I was going to write about something else for this post, even had it started—the wonderful Wyoming School For Girls where I made a connection when I was out at Ucross Foundation for a residency in March. I’ve been doing writing workshops with them on Google Hangout, and I wanted to tell you about how much they’ve meant to me and seem to mean to the girls incarcerated there. The director, Dixie Fox, with whom I’ve been dealing over the complexities of doing such an intimate experience virtually, is a stunning example of what a facility for troubled girls needs in a leader. I am mightily impressed with her and hope to continue to volunteer as a writing group facilitator with them until I get back to Wyoming, hopefully next spring. It feels so good to be able to reach out to these young women with all the poems and stories of my girls and know how inspired they may be by them; how I have missed this work.
Read moreWaiting
I was waiting to do this post until I got my books and could write about how I felt when I opened the box and actually saw them—the real thing—not the copied pages, the ARC, the digital version—but they haven’t yet arrived.
As I was sitting outside for a brief respite from the computer, dreaming a bit in the sun, all the other things I was waiting for flooded my mind—the arrival of those books, a haircut appointment, word from Politics and Prose about a hoped-for Crowdcast video for I Am Not A Juvenile Delinquent, for the overgrown lawn to be mowed, for the grass seed in its bare spots to sprout, for my puppy Stella to finish her heat, for the time and energy to clean up my thousands of emails, to write a new poem, to put together another poetry collection.
Read moreMAY IS THE CRUELEST MONTH
I was going to tell you about the great Zoom re-creation of my women’s writing group last Sunday, when seven of us joined for the day to express in words the many feelings and thoughts prompted by poems I shared, but I’m not going to do that.
I debated writing about the powerful virtual mindfulness retreat I sat (in front of my computer) last week, given by renowned meditation teachers Joseph Goldstein and Sharon Salzburg to 2300 others all over the world. I thought I’d quote Ajahn Chah,
Read moreTRUE CONFESSIONS
I was walking Stella, my dog, who we’ve trained to sit when a car goes by. This one stopped. It was my neighbor, going for a drive to get out of the house.
“I just read your blog,” she said. “It’s so depressing. Can’t you write a happy one next time? Something inspirational?”
I thought, but didn’t say, that’s not my style. How many times have I heard people say things like that to me? Just a recent email from an old friend declared, “I have read your poetry and wondered at your gift for writing. It is wonderful to read but so full of sadness. I look for the hope! “
Read more“PERFECTIONISM IS THE SCARIEST WORD I KNOW”
This sentence, a quote from Kathleen Norris, who writes movingly in many books of grappling with perfectionism and her spiritual journey, was to be the title of one of the sections in my upcoming memoir, I Am Not A Juvenile Delinquent, about my similar struggles. But I had to cut it when my editor suggested that three sections would work better than the five I’d originally had. As usual, she was correct.
But its personal resonance has never left me; this morning during a very challenging zoom yoga class with a new teacher, its noisy dictates blared back to me as I struggled to get the unfamiliar poses exactly right.
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