New Moon

It's just past 11:11 pm and the balsamic moon has just shifted into the new.

I usually feel a palpable shift in the energy when the moon shifts phase. Right now I'm feeling relief from a heaviness that has been building for weeks. I'm feeling light and contented. Three good things happened today. They stand out in my thoughts as I'm reviewing the day. 

The Great Summer Writing Retreat continues. One hundred days of writing unedited ideas and following a prompt to its sometimes illogical conclusion.

Almost

I'm tired of waiting.

The painted cabinet sits on the drop cloth on the wood floors of my bedroom. It feels dry to me. But it has to sit. And I have to wait. At least that's what experienced painters have told me. Not only does it need to dry, it needs to cure. To develop what painting experts call a "hard dry." 

That means that when I set something on it, the cabinet will be able to hold it and that the paint job won't collapse under the weight of whatever I put on it. While researching it, I learned that it takes 21-30 days to cure. And day after day, I walk into my bedroom and look at the drop cloth and the unused cabinet and the painting detritus and I feel frustrated. 

So today I spent a little time getting ready. It was something to do. 

I pulled out the old night table and re-purposed it to another part of my home. I vacuumed the floor and the baseboards. I took all the stuff that had accumulated in that corner and organized it and put it away. I notice that it and other places around my house can end up being collection points for clutter and stagnant energy. And before I go to bed, I'm going to move the cabinet in place. There are still two weeks I can't use it, but at least it won't be sitting in the middle of the room, a constant reminder that I must wait.

Waiting can be a powerful spiritual practice, but it can also lead to feelings of stagnation. 

If you can't do what you want to do, do something. The next, best, right thing.  

The Great Summer Writing Retreat of 2018 continues. One hundred days of writing unedited ideas and following a prompt to its sometimes illogical conclusion.

So Many Things

I've been looking at what I was writing last year for the 100-day summer writing project and what I'm writing this year. As I compare them, it strikes me that I need to step back from judgment. Last year I was writing deep and full pieces, and this year I'm doing all I can to show up and write a few good sentences.

There are things to notice, especially around what else has been going on and how my rhythms take shape. How many projects I'm working on -- for example, this summer I'm in the end stage of my poetry book. Truth be told, I was last summer as well. But last summer all the projects were on hold by the publisher because of a merger. This summer everything is active. I'm also working on a short fiction project. All told, I've got seven projects going. They are all juicy and alive for me. And as I think about myself, I imagine myself as a jongleur, moving between roles with deft elegance.

Itinerant entertainers of the Middle Ages in France and Norman England, the repertoire of the jongleurs included dancing, conjuring, acrobatics, juggling, singing and storytelling. Some were skilled at playing musical instruments. Some composed their own material. Many collaborated with troubadours. They had incredible reach. Performing at public holidays in market towns, in abbeys, in the castles of nobles. They held competitions for lyric poets. They sometimes morphed into menestrels (minstrels) if retained by a wealthy patron and focused on literary creation. The role of the jongleur reached its height in the 13th century and began its decline in the 14th, as the various facets of this complex role began to disseminate among other performers who began to specialize. 

Specialization. Single focus. I know these things can be important at times, but I think we lose something if we don't develop our multiplicity of talents. Over a lifetime, we can certainly develop many interests and talents and become quite good at them. I think about my young years when I think about this tendency toward being a multiverse rather than a universe. My favorite badge when I was a girl scout, the first one I earned, was The Dabbler. I was interested in so many things and loved to do so many things. I still do.

My mother tells a story of my earliest years when I was a tiny girl with very early language skills. The way mom tells it is this. Bursting with energy in the morning I would say, "What can we do today, Mommy?"   And she would say, "Well...we can do this and we can do that and we can do this other thing..." She'd start naming things and I would prompt her when she slowed down, "What else, Mommy? What else can we do?" She'd keep going until, finally, I would say, "We can do so many things!" And I'd get so excited about about all the possibilities before us.

That's still my orientation. 

The Great Summer Writing Retreat of 2019 continues. One hundred days of writing unedited ideas and following a prompt to its sometimes illogical conclusion.

The Edge of Seventeen

I sat on the deck by my friend’s swimming pool this evening in Ocean, New Jersey. A familiar tune came on the radio, the introduction to Bruce Springsteen’s “Thunder Road.”

I could have been 17 again.

The Grest Summer Writing Retreat of 2019 continues. One hundred days of writing unedited ideas and following a prompt to its sometimes illogical conclusion.

Back Into the World of Reason and Mystery

PBS is on in the background tonight. Much better. A similar subject to last evening's Ancient Aliens but much easier to listen to and take in. Ancient Skies explores the relationship between humankind and the skies.  The sun and the moon and the stars, seasons and cycles -- all those things I find so interesting and mysterious. And I'm loving how they're talking about it. A gorgeous blend of science and mystery. Like life is. 

It's nice to have my feet back on the earth, even while exploring the mysteries of the universe and our relationship with it.

The Great Summer Writing retreat continues. One hundred days of writing unedited ideas and following a prompt to its sometimes illogical conclusion.

Friday Night Thriller: The Return of the Reptile People

I miss the one-fingered-typing-on-the-cell phone writing. Of course, I could have pulled out my phone and continued with that practice. But it seems a little silly once I'm back home and have electricity again, storm and power loss in the rear-view mirror. 

Ancient Aliens is on in the background tonight. I thought I'd been half-listening to a show on the human brain. The reptile brain was being discussed. Suddenly, the script changed and experts began to discuss a theory that posits that our reptile brain is the result of reptilian aliens who came to Earth in the distant past and manipulated the DNA of ancient hominids. We are the result.

The show, actually, is interesting. Great views of beautiful and wondrous sites. A lot of discussion around archaeology and artifacts. I'm not convinced by their interpretations; much of it is a huge stretch. But the discussion is interesting and entertaining. If I were a cynic, I'd wonder how the scientists and scholars featured can say what they do with a straight face.

"Is it possible that a race of reptilian aliens still lives deep within the Earth and, if so, why don't they make their presence known?" This cliffhanger entices us to return after the commercials. They tease a biblical connection, and sightings, so I'm curious.  

My mind wanders into a memory of Friday nights in college, when we'd watch the late night horror thriller on the local station and order a Domino's pizza. Pepperoni and green pepper. There was an actor in costume introducing the movie each week. The plot was often reptile people coming to Earth for some kind of misadventure. 

The late show I'm watching this Friday night puts forward the idea that the reptile people have returned and are living among us. They've infiltrated human society to determine the course of human events and to create an advanced human through further experimentation. The late show has come off the screen and into our lives, they tell us. And I wonder if I will be visited by aliens in my dreams tonight.  

The Great Summer Writing Retreat of 2019 continues. One hundred days of writing unedited ideas and following a prompt to its sometimes illogical conclusion. 

Note - Some days the conclusions are more illogical than on others.

Home

The drive back was mercifully uneventful. And fast. Not like the drive down, with the constant and persistent lane closings for road work that doubled the length of the trip. It’s quiet here. Arriving just before midnight to a sleepy street and still energy in the house, I notice my footfalls on wood floors and the texture of the grass rug and the cool refreshment of water from the fridge.

I think about the home I’ve left and the place I’ve come home to and the home that resides only within me. I know where I live.

The Great Summer Writing Retreat of 2019 continues. One hundred days of writing unedited ideas and following a prompt to its sometimes illogical conclusion.

Continuing to type one-fingered on my cell phone. A whole different sort of discipline.

Surrender

There are days when you just have to say, “Okay. Here I am.”  And simply be available for what shows up. Today is one of those days.

The Great Summer Writing Retreat continues. One hundred days of writing unedited ideas and following a prompt to its sometimes illogical conclusion.


Note: whether for power outage or travel, I’m writing these days with one finger and a cell phone, and showing up nonetheless.

Just a Thought

Twenty-seven hours of power outage and a two hour and eight minute drive to go eighteen miles. Makes me wonder if someone is trying to tell me to slow down and be still.

What’s the lesson in delay?

The Great Summer Writing Retreat of 2019 continues. One hundred days of writing unedited ideas and following a prompt to its sometimes illogical conclusion.

Hello Storm — Good-Bye Electricity

There’s a symphony of chainsaws and generators out there. They follow a prologue of howling winds that brought the trees down before a drop of rain fell. Thunder and lightning so close, I thought it might strike inside. 

The sun behind the clouds has gone down and it is suddenly dark. And sweltering from the heatwave that clothes my neighborhood even now.

The Great Summer Writing Retreat continues. One hundred days of writing unedited ideas and following a prompt to its sometimes illogical conclusion.


Note - writing again with one finger and a mobile phone. 

Crouching Tiger

I use a font called Trebuchet for this writing.

Just for fun, I asked my search engine to define it and was stunned by what I discovered. A trebuchet is a catapult used to fire projectiles, probably rocks and boulders, favored in medieval siege warfare until the advent of gunpowder, when I suppose canon began to be the preferred projectile thrower.

A catapult used to hurl projectiles toward a fortress to break down the walls. 

There is some humor in this late night exploration of fonts. 

The Great Summer Writing Retreat of 2019 continues. One hundred days of writing unedited ideas and following a prompt to its sometimes illogical conclusion.


Note - The Crouching Tiger is a Chinese design. Pictured, a 15th century depiction of a counterweight trebuchet. 



   

Rear Window

Late at night I'm washing dishes and I turn to see the moon rising out my kitchen window. A beautiful waning gibbous moon, glowing golden in the night sky.

She took my breath away.

The Great Summer Writing Retreat of 2019 continues. One hundred days of writing unedited ideas and following a prompt to its sometimes illogical conclusion.

Holding Up the Sky

I've taken a week off work to work on a writing project. And my body has said, "No. Nope. No way." I had this big list of things I'd like to do around the house also. And my body has said, "Forget it, sister. You're done." 

I have been laying the occasional coat of paint on the cabinet. Yes, that's still in process. My contact at the publishing company is away until Tuesday, so there's no progress on the book. And my notebook with 120 pages of handwritten short fiction languishes in the book rack on my kitchen table, fourteen thousand (and some) words typed and at least that many to go. Then the story to construct around it. 

But my body tells me it craves rest and nourishment. 

I've been off for two days so far and my mind roils around missed opportunity. I tell myself I need to surrender to what I need to do for myself. The heatwave swells all around me and encourages a slower rhythm. I've tucked in to the stack of books next to my bed and have read a paragraph or two here or there. I notice that I am slowing down and my mind begins to rest. Have I forgotten how to slow down enough to give myself an entire day of Sabbath? I notice I've been driving myself too hard at work for far too long, carrying too much. 

Holding up the sky. 

Atlas is a Titan in Greek mythology whose name is derived from a root word that means "most enduring." I think about him when I get myself into these work marathons and I'm not getting enough rest. Atlas was doomed to hold up the sky following a power struggle between the Titans and the Olympians. I sometimes have my own power struggle between the titanic and the god-like. I am neither and when I pretend toward either extreme, I find myself holding up the sky and buckling under its weight.  

One day, the hero Perseus happened upon Atlas and asked for hospitality. Atlas, who had been once tricked by a hero, feared being tricked again and refused. Perseus pulled the severed head of Medusa out of his bag and showed it to Atlas, who turned to stone and became the mountain range which, even today, carries his name. It seems he's still holding up the sky. 

The Great Summer Writing Retreat of 2019 continues. One hundred days of writing unedited ideas and following a prompt to its sometimes illogical conclusion. 

Joy Comes With the Morning, Again

The fragrance of plums and nectarines hangs heavy in my kitchen this morning. It brings me to joy. 

Joy was hanging heavily in my thoughts last night as I went to bed. I wrote late, after a long day and evening at work, and my prompt, which began with noticing slight improvements in medium-sized frustrations, carried me into remembering joy. It's one of the lovely surprises in following a prompt to its sometimes illogical conclusion. 

I went to bed with joy and woke with joy and remembered last year's writing about joy and am reminded that joy is choice. A perspective. We see what we expect to see. There's been a lot of research into that lately. I think of Pam Grout's little book E-Squared. I read it at a time in my life when everything was falling apart. Every day I expected to wake to more bad news, to more losses, to more things to grieve. The little experiments in her book helped me to shift my perceptions, to shift how I see. They may be little, but they are fierce in their teachings. 

And I still see gold cars every time I go out. 

They make me smile.

We're in a heat wave these days in southeastern Pennsylvania. My bowl of nectarines and plums has been sitting on the counter for a couple of days while the fruit ripens. With the urging of sweltering air, the nectarines were tipped at the edge of fermentation this morning. So I cut away the spoiled bits and cut the rest into a bowl and instead of eating them one-by-one over days I'm going to have to eat them as a feast. That's how joy works. Out of what first appears to be difficulty, challenge, sorrow, or desperation, something shifts, and what was hard becomes suddenly wondrous and juicy and sweet. Light instead of dark. Vitalizing instead of draining or dispiriting. 

As I put the bowl of freshly cut nectarines in my fridge I notice an abundance of fresh produce I've collected as the week has gone on. Corn on the cob in the husk. Asparagus standing tall in a small jar of water. Half a cantaloupe turned upside down on a plate.  Half an avocado dressed in its unused piece of skin. Brilliantly hued red pepper and orange carrots. Lemons, limes, a pear. My creative mind begins to play with ideas of good food to eat. I shift my gaze to the bowl on the kitchen cart - organic sweet potatoes from the farmer's market, new potatoes, sweet onions, garlic. I am surrounded by goodness and nourishing things. 

Joy comes with the morning, again.

The Great Summer Writing Retreat of 2019 continues. One hundred days of writing unedited ideas and following a prompt to its sometimes illogical conclusion.

Photo by Dan Cain. 

The story: Two images greeted me when I signed in to Facebook this morning. One, of the North Carolina rally and the president leading a crowd in hate speech and the other, this gorgeous image of a hummingbird in the desert taken by Dan Cain, an brilliant photographer who lives in Borrego Springs, CA and hikes the back country capturing extraordinary images. He finds them in his garden as well, which is where I think I read this image was captured. In the morning. We're inundated with images and stories every day - which ones will we take into our day and allow to shape us?  I'll take this one any day over the other and I feel fortunate to understand I have the choice.  

I see the embodiment of fierce joy in this image. In ancient indigenous Central American cultures, hummingbird is the heart warrior. Cultivating joy is heart warrior work, so I'll allow this image to inspire me to spend the day taking in the nectar and chasing away those beings and things that would prey on my joy. 

Tiny Treasures

The cabinet is looking better. More time. More coats of paint. 

Patience. Persistence. Effort.

And a day away from it. That was probably the best thing.

Sometimes a little space opens the way to a more positive perspective. I've got a couple of things going on this week that require my patience, persistence, effort, and a shift in perspective. 

The poetry book. 

The print proof arrived in the mail last week. The book is beautiful. And the table of contents is the wrong font size. It's disharmonious. Not going to work. So what does it mean? Another long delay while it is corrected. Extra cost. Mine, even though the mistake was not. Mine. It took me a couple of days to get my head around that. Extra cost and another delay.  

I was watering plants and discovered buds on my African violet plant. A gift from my daughter. The African violet I gave her as a house warming gift for her first apartment gifted her with an unexpected second plant which my daughter transplanted into another pot. She gave it to me as a gift. I feel such joy every time it blossoms. Those tiny purple buds form and appear suddenly. It's like discovering tiny treasures when it happens. And they are. Tiny treasures. My perspective shifts. Joy emerges, regardless of whatever else is going on.  

The Great Summer Writing Retreat of 2019 continues. One hundred days of writing unedited ideas and following a prompt to its sometimes illogical conclusion.

Can't It Just Be a Simple Paint Job?

Right now I'm asking myself why I decided to paint this cabinet. It probably would have been better to have put it on eBay and bought something new. What was I thinking? Why all that work to remake something?

That's a great question.

If I let myself keep going down that thought path, I'd have a lot of "what was I thinking" questions for myself. "Why publish a poetry book?" "Why take on 100 days of daily writing again?" "Why work on a collection of short stories?" 

Why don't I just get an easy job and craft an easy life? Pick up a few easy hobbies and go to the beach?

Is there really such a thing as an easy life?

I don't think there is. I think it just might be a fantasy to help get us through times like this.

The cabinet sits open on a plastic drop cloth in my bedroom. It looks terrible. Different parts painted with the first or second coat of white. The old color is bleeding through. This piece of furniture has so many interior corners I wonder if I will ever be able to get it to look good. I begin to wonder if I should have left the interior shelves behind the glass-paned doors the original color and just painted the outside. I look at it and just know it's going to take more than parts of the three days I thought it might. It might even take weeks. 

Weeks is a long time to paint a piece of furniture.

My personality is to keep things light and simple. I can do complex, but I don't like it. 

Could painting this cabinet be some kind of quest?

I'd prefer it to be just a paint job, but I know that things like this can also be metaphors for bigger things in my life. 

The Great Summer Writing Retreat of 2019 continues. One hundred days of writing unedited ideas and following a prompt to its sometimes illogical conclusion.

Painting, Punting, Progressing

Exhale.

It's been one of those days. I talked to a few other people who report similar experiences -- the need to exhale and allow their bodies to relax, for oxygen to rush to the brain and to step back and rethink some things.

Talked to my publishing company about their production team's mistake with my table of contents. I could detail all the woes but it's the outcome, ultimately, that matters. I'll need to pay for it to be corrected and there's likely another several weeks to wait before receiving another print proof. When they get the table of contents fixed and not make any new errors, the book will be good to go.

My contact said to me, "Isn't it good enough? Do you really need to have these changes for one point size? You need to think about this."

I thought about it for a few breaths, and then when we got off the phone I thought about it some more. 

No. It's not good enough. It's disharmonious with the rest of the book and, if I were to let it go to press like this, every time I looked at it I would feel angry and disappointed. I've worked too hard and my work is worth being offered beautifully and harmoniously. 

So, yes. I really have to have this change for a single point size. It matters.

When we were on the phone I asked her if she'd seen the printed version. "No, I've only seen it on the screen," she said. So, she doesn't understand. But I do. 

It feels like punting, but I've made peace with it. I'll pore over the book again this evening to note anything else that might need to be adjusted. I'll see it as an opportunity and take full advantage of it. I'd noticed a couple of stylistic things in the proof that I'd missed. things that no one else would notice. Nothing to delay publication over, but as long as we're correcting the proof, we'll take care of those things too. 

To take my mind off all this, I got back to my painting project. The first part is done and in a few hours I'll lay down the second coat. It will dry over night before I turn it over and paint the top and main body of the cabinet. I've had to be strategic about this painting project. And I notice the same tendency to put in extra effort to get it just right. It's going into my home after all. It's worth my effort to create beauty and harmony there as well.

Getting lost in the painting helped me to regain my equilibrium and open to empathy. I don't envy my contact at the publishing company. She's between a rock and a hard place. Between authors who want excellent outcomes and her colleagues who want to save on costs. If they'd checked their work the first time around, we wouldn't be here now, so I'll insist on that going forward. And I'll be much more careful about what they've given me and not assume that they have the same level of impeccability around their work as I do. That sounds harsh, but experience has taught me that it's the case.

I look up and notice the sky just after sunset, streaked with pink that is deepening so beautifully I have to stop typing and simply watch. There's a peach tart cooling on the stove top. I've made it in the rustic French galette style. The kitchen is fragrant and all my senses are firing. 

The Great Summer Writing Retreat of 2019 continues. One hundred days of writing unedited ideas and following a prompt to its sometimes illogical conclusion.

  

Painter's Tape and Crosby, Stills & Nash

I'm burning the midnight oil with an engrossing project.

I've got a cabinet that's been in my bathroom because I haven't known what to do with it. After you get divorced, there's an impulse to buy all new furniture and start over. But, unless you're wealthy, that's not very practical. So you do what you can do. I've got a mix of things. I'm slowly working through them, deciding what to keep and what to give away. Picking up some new things. A few years ago I repainted my dressers. Gave them a complete makeover. I didn't want to get rid of them because my grandfather made them and I like them, but they were in our bedroom throughout so they needed to be remade. I painted them white and bought new drawer pulls. They really look great, like they are a new creation. I'm hoping for the same results with the cabinet.

I've had it for years. It was my bedside table, a gift from my then-husband. I really love it, but it makes me sad to look at it. So something needs to change. I've been using a table I like for the last few years, but it's completely unsuitable. Not enough storage for books and doesn't match anything else in the bedroom. 

The thing is, it's a pretty complex piece to revamp. There's a drawer and glass doors. The hardware doesn't come off. The feet are an interesting shape and look challenging to paint. I'm sure I can do it, but it's going to take some work, some thought, a bit of strategy, and lots of patience. It's also going to take some time. Tonight I'm taping the glass. It's exacting work because there are six panes edged in wood and I don't want to have to scrape the glass after I'm done. So I'm sitting on a stool, with the cabinet tipped back on a laundry basket so I have a good angle, taping the glass. I've had to lift and re-tape a few times and have had to go over a few spots where my line has not been exact.

It's funny. I can be impulsive about these things. I think to myself, "No problem. I can do this." I go out and buy paint and other supplies and then I get home and really look at the cabinet and realize that the project is a bit more complex than I'd expected. For example, the shelves inside the glass doors are also going to need to be painted. So the work will happen in layers. The inside of the drawer probably needs to be painted also. And before I paint anything else, I'll have to flip it over and do the feet. That will save me a lot of aggravation in the long run.

It's a great metaphor for other things. Like remaking your life after divorce. 

And it needs to get done, so you put on Crosby, Stills & Nash and get to work. 

The Great Summer Writing Retreat of 2019 continues. One hundred days of writing unedited ideas and following a prompt to its sometimes illogical conclusion.

Facets of the Same Jewel

I was video-chatting with a friend today. Suddenly, she lit up with the loveliest laughter. And a smile that went all the way to her eyes. 

I asked her what she was finding so delightful.

You're starting to dream again, she said.

The Great Summer Writing Retreat of 2019 continues. One hundred days of writing unedited ideas and following a prompt to its sometimes illogical conclusion.

Opening to Rebirth

I notice the patterns and habits that might be difficult to break. There's almost a programming energy to how they manifest. I feel my way naturally into certain patterns and have to work hard to do something else. Like water directed in its flow in a creek bed, my patterns flow without thought. Worn into the ground of my being over time, they flow through and shape my inner landscape and determine what can grow there. They flow beyond and shape the outer landscape of my life. Storms may arise and floods may overwhelm them and begin to change the ways I flow. Or I may need to dig new pathways. 

Either way, the ecosystem is disturbed. But what new living and growing things become possible because of it?

The Great Summer Writing Retreat of 2019 continues. One hundred days of writing unedited ideas and following a prompt to its sometimes illogical conclusion.

Resurgence

It seems I've bitten off more than I can chew. Cultivating resurrection is a lot harder than cultivating joy is. Most likely the reason for this is that resurrection is a gift of grace, well beyond my abilities. So I stepped back and looked at the other words on the list. Rebirth, like resurrection, is something to allow rather than something to cultivate. Revival, regeneration, rejuvenation, renewal, resurgence, revitalization, renaissance -- now those can be cultivated. 

I started with sleep, good food, hydration, and minimizing stress. For a day. I spent time doing things I love. I did work that feels meaningful to me. I encountered a few frustrations and took them in stride.

As I think about it now, it really hasn't been a day unlike most others. The main difference was how I approached it, the way I framed it, how I created the container for the day. 

The Great Summer Writing Retreat of 2019 continues. One hundred days of writing unedited ideas and following a prompt to its sometimes illogical conclusion.

Through the Looking Glass

I've been curious about what I was writing about last year at this time in the 100 day writing project. I'm feeling a little meh today. Probably because it was a long day at work, after a long and intense week at work. It's late at night. I'm in the last hour of the day and am pushing this writing to its edge, deadline-wise. So I decided to look up what I was writing about at this point in the project last year.

Joy.

And jackhammers.

Last year there was a water project on my street. The borough was replacing all the water pipes, so it was quite noisy and they seemed to like to start jack hammering just as I started to write every morning. Glad I'm not contending with that this year. The loudest thing in my neighborhood these days is either power tools or bird song. I probably don't have to tell you which one I prefer.

The odd thing for me was that I took a week to write about joy. 

I simply decided. And cultivated it. It was not that difficult, to tell the truth, and I could tell simply by reading the beginning of one of these writings that I was completely into it. I'd decided that joy was the right response to emerging from the wilderness. And today is Day 40 again. Forty days. A wilderness journey. It's really felt like it this year. 

That darn book.

But tomorrow and the next day and the next I have very little scheduled, so I can give those days to myself. Three days. Another archetypal reality. Perhaps today is the day I die to an old life and allow myself to transition into something new. That feels like the right response to emerging from the wilderness this time.  

If I can decide to cultivate joy. I can certainly decide to cultivate rebirth, resurrection, revival, reinvention, regeneration, rejuvenation, renewal, resurgence, revitalization, renaissance. They are all facets of the same jewel. But what do they look like in a human life? I my human life? 

I don't know. 

But I'm going to take three days and see what I can discover about it. 

The Great Summer Writing Retreat of 2019 continues. One hundred days of writing unedited ideas and following a prompt to its sometimes illogical conclusion.

Almost Through the Wilderness

The first forty days of these one hundred day writing projects often feel like working my way through the wilderness. Day One feels fresh. Or perhaps it has me asking myself what I was thinking, publicly committing to one hundred days of putting writing out into the world no matter what else I'm doing or how I'm feeling. Every. Single. Day. Some days feel empowered and empowering. Other days feel like I'm walking through mud -- or soft sand.  Each day represents a percent of the process. There are milestones. Ten days - ten percent through. Twenty days - twenty percent through. Twenty-five days - an entire quarter gone, accomplished. Energy builds. 

An interesting thing happens at Day 39. I notice I'm almost at Day 40. Forty days is one of those archetypal realities for me. A wonder process where I come face-to-face with myself and all my light, all my shadow, all my darkness, my cracked and broken places, the things about me that are a wonder or are magnificent. It's all there. I see it all. There's nowhere to hide in the wilderness. 

Day 39 this year falls on the first quarter moon. Energetically, the first quarter is a crisis of action. Something new has been sparked and has been growing and it finally gains enough energy that it breaks the surface and can be seen, breaks ground. It heralds a time for nourishing what is growing. So, you do something. You meet the energy offered with action.

It also coincides with my receiving the print proof for my poetry book. I've been working on this book for a very long time. It's the first book I am publishing. In addition to doing something new that requires a great deal of courage and energy, I am also learning new skills and learning to apply them. So there's a lot going on around this. For the first time in the process, I feel like I am breaking ground. It's moving beyond the dark soil of its seed-growth and into the open air and the light. And so am I.

Putting this work out into the world has been an intense wilderness journey for me. Talk about coming face-to-face with my light, shadow, and darkness, my cracked and broken places, the things about me that are a wonder or are magnificent -- it's all been there. I've seen it all. There's been nowhere to hide.  

So I'm stopping to mark the occasion just as I see the edge ahead of me, the boundary that takes me out. Tomorrow will be the 40th day, and the day after that the 41st and a new breaking through to something different. I'm celebrating the beautiful book I hold in my hand as it is tipped at the edge of breaking through the boundary of its conception and creation. As it begins its own journey through the birth canal of the publishing process, the time between my approval to publish and its emergence in the marketplace. 

The Great Summer Writing Retreat of 2109 continues. One hundred days of writing unedited ideas and following a prompt to its sometimes illogical conclusion.

   

Ode to Beautiful Tree

Climbing high in the morning sky
Lyrical branches screen the rising sun
Move lightly in the afternoon breeze
Draw my vision to the heights
After the storm I look out my kitchen window 
I want to see the blue sky
And see instead a breach
Your powerful trunk torn and shattered 
Woody flesh naked and exposed
Grey skies make it hard to look up
So instead I look in
Deep within the lemon balm growing on the sill 

The Great Summer Writing Retreat of 2019 continues. One hundred days of writing unedited ideas and following a prompt to its sometimes illogical conclusion.

Movement and Flow

The beautiful thing about movement and flow is that once things open up, there is space for expansion.

And when we step into that river, we can be carried far distances.

The Great Summer Writing Retreat of 2019 continues. One hundred days of writing unedited ideas and following a prompt to it's logical conclusion,

The Writing Life

I've been catching up on some work today. About six thousand words of it. There's some handwritten material that needs to find its way into my laptop so I can craft a story around it. I've been working on a collection of short fiction now that my poetry collection is in production. And while the agonizing wait for the second print proof continues, I pour my energy into the short fiction. I'm not sure what I'll have at the end of it, but that's all part of the fun of writing. 

Three short stories are already written. Good first drafts. The material I'm working on now will eventually be a fourth, and then I will create a new story. I'm thinking five stories will be perfect and will enable me to have a nice arc for the collection. 

While creating the poetry collection, I worked with some editors who taught me a lot about crafting a collection that holds together and tells its own story. I had more than 200 hundred pages, including the three short stories that will go into the short fiction collection. Their advice - take out the fiction and allow the poetry to stand alone. Curate it so that my subject is focused in sharp relief and don't overwhelm people with too many poems. 

So that's what I did. It's taken about seven years for the poetry collection to birth. And now that it's happening, I'm ready to work more purposefully. My plan is to complete the short fiction in my 100 days of summer writing and work on publishing come fall. I'm not going to be rigid about it, but that's the plan. I have to keep reminding myself to stay loose.

I was away last week and an idea for a novel emerged. So, in the fall when I'm done with the short fiction collection, I'll see if the story is still alive for me. If so, there will be a lot of research. Part of what I love about the idea is I'll be able to learn about something that has grabbed my attention and is really interesting to me.  

I spent more time today than I'd planned working on the notebook to laptop transfer of material. It swallowed my day. And now it's regurgitated me to do this writing and get ready for other things that are coming up. Balance is elusive when I'm deep into something. 

The Great Summer Writing Retreat of 2019 continues. One hundred days of writing unedited ideas and following a prompt to its sometimes illogical conclusion.

Thought Pickings

I'm thinking about the way people treat each other. It's late in the evening and I suppose I'm feeling reflective about the day. I spent the evening driving home from Washington, about three hours in the car. I drove through all the weathers. I watched the sun go down. I saw glorious thunderheads in the sky. While on the interstate highway, I drove through some amazing landscapes. Sometimes even the East Coast megalopolis awes if you can look past the asphalt, concrete, and congestion.

Traffic was light. I passed between the holiday traffic gateways. 

And I'm back to people, in spite of trying to take myself away from them.

So today I was out with my mother. She's walking with a cane these days. We were rounding a corner in a hallway to get to an escalator in a mall in Georgetown. A couple of twenty-somethings were in a hurry and nearly knocked Mom down. They were not paying attention to where they were going and were practically running. I get being in a hurry, but you also have to have at least some situational awareness. The young woman laughed and said, "Sorry," as she continued her speedy careless progress. I said, "Please be careful. You nearly knocked my mother down." The young man looked at me as he walked by and said, "Relax." 

It was dismissive. 

And, for some reason, I can't get it off my mind.

This week has been filled with things that have made me stop and think. It's as if I am gathering things to ponder like pickings from my garden. I have a million things in process. I'm probably overestimating here, but I feel like the woman in the meme that shows her with 3000 tabs open, reflecting her state of mind. It feels strange to be back to my tiny apartment after spending the week at the family home. But I have hydrangea from my mother's garden in a vase on my kitchen table, so I know the time was real. 

In the car on the way home, between noticing the glorious sky and the steady stream of accidents by the side of the road, I was thinking how fun it would be if I lived a few blocks away from my mother and could drop in on her more often that every few months. That inevitably got me thinking about winning the lottery since she lives in one of the most expensive zip codes in a city of expensive zip codes. Once upon a time it was a nice, middle-class neighborhood, but property values have gone up and the homes are way beyond my ability to purchase there. That got me thinking about what all those people who are buying into that neighborhood do for a living. And back to winning the lottery. 

What would I do with all that money if I won?  

It's amazing how quickly the drive goes when you're thinking about what you could do with lottery winnings. 

The Great Summer Writing Retreat of 2019 continues. One hundred days of writing unedited ideas and following a prompt to its sometimes illogical conclusion.

Breaching

Visiting my family home for the holiday, I am flooded by a thousand memories. It feels overwhelming. Memories from my childhood and youth, memories from my children's younger years and from being married.

There's not much to say about it. When we're flooded, we simply need to find the high ground and stay above the waterline. For now, I will continue to show up and write and put the writing into the world. 

Pretty sure there are rich reflections going on beneath the surface. At some point, they'll breach.

The Great Summer Writing Retreat of 2019 continues. One hundred days of writing unedited ideas and following a prompt to its sometimes illogical conclusion. 


Photo: Glacier Bay National Park