Category Archives: Writing

Thyroid Fun, or Keeping the Faith (18)

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I started back to work on Saturday, but because it was the weekend I could pretend I wasn’t really working yet. I did my work in spurts then retreated to the novel I am reading in between, setting my laptop aside and burrowing under the down comforters, cozy during the end of our cold spell here, echoing my blissful holiday habits. I even made popcorn Sunday night, filling the big green ceramic bowl. But Monday arrived, and I could pretend no longer. Work was in full swing. Still, in the midst of being sucked up by the intensity of keeping up with the work I remembered to be happy. I stood beside the kitchen sink at noon chopping garlic for my belated breakfast and sang a little song. “I’m back at work, but it’s okay,” I sang. I bobbed up and down along with the movement of my chef’s knife. “I’m not going to let my neck and shoulders get too tight,” I sang, tilting my head from side to side. I learned a tight neck and shoulders can cut off blood flow to the thyroid I am trying to protect, but I was grinning as I sang, glad to be having goofy fun. In the afternoon I told myself I could have two hours, and I did my yoga in the courtyard while the sun sank behind our mountains. My neck and shoulders were tight, but the yoga helped. Then I sat outside to write, my notebook perched against my thighs. I reminded myself to breathe. “You can do this,” I whispered. “I have faith in you.”

Keeping the Peace (17)

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Sunday, December 14th
When I wonder what to write for my Christmas letter, nothing comes but a vague sense of knowing, like a remembered dream, or as if viewed from underwater, blurred and indistinct. What was my year? How might I lay it down on the page? What will I choose, pluck whole from the blurred images, the trout tickled from the icy stream? It was a second hard year for me, but I turned a corner with Indian summer. Do I try to explain? Or do I try to capture the odd ethereal quality of the light on my arm as I sit in our courtyard garden on this winter afternoon, the cats both napping beside me on their pillows? I savor this ease, this togetherness. Sundays have always been sacred to me, a holdover, I think, from my childhood when the world would stop for the day. I wrap the lazy quiet around me like a cloak. I feel the sun on my throat, my collarbone, speaking to my thyroid. I am inclined to be tender with myself today, a warm regard that is new to me. For the moment things fall away, the hectic work week behind me, all the preparations that lie now between me and Christmas. I want to keep this with me, so I make a vow. I will remember to relish the cold air on my nose in the early mornings between now and then and to listen for the new songbird in our Palo Verde. I will remember to revel in the glistening magic of the colored lights on the fig tree outside the window when I turn over in the middle of the night. I will stop in the late afternoon to feel the sudden coolness on my skin the second the sun sinks behind the mountains like it’s doing right now. I’ll touch this peace again. I’ll look for the white-crowned sparrows visiting for the winter, so small but somehow sturdy. I’ll watch them flit about on the ground beneath the feeders, like I am watching them now, with a glad and grateful heart. And I’ll wish you your own delicious moments now and always.

Living on the Edge (14)

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Sunday morning my fingers do their weird, anxious thing. I am lying in bed. I’ve been dozing off and on, aware once at dawn and then again at seven, but I don’t surface until late, maybe eight o’clock. I stretch, the epitome of luxurious awakening, and my arms are over my head when I hear this odd sound and stop to listen. It is my fingers moving, making little scratchy sounds, fingernails against the sheet. This is my fourth weekend off, I calculate, make a point of emphasizing to myself. And so my fourth cherished Sunday when I can sink into the quiet of my neighborhood later in the day. I sit on the patio and let myself write. But it is not yet enough, not yet perhaps a long enough string of days, not enough to stop the restless circling of my fingertips. I am too quick to run out of patience with the cats, too quick to snap or yell at them. I do it with humans, too, but I am more subtle. I am not wild and loud like when I was young–sometimes people don’t even know I’ve snapped at them by my reckoning. But I feel it inside, this stingy tightness, this prickly impatience that has no true base in the moment but screams instead to that other angry person years ago who stole things from me. I am a person wound too tight. It is not the first time. Some days I am afraid I won’t know how to fix it, won’t find a way to be less anxious again. It wasn’t that long ago, I think.

Even as I write a part of me knows I will figure it out. I will find a way back to who I want to be. I wrote about this before and laughed when I read it later. I guess it was a kind of Freudian slip. “I want to find my way back,” I wrote, “to the woman who would drink her first cup of teach in the courtyard garden,” and let herself lean back in the chair, warm ceramic cup cradled in both hands, solid heat nestled against her sternum. The first cup of “teach,” indeed. How funny. I want to find my way back to the woman who knew how to stop like that every morning, the woman that knew how to drop down into her peace. I don’t want to be the woman whose mind in wrestling with work, teaching or otherwise, thoughts that assault that first hour of the day. Worse yet, sometimes I am the person whose first cup of tea sits forgotten beside me on the table, cold because I am too focused on the computer in my lap.  I want to find my way back to that other woman who knew how to stop or at least pause every morning.  And then a kinder voice emerges–a small miracle–and I remind myself I have already come a long way. “Voy a llegar,” I say, and I laugh in the now dark. I am going to arrive.

The Archaeologist (13)

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New moon day, and I want to return to practicing my writer’s craft. I’ve missed it, this relationship with myself, with my imagined readers, known and unknown. I’ve missed the weight of my notebook propped against my thighs, the whisper of my hand inching across it, squiggly lines that harbor meaning etched in black upon the soft white page. I hope I am really returning to my writing now, but I tell myself even only an entry or two for my blog will be a victory. Still, I am hoping for more. I want it back, a part of my days. I can’t say exactly what has kept me away. It is not lack of time, I know, though for a few months I did have less of it. More, if I would guess, it is an unwillingness to meet myself here. But I miss my writer self. And I don’t want this to be my reason, to not want to look or to dig, to refuse to unearth. I want to be willing to scrape away the layers of dirt again, pour water like rain, the hidden made clean, resurrected. I want to thrive again among the new-washed relics.

I Didn’t Win

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Hi everyone. I found out this morning I didn’t win the book contest. I am sad but okay. I have been telling myself whoever wins will be the one meant to win in this round. And looking at the winner’s photo on the New Rivers Press Facebook page, I felt good seeing her, knowing this was her time to win. Maybe one day it will be my time. :)

Writing Prompt (7)

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Write about what stirs you. What stirs me? I like making big pots of soup. I stir them with a wooden spoon. But when I want to taste them I dig a big metal soupspoon out of the drawer. The texture and the flavor of the wood interfere. I like stirring soup. It stirs me to smell it, to imagine sitting down to a big bowl of it, the hot ceramic cradled against my belly when I lean back on the couch or the bed, my kitchen towel napkin draped across my torso as though I’m preparing to eat lobster. What stirs me? Taste, color, texture, the exquisite beauty of our natural world, the craggy rocks on our mountains on a clear day that make you want to rub your hand across them, feel the ragged edges of the ridge. I am stirred by little things. My father gave me this, I think. I can be stirred to awe, stirred to pity, stirred to anger, excitement, gratitude. I am stirred when people take the time to reassure me, stirred by their kindness in that act, their generosity. I am stirred by injustice, by empathy. I’ve always rooted for the underdog. I hated the roadrunner cartoons when I was a little girl. I always felt bad for the coyote.

Belated Good News!

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Facebook announcement of the MVP finalists

Facebook announcement of the MVP finalists

I’m sorry now I didn’t post this here the very evening I heard Suzzanne’s message on my voicemail. It was after Laurie and I spent that day writing for over six hours. I’m convinced it’s all connected. Listening to my messages, tired at the end of that intense day of writing, I found out my book manuscript, You and Me, has been selected as one of ten finalists for the Many Voices Project at New Rivers Press. It still feels like a dream. I didn’t post the news right away because Suzzanne thought they would be gathering photos of each finalist, making an announcement on their website. I waited to tell you about it because I wanted to be able to offer up the link to that page, make it all real. Now it makes me sad I didn’t share the news while it was still hot, still streaking through my veins, the joy and the thrill, the incredible validation, the almost overwhelming gratitude. I don’t know exactly how many entries there were. Maybe 300 or so, Suzzanne thought. And it looks now as though they may not get a chance to post us on their website before the winner is selected, which could be at the end of this month. (They are a university press, run by a small staff, so I understand this. It’s likely they are already accomplishing more than is humanly possible.) Still, I love that they let us know right away, let each of us savor being selected while every one of us still has a chance of winning. I think it is a great kindness. I pray to keep my joy about this, to hold fast to my gratitude and to the deep validation in it no matter how things unfold. If my manuscript wins, I will rejoice like nobody’s business, leaping tall buildings in a single bound. And this time I promise I’ll tell you right away.