Rain
It rained. It rained and rained. It rained so hard the windows cried. It rained so hard the roof thundered. It rained for so many days the girl no long believed in the sun, no longer believed in the light. The rain came down so hard, it knocked leaves off of trees. It splattered dirt out of flowerbeds. It even took blooms off of branches, leaving red and yellow memories on the slick pavement.
And so she went out into it. All around her people scurried for doorways and bus stops. Some held umbrellas turned inside out in the wind. Some held newspapers over their heads. But she did none of these things. Instead, she stood perfectly still. She waited while the water soaked her clothes, her hair, her skin. She felt the weight of all that water, as if she might become rooted there on that city street.
Tagged with: connection, discovery, fiction, imagination, story
Wish
It was enough to make her crazy—the constant yearning for something she could not name. She saw glimpses of it—in the smile of a new friend, in the tree limbs scraping the sky, in the lone crocus on her lawn—glimpses that just made her want it more.
The wind picked up, and the clouds crawled in. And when the rain began, she listened to its steady beat on the roof. She watched it cry down the windowpanes. She imagined herself on an old raft, a dog at her side, letting the water take her down the river of her street and out into some new adventure.
Tagged with: connection, fiction, imagination, story, why write, words
Heart
I heard the tiniest of heartbeats. Ba-dump. Ba-dump. It wasn’t a Tell-Tale heartbeat, nothing frightening like that. This heartbeat had a soothing rhythm. From what I could tell, the beat came from the trunk of an old tree just off the path where I had been walking. I approached the trunk and put my ear up to its grooves. I listened. No heartbeat. I waited, and then I heard it again—faint, in the distance. A little faster now. Badumpbadumpbadump. I followed the sound and ended up at another tree—this one full of crows and their caw caw cawing. “Shhhh,” I called out. “I am listening for a heart.” One of the crows looked down at me and laughed, or that’s how I perceived it. The crows flew off one by one, and I waited for the heartbeat. When it finally started up again, it seemed to be coming from underneath the snow. So I dug down with my mittened hands. No heart. I sat completely still. Me. The snow. The tree. The crows cawing in the distance. And then I heard it again. But this time, I did not go searching. I sat still. I did nothing. I just listened.
Tagged with: connection, fiction, imagination, story, struggle, words
Shadows
She has been thinking about shadows lately—how they change daily, depending on the light—how they offer a weird kind of mirror, a reflection: so there’s a tree silhouetted on the side of a house, a bird in flight flat out on the pavement. That’s the thing about shadows—they don’t make sense. But they do. You know, the bird isn’t really flying on the ground, and the tree isn’t really on the side of the house. But when she studied the shadows, they seemed real enough. And that got her thinking: maybe we had it all backwards—like the shadow is the bird. The shadow is the tree. If that were the case, would everything else be illusion? The question haunted her, so she spent a whole day following her shadow—letting it be her guide. She had to trust that her shadow knew where to go and when. And of course it did; the shadow simply listened to the light. It was that simple. The whole experience calmed her down considerably.
Tagged with: connection, fiction, story, truth
Prayer
It was a cold and frosty morning. The boy could see his breath. Actually see it! “Look at that,” he said and blew again. His mother reached out to grab his arm—there was traffic, after all—and the streetlight was about to change.
“Hey!” he yelled. “You put your hand right in my breath?”
Tagged with: connection, exercises, fiction, narrative, story, words
Bardo Again
Came across this quotation from Lionel Trilling:
“Between is the only honest place to be.”
Tagged with: connection, poem, quotation
Saturday in New Jersey
Just returned from a writers/editors conference at Rutgers University. What a well-conceived, well-organized event—a one day conference during which writers, editors, and agents mingle. And I was most impressed with the editors I met—all of them young and passionate, intelligent and thoughtful. They love books. They love good writing. And they volunteered a Saturday to offer encouragement, advice, and feedback. Trying to market one’s work can often feel discouraging, but the Rutgers University Council on Children’s Literature has found a way to make it encouraging. For that, I am grateful.
Tagged with: connection, discovery, learning, marketing, moments, process, why write
In Process
Rita is still in intensive care, but there are indications that she is on the upswing. Thank you, readers, for thinking of her. I miss her very much.
My students and I are experimenting with building a collaborative class website through pbwiki. It’s fun. I created a main page that introduces the course theme: imagination. That page also includes links to assignments and to students. Branching out from that main page, students are building their own “homes” from which they can link their individual work. On each page, there is a comment function, so that students and I can go in and converse.
Tagged with: audience, connection, imagination, learning, students
Rita
Health issues have consumed me lately—my own and others. But rather than write about my stuff, I want to put out a thought for my friend Rita. She has been lying in a Montana Hospital for at least five days. She has pneumonia, and she is now on a respirator. Rita is wonderful writer. She and I share a love of nature and quirky characters. Up until five days ago, we were exchanging emails everyday. I miss her. Anyone who reads this, please send her some good thoughts.
Get well, Rita.
Jan
Tagged with: connection, friendship, struggle
Bardo Poem
Here is the poem (perhaps still in progress) that grew out of my lessons in negative space and my introduction to the buddhist concept of bardo. Thank you, Kennon.
“A Lesson in Negative Space”
Tagged with: connection, moments, poem
Bardo - Between the Islands
I had dinner the other night with Vanessa and Kennon. They travel all of the time. I told them that traveling makes me anxious. Kennon asked me why. I told him that transitions are hard for me. He explained Bardo—a buddhist concept that, according to Wikipedia, means an intermediate or transitional state. Apparently bar means between and do means island. Kennon explained that the most fundamental transition is the one from life to death. He looked at my denim jacket, and he said, “Consider taking off that jacket and putting on another. Consider that transition. Consider the movement from life to death as being that simple.”
In my drawing class, the instructor spent a whole class period on the concept of negative space—that being the shapes that happen between and around the object you are trying to draw. For instance, if you look at a chair, you see the seat, the back, and the legs. But if you look at the space around and between the chair, you see something else. In drawing the negative space around a chair, you end up drawing a chair.
Tagged with: connection, learning, poem
Past
In exploring the poetry of my past, I am discovering a part of my writer self that I thought I had lost. I want to find a way to reconnect what I am doing now with what I did then. And it is happening. I just finished one last draft of my novel—now called, tentatively, New Moon Falls. As I revised, I found that part of my writer self from years ago—the part of me that wrote this poem:
Fossil
Tagged with: connection, discovery, poem, process
"Aren't Us"
September 11th, 2001 has been on my mind lately. I just enrolled in a new drawing class, and so I have been looking through some of my drawing/painting exercises from past art classes, and I came upon pieces I had done in 2001, months before the horrible event. Looking at those dates—May 2001, August 2001—I could not imagine what it felt like to not know what I was about to know.
And the other day, in looking through an old textbook, searching for teaching ideas, I came upon a poem I had never read before:
Tagged with: connection, discovery, poem, truth, words
Shadow
A recent obituary about the children’s book illustrator Tasha Tudor offered one of her favorite quotations:
The gloom of the world is but a shadow. Behind it, yet within our reach, is joy.
—Fra. Giovanni Giocondo
Tagged with: center, connection, quotation, struggle, truth, words
Revising
I just finished (I say that loosely) a new draft of my novel.
I all but threw out the last draft and started over. The protagonist is the same, and her best friend—a sort of sidekick—remains. Other than that, the story morphed ahead several decades, and its focus became much smaller.
This writing process confounds me, yet I am in love with it. I spend so much time alone, mulling over words and phrases, wondering, “How would she really respond in this situation?”
Tagged with: audience, connection, construct, process, rejection, struggle, truth, why write
Backpacks
Years ago, I remember seeing rows and rows of shoes in a Holocaust Museum exhibit—the shoes had been collected from one of the camps. And the notion that shoes hold our identities (footprints) has stayed with me as a metaphor.
Today, page one of The Boston Globe shows gays and lesbians celebrating California’s legalization of gay marriage. As a married lesbian in Massachusetts, I am proud of my state and thrilled that the California court went even further in its judgment—offering gays and lesbians from any state the opportunity to travel there and marry.
Tagged with: connection, truth
Bleeding Hearts
The Bleeding Heart Bush is a perennial metaphor. It blooms at this time of year; and in the morning, when I walk Gizmo, I stop and stare at one that rises from behind my neighbor’s small wooden fence—all those hearts bleeding.
Tagged with: connection, discovery, moments
Inspiration
The experience of watching lead runners pass me by during my recent half-marathon experience, as I mentioned in a previous post, was humbling.
On my first run since the half-marathon, I decided to do a four mile route over at the Arnold Arboretum—the amazing tree museum that makes up part of Boston’s Emerald Necklace.
Tagged with: connection, learning, struggle
The Feminist in Me
Okay. So I crossed the finish line! I did it! Nevermind that some women ran 13.1 miles in half the time it took me. I found my pace. I found my zone. I made it.
At several points on the course, authoritative voices called out, “Make way for the lead runners,” and I would turn to see women racing past me. For an instant, I thought, “Damn! Who do I think I am?” But I reminded myself, “I have my own pace.” And the next time someone called out, “Make way!” I said loudly and clearly, “I need my space, too.”
Tagged with: connection, imitation, quotation
The Perfect Glass
Recently, I purchased three stemless wine glasses. I wanted six, but the store only had three. One evening, I poured some chianti into one of the glasses. I drank. It was a perfect wine experience.
These glasses are not thin, as are so many wine glasses. They have a certain stability to them. And the design cut into the crystal is called “pearl”—white dots neatly aligned vertically. The 15 oz. shape fits perfectly into my small hands.
Tagged with: connection, moments, story
Ambiguity
This morning, my usual routine has been disrupted by four men tearing apart our upstairs bathroom. Gizmo, particularly, is unhappy with the circumstances. He comes to sit underneath my legs, as if I am some shield.
My semester begins in two weeks, and in the next few days, I will ease into syllabus building.
Tagged with: connection, discovery, quotation
Another link
My friend Anita lives in Manhattan. She has a very full and interesting life. She writes. And she also teaches high school. Recently, she watched my Ben Cartwright video-story and then told me about David Rose, the composer of the “Bonanza Theme Song.” He’s most famously known as the composer of “The Stripper.” Anita grew up in LA, and David Rose was her best friend’s father. Anita spent a lot of time in the music industry, and she considered David Rose a mentor of sorts. Anita has a blog, from a high school teacher’s perspective. It’s listed under links as “Schoolmarm.” Check it out.
Tagged with: connection, discovery, links
Pace
The other day, I said to Diane, “There’s an epidemic of slow drivers.” Every time I drive somewhere, I inevitably end up behind someone driving at least ten miles-an-hour less than I believe we should be going. In my more frustrated states, I shake my head and lift my hands in helpless gestures, hoping that the drivers look in their rearview mirrors and recognize just how much they are inconveniencing me. In my more philosophical states, I think—it’s good for me to slow down. And so I back off and see what I see out the windows.
And today, forced to drive slow, I thought about pace—how that driver ahead of me has some pace that works for him. And simply, his pace is not mine. That got me thinking about pace in general and how one person’s seldom matches another’s.
Tagged with: connection, pace, students
To Wait
Here is the text of my most recent letter to students:
We spend so much of our lives waiting: for trains, for doctors, for a phone call, a letter, a dream to come true. We wait in lines or in rooms made just for waiting, with chairs and magazines, even toys and TV and coffee.
Tagged with: connection, discovery, letters, why write
Links
So far, there are two links to other sites on this page. I plan to add more. But I’ve been thinking about the word itself, links, and how the internet has created a valuable sense of connection for me.
If you are interested in children’s literature or baseball, check out Barbara Gregorich’s website. She and I are in a critique group together, and she has been a wonderful writing and marketing resource for me. Our group, called the Londonderries, is made up of six writers, from different cities. We meet every week online, and we meet every two years in person.
Tagged with: connection, links, why write, words