January, First Week :: 2022

Meditation for a new year, snapped out the window on a trip downtown.

The beginning of any new season, for me, requires a lot of self-forgiveness. I’ve failed at nearly every goal I set for myself in 2021. I went backwards in some areas. I made devastatingly stupid mistakes. I lost huge amounts of time to my own mental fog and fatigue. It wasn’t a year of obvious successes (though there were some!). So this time around the circle, I’m allowing January to be a quiet, reflective month. I feel hesitant to choose a word or theme, to make too many plans. I’m tired of dictating to the year what I’m going to do. I’d like, instead, to leave room for surprise, to practice accepting what comes with equanimity.

During this first week of the year, I’m trying to shed whatever excess I can. When I cleaned off my office bookshelf last week, I found a small stone - a piece of pumice, formed from lava-froth in some distant past - that the kids had once collected outside. I had forgotten what it was; I picked it up expecting the weight of stone in my hand and found a marvelous lightness instead. Holding that stone in my palm, I felt an answering leap within myself: Porous. Weightless. Light. Steady. These are qualities I want to nurture in 2022. So, not a word or theme, per se, but an image, a stone to set on my desk to remind me that I am not some capitalist automaton required to pump out content with the blade-edge of the calendar at my throat, but a living woman, both fluid and solid, tidal and receptive, firm and still.

“I wonder what we will do with this year, what it will do with us and what together we and life will create during the twelve months ahead.”

Jean Hersey, The Shape of a Year

Oliver Burkeman says, “What you need…are tiny goals and a commitment to incremental progress ("small wins"), plus a willingness to encounter failure after failure as you stumble toward improvement.”

Thanks to Burkeman, I’m including failure and stumbling in my expectations for the year. It’s strange, I know, but already I can breathe deeper.

This month, I’m taking a class with Holly Wren Spaulding that I hope will help reignite a vision for my work. I’ve got a clean desk area, waiting journals, and nourishing books, but mostly, I’ve got my eyes open. I’m looking for the little patterns, the ways I sabotage myself, the places I knuckle under pressure, excuses I make, as well as the things that inspire me to create.

Two examples:

1. A reframing: I heard someone say the other day that they are a full-time practicing artist whether they are actively writing or not. Sometimes this person needs to work for awhile in other medias, but they are always an artist. This immediately allowed me to accept the seasons when words aren’t flowing and I need to work with my hands (everything from baking to knitting or gardening). Until she said that, I didn’t realize how much seesawing I was doing in my own mind, afraid I wasn’t committed enough. Now I know that every season is part of my process as a writer and I don’t have to shame myself for not being at the desk. A different way of understanding what I already am.

2. An observation: I’m at my most receptive and creative early in the morning, which makes it a perfect time for writing, but I noticed that if I engage in conversation before I sit at my desk (either digital or face to face) I will not only get pulled out of that receptive space, but I am also likely to start doing household tasks, or looking up something online, or getting involved in someone’s emotions. It’s the smallest of things, but it can delay my work for the rest of the day. One January question is how to guard and use that precious morning time. (Keep the phone turned off? Earplugs? Blinders? Move to a desert island? )

Tiny steps. One by one.

I know I’m not alone in this wrestling at the new year. We’re all struggling in various ways with loss and fatigue. I sure wish we could meet up for some good food and conversation around a table. (Wouldn’t that be great?) But since we aren’t able to do that, we’ll meet in the places we can, and we’ll just keep going, all of us, messy, unproductive, inconsistent, and occasionally wonderful. At least that’s my hope.

with much love,

tonia

Gathered:

~ “Consider that rest is not a time set aside, but a spirit brought to every time.” L.M. Sacasas

~ Lesley’s silent films feed my soul.

~In praise of reading “old” books - and a list of ideas. Maybe it’s better to let books ripen, see what sticks around, instead of rushing to get the newly published books straightaway.

~ A word to adopt for 2022: ”Respair”: fresh hope, a recovery from despair.

August, Third Week :: 2021

My youngest moved out on Monday, off to the Midwest for nursing school. I’ve been getting myself ready for this the last couple of years so of course I’m a wreck right now. There’s really no way to adequately prepare for these big transitions, is there? I’ve been self-medicating with junk food and naps, but clearly this can’t go on much longer. ;) On top of that, the hard drive on my computer died without warning, taking with it three years of stories and about three months of work on the novel (and no, none of it was backed up.) I have been swinging through horror, grief, guilt, and despair pretty much every day since then. I had a day or two where I took it as a divine sign that I’m not supposed to write at all (what can I say? I write fiction, I’m dramatic) but within a couple of days stories began to whisper themselves in my dreams and potential words were dancing in my head like sparks over a camp fire and I realized this is just one of life’s ordinary obstacles, not the end of any roads at all.

So, once the tide of emotions and change passes, I will pull up the novel where I saved it to an external hard drive last May and begin again. Again. This time with better back up plans.

In the meantime, I’m exercising what little grace I have for myself and doing the things I know to do to get through. No strict regimens, extra sleep, lots of fiction and time outdoors, no brand-new projects to imagine myself being perfect at, no news, no reading about issues or world-problems, just a lot of comfort and distraction - whatever that looks like day by day.

I hope your August is going more smoothly than mine, but wherever you are, however it’s going, will you please go back up your computer for me right now? Thanks. :)

Lots of love. More writing to come. That novel is GOING TO GET FINISHED, I promise.

xoxo

tonia (accompanied by vegan cheese crackers and about 20 chocolate bars)

Comfort duck.

Gathered:

~ For those of us who can’t (or don’t want to) enroll in an MFA program, Anna has created a really lovely self-directed option. I had her create a one-quarter fiction syllabus for me which I’m going to work at slowly over the winter and it is wonderful. Challenging, creative, deep, and exciting. Find out more about it here.

~ Louise Erdrich’s agonizing (for a perfectionist) poem and advice, which I am listening to repeatedly. (HT: Kyce Bello, whose poetry book, btw, is a safe space for those wrestling with climate despair.)

~ This from Lyanda Lynn Haupt’s Pilgrim on the Great Bird Continent:

“We watch, hopefully. We keep watching. We fill our days with care, watching our words and minding our vision, and our evolution continues. We branch, we rise.”

July, Second Week :: 2021

Red dragonfly, misty morning.

That’s my alternative title for this post based off an ancient Japanese calendar I read about recently. In this way of time-keeping, the year was divided into 24 seasons, and each of these was further divided 3 times into a total of 72 seasons, each lasting 4-5 days. These miniature seasons were given lovely, poetic names based on what was happening in nature. (e.g.“Warm winds blow”, “Hawks learn to fly” )

There are so many reasons I love this way of season-keeping, mostly because it requires attendance to the subtle shifts and nuances of change as we move through the year, but also for the invitation to grace the passing days with poetry.

Right now we are in a bit of an upheaval at Fernwood. Outside, the house is being painted and the decks repaired. Inside we are preparing to downsize and shift our living quarters so a soon-to-be married daughter and son-in-law can share our home for awhile. All my curated corners for sitting and thinking are upended, there is always a contractor (agreeable and helpful as they are) just where I want to be, and there’s no end to the amount of decluttering and reorganizing waiting for me. How necessary then to have a place where poetry can enter and soothe.

Red dragonfly on wild sweet pea.

Misty morning, thirsty ground.

House waits with folded hands.

…

Yesterday I carted one of the plastic adirondack chairs out to the center of the yard, out of the path of the contractors, just on the edge of the walnut tree shade so I could write. I remember Sylvia V. Linsteadt saying in an old blog post that she tried to spend one day every week out on the land “tracing the songlines of that beloved wild place, so that my work remains infused with its many voices.” I’m determined to put myself in connection with the land and all that it speaks to me every day, even if that happens in fragments and requires listening for the squabble of bluejays over the “sounds of the 80’s and 90’s” coming from a contractor’s radio. In my classes this last spring, I realized I don’t really need more formulas and instruction on basic writing. What I need instead is to loosen something inside and explore outside my domesticated self. Practices like writing outside by hand not only help me listen to the wild places, but also help me access parts of myself that have been shuttered so I can create freely (something that didn’t feel possible until I left religion behind, but that’s a post for another day.)

After I finished writing yesterday, I spent an hour re-watching a talk by Ray Bradbury and making plans to write a short story every week as he suggested. He assured that you can’t write 52 terrible stories, so I hope I’ll be able to share some of those in the Story Room throughout the year. And, of course, I’m still working on the novel as well! In fact, I’m going to wrap this up and get back to work on it.

I hope you will find some peace, poetry, and freedom on your own path this week, no matter what is going on around you.

Gathered:

~ Ryan Holiday’s videos on being an active reader and making time for reading.

(FYI, I’m reading Heather Cox Richardson’s How the South Won the Civil War: Oligarchy, Democracy and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America and Graham Joyce’s The Limits of Enchantment right now.)

~ This funny, smart essay by Caitlin Flanagan: You Really Need to Quit Twitter

“Surely Joan Didion has confronted her share of aggravations (cucumber slices not adhering to tea sandwiches; Lynn Nesbit calling during NewsHour; latest Celine sunnies too big for tiny, exquisite face). But would she ever take to Twitter to inscribe these frustrations onto the ticker tape of the infinite? Of course not. She would either shape them into imperishable personal essays or allow them to float past her and return to the place from which they came.”

(I just marked two years without social media accounts. I echo everything Flanagan (and her family) has to say.)

~ Bob Dylan:

“A library is an arsenal of liberty.”

A bientot mes amis.

April, Fourth Week :: 2021

Happy Earth Day, friends!

Last year I took a whole Earth Day to myself, hiking and spending time outdoors. I thought I’d make an annual tradition of it, but this year I’ll be indoors most of the day on Zoom classes instead. There will be a couple of free hours in the afternoon though, and I’m marking them out for the woods. Just the thought of time under the trees, the air scented with bluebells, will get me through the morning.

This week has been a roller coaster of insecurities and weariness. I had a glimpse of what it is going to be to study writing for the next few years and how I will need to be strong in my ideas and instincts while still being teachable. The experience shook me up a little, but fortunately, just when the doubts about my path started to creep in, words came to rescue me. I picked up The Living Mountain, Nan Shepherd’s acclaimed book about the Cairngorm mountains, and began reading Robert MacFarlane’s introduction. He puts great emphasis on the fact that Shepherd had a “modestly regional life,” but “she came to know her chosen place closely, …that closeness served to intensify rather than limit her vision.” She wrote differently than other writers of her time. A close male friend told her the book will be “difficult, perhaps,” to get published and closed off his note with a patronizing jab. The book languished for forty years and even now, beloved as it is by many, is difficult to describe. I was reading this out under the evening sky, out where God moves among the trees and whispers loud enough for me to hear, so maybe you will understand that a feeling formed inside of me, a determination to stay my course, to lean into what I know is my own voice and not be shamed by the limits of the world and experience I draw upon.

“To know fully even one field or one land is a lifetime’s experience. In the world of poetic experience it is depth that counts, not width. A gap in a hedge, a smooth rock surfacing a narrow lane, a view of a woody meadow, the stream at the junction of four small fields - these are as much as a man can fully experience.”

~Patrick Kavanagh (quoted in MacFarlane’s introduction)

Right now on this little patch of earth, I have marked the arrival of the first Honeybees, a Bumblebee Queen, the return of the Violet-backed Swallows, Nettles and Rhubarb and Plantain and a dozen other old friends. What a privilege it is to experience and know this land year after year, to be shaped by it and shape my words around it.

Small, slow, and deep is how I want to continue on.

. . .

As a side note, I want to say that just because I don’t always write about current events here, doesn’t mean I don’t keep track of them or speak up about them, k? I care deeply about and participate in the work of justice in my own community and write about issues when I need to or feel I have something to add to the conversation. Thanks for understanding. xo

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Gathered:

~ More on Nan Shepherd and The Living Mountain

~ Mads Mikkelson’s thoughts on ambition:

My approach to what I do in my job — and it might even be the approach to my life — is that everything I do is the most important thing I do. Whether it’s a play or the next film. It is the most important thing. I know it’s not going to be the most important thing, and it might not be close to being the best, but I have to make it the most important thing. That means I will be ambitious with my job and not with my career. That’s a very big difference, because if I’m ambitious with my career, everything I do now is just stepping-stones leading to something — a goal I might never reach, and so everything will be disappointing. But if I make everything important, then eventually it will become a career. Big or small, we don’t know. But at least everything was important.

~ Madeline Forman becomes a recording artist at 94. Have a listen to her at 17.

~ Last year’s (long!) Earth Day post.

Much love, friends.

tonia

April, third week :: 2021

I marked off my 120th day of writing this weekend and decided to take a few days off to reset my goals. I’m stuck on one chapter of the novel rewrites and I need a little bit of time away from it to get some perspective. I was feeling bad about how slow these rewrites are going, but then I came across James Baldwin’s admission that writing is just hard. “Every form is difficult, no one is easier than another. They all kick your ass. None of it comes easy.” Amen to that.

I asked Mark to take the long way home tonight, around the dike on the low-lying road that curves around farms and newly bright fields. We rolled down our windows and drove slowly, letting Bortkiewicz’ Lyrica Nova play out into the sunset, something we’ve done for years whenever we need to unwind. These first weeks of school I’ve had a hard time figuring out how to find real rest, but I’ve at least remembered that it begins with a little time and a bit of nature, even if it’s only seen from the window of a moving car.

The moon hung over us as we drove, a bright sickle against the blue sky. She’s moving through her cycle again, patient and constant while our world keeps fracturing and wounding itself. All around us green blades pushing up through soil, rogue daffodils in ditches, flit of deer shadows among the cottonwoods, moth dance above the windshield. Inhale. Exhale. Tomorrow I’ll get back to studying, back to learning how to write, because as James Baldwin says:

“You write in order to change the world, knowing perfectly well that you probably can’t, but also knowing that literature is indispensable to the world. In some way, your aspirations and concern for a single man in fact do begin to change the world. The world changes according to the way people see it, and if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way a person looks or people look at reality, then you can change it.

Let me know how you’re changing the world today, friends. xo

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Gathered:

~ Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows reading Rilke.

~ Justine Bateman refusing to feel bad about aging.

Peace keep you.

More soon.

Tonia