Today my writing workshop was hybrid — one Californian connected by Zoom and was projected through the big living room TV and four of us participated IN PERSON! What an incredible treat.
The day was bright and slightly cool, the maples hazing the horizon with green. In other words, spring added to the cheer.
We only wrote to one prompt* because it was just too nice to chat and catch up afterwards (we usually write to two). Finn mostly behaved.
A few of us had lasagne and salad after. It felt so normal and also so extraordinary.
Because of the tech prep and cleaning the place up, I’m exhausted — but exhausted in a clean house and with a full heart.
* prompt produced some amazing writing and came from Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones Deck. It was : “What are you waiting for?” Write for ten minutes. We wrote for longer.
A nice hangover of the pandemic for me – not taking gatherings for granted. I may never be a great hostess, but I think I’m a better guest these days.
The pandemic has heightened appreciation for these gatherings. No doubt.
Sounds lovely.
Yeah. It was.
I love Natalie Goldberg … have you read Living Color?
I haven’t. Should I?
Sounds very nice to be all-accommodating!
Love the bird collage. Are those geese or ducks or swans?
I think geese
Sounds like a wonderful connective experience, both the writing, lasagna and salad as well as the camaraderie.
Your Natalie Goldberg prompt seems to coincide with some reading I am doing from Dr. Sharon Blackie’s book, Hagitude. I’ve written most of my life but more than that, I’ve told stories, orally. Thirteen years ago, I was introduced to dyeing cloth using natural materials and at the age of 62, this question of “What Are You Waiting For” was answered in a totally unexpected way. I was waiting for another way to “talk” story, for another way to bring forth the strong pull that I have always had with the land, from foraging and bringing home all manner of weeds, leaves, twigs, wildflowers, bark, rocks, bird nests, etc.. Now I could use many of these items to make marks and color into cloth and slowly, over the years, I found a new language, the language of the sacred ordinaries that exist in the land. The old recycled cloth, a story in and of itself, accepted these gifts and the pins, needles and threads and my hands, created the story of my relationship with the many lands I have lived in..
In the passage in Hagitude titled, “The Cretatrix, Old Women Weaving the World”, these words:
“There’s a strange magic in objects we create ourselves, by hand,and an even greater magic when they’re made from natural materials- especially those we have gathered from the land.They tie us back to the rhythms of the Earth; they help us to remember where we come from and where we belong.They’re a link between human imagination and the imagination of the land itself. And in practicing these skills and passing them on to others,we do that all-important work of weaving ourselves into being and into greater consciousness of the beautiful animate world around us.”
Thank you for that quote. I hope that your twins know of the handful of blogs that you leave comments on so they can find them some day down the road if they want. Such beautiful storytelling. Thank you for sharing Marti.