pushes itself through my earlobes and elbows, that wants all of my attention. Give me a poetry that won’t be ignored. Give me a poetry that stands up on the table, kicks over the glasses of tea, steps in the butter and avocado with its dirty workboots, and takes all of our breath away. Give me a poetry that’s rude and demanding. Give me a poetry that breaks things, breaks in, sidles and insists, claims, orates, and relinquishes. Give me a poetry for today. Continue reading
the gift of a quiet morning
I am outside on a back deck in Oakland, listening to the morning sounds: the suctiony bark of the crow, the meandering and variegated warble of the mockingbird, the the tidal rush of traffic from the highway a few blocks away, the barking dogs, the gas-powered lawn trimmers and leaf blowers — the kids are on spring break this week, so the schoolyard is quiet: no bells to announce when to pass to the next period, no shouts and screams, no corrugated rise and fall counting through sets of exercises. The sun is warm, the breeze cool, the construction finished on the road out front of the house, and I have a little green tea in a “women unlimited” mug, a slice of sourdough banana bread, and an hour before my first appointment. I stayed up late working on an editing project for WritersCorps, and so slept in, am only just getting to the writing now when the sun is more than a quarter of the way through her day’s arc — I dreamed through all the good fertile dark time.
The first thing I did this morning was to walk through my little garden in my pajamas and my bare feet. What a deep pleasure this is, to have dirt on the toes while still wiping the remnants of dreams from my eyes. I watered a little bit, checked in on all the flowers, patched up a watermelon mound that the puppy had clomped through, and ensured that none of the bush bean seeds were trying to escape from their little hillocks. The puppy fled to the porch so as to avoid getting sprayed by the hose, and from there surveyed her dew-damp kingdom, ensuring that all was well. As I watered, I was draped with the scents of alyssum, blowsy rose, and nasturtium — the jasmine was quiet this morning. I pulled some snails off my nasturtium and strawberries: the snails and I are going to be enemies. Sometimes it’s good to have an enemy you can see, and lift up in one hand, and toss into the compost bin.
What a gift, to have a quiet morning, to let the body rise when it’s ready, to let the words come as they rise, to sit in the middle of this thing that is life and understand that I am not outside of anything — I am welcome.
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Tagged garden, morning write, WriOursWhoMo
femmelove: you can only carry yourself with your own fierce grace
One day, you will awake from your covering
and that heart of yours will be totally mended,
and there will be no more burning within.
The owl, calling in the setting of the sun
and the deer path, all erased.
– from “One Day,” by Patricia Jabbeh Wesley
Good morning good morning. I’ve been up since 4, seeing my sweetheart and her boy off on an adventure. The song sparrows found the sun long before the light crested the edges of the hills. I woke up tender this morning, struggling with old resentments, struggling with how long it can take to release myself from blame, shame, and guilt, struggling with how easy it is for me to get called back into shaming myself for old ways of being, for not growing or healing faster than I could.
I got a communication from my ex last night and it’s got my hackles all up. Never mind that it’s a straightforward question, nothing overtly hostile or shitty. He never was overtly hostile or shitty — just passive aggressive and ostensibly clueless. We rarely communicate because he asked that we have no contact, and then proceeds to contact me whenever he feels he needs to. So it is that I continue to erupt with feeling whenever I see his name in my inbox or on my text messages: old resentment, directed toward him, sure, but more directed toward me and the self I was when we got together, the self I was throughout most of our relationship. I want to have done things differently from the beginning. I want not to have needed as much time as I needed in order to finally stand up for myself and walk away.
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Tagged anger, femmeluv, letting it come, old love, radical self acceptance, WriOursWhoMo
A life that has new languages in it
the swallowed grain
takes you through the dreams
of another night,
the deer meat becomes hands
strong enough to work.
– from “Inside,” by Linda Hogan
Outside the birds are already waking up, even though the sun isn’t up yet. My body is sore from a weekend working in the garden — we got ourselves connected and grounded and rooted over these long, warm days.
Write in the notebook, take care of the dog, get the day’s bread ready, work in the garden, be with the child. How is this not the work we’re supposed to be doing? All the rest is about making money to pay rent. All the rest is about living under capitalism.
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Tagged bread, garden, hands, long-term survival, radical self acceptance, WriOursWhoMo