Where to begin? Well, why not with the first prompt I always give my writing groups: “this is the way it is right now?” That’s also the title of the last chapter of my forthcoming memoir, I Am NOT a Juvenile Delinquent. Since one of my spiritual teachers spoke those words to me at a very troubled time in my life, I have found them immensely comforting.
The way it is for me today is so much better than yesterday, or even the last week, maybe even the last months, a true manifestation of the impermanence my cherished Buddhist dharma teaches. I’ve been so on edge over just about everything—the roller-coaster political situation, the coronavirus and how it will affect the world and our country (and our retirement accounts), challenging travel to Switzerland and out here to Wyoming where I am now, getting my new website set up, and the physical malaise I’ve been struggling to shake.
I knew I was super-stressed, but all the nostrums I attempted to employ simply weren’t working.
And I’d finally finished the second round of edits on I Am NOT a Juvenile Delinquent a few days before the Switzerland trip. The first round had been a pretty intense rewrite—a restructuring of the whole book, really. What a humbling and learning experience that was. The second involved a complete re-do of the format as well as the addition of an introduction, a foreword, an afterword and acknowledgements. The latter was one of the hardest sections to write. There are simply so many people who have been part of this journey for me to thank, and I was afraid I’d inadvertently leave someone out.
It’s taken the proverbial village to get I Am NOT a Juvenile Delinquent into the world and my gratitude is great.
I feel an enormous sense of relief at having finished the book project, but also the immense sense of loss and let-down that often follows the fulfillment of an aspiration. For months I’d been living with my own long-ago words and experience as well as my editor’s comments, suggestions and dictates. And before that, with all the attempts to find an interested publisher or an agent—and before that, the years of actual events recounted in the book.
I Am NOT a Juvenile Delinquent been my life since 1999. I’ll soon be preparing for its birth in June, and its reception after that.
But for right now, I have this gorgeous respite at the Ucross Foundation in Wyoming. I’m out on a high plateau that’s been here for millenniums, on loan to us by all the Native American tribes who’ve lived here. There are teepee circles to explore, petrified wood and other ancient artifacts to find, long clay road and tracks to hike, delicious meals to eat and new and fascinating people to meet.
In the month I have to live in this oasis, to enter a trance-world filled with the poems of others, and my own as yet unwritten, I’m being allowed to come back to myself once again. Here, I can retreat from all the fear and information overload that’s been infecting me. I feel whole and empty and free.
It’s just the solace I need at this junction in my life.
I have the opportunity here to practice the acceptance of what is, that I talk about so much in my book, and I will try to embrace it fully as I have not been doing. I’ll drink from the spring of energy and repair as I walk this new land, read the piles of books I never seem to have time for at home, write new poems, and try to grasp once again that wanting something to be other than what it is causes double anguish.
I’ll keep you posted on my progress.