life and write

That rainy day, they marched, looked for your footsteps, your blurred shadow, shining in what was left of the storm. Everyday they watch, listen, place their tiny footprints in the weight of your every step.

Happy Father’s Day…

Don’t mind the mess on my desk, what matters more is the thank you card I received in the mail the other day from a young lady, a high school freshman, after we spoke recently about her career interests, education, and post high school options. One might think that in a time of instant messaging a 14-year-old might send a casual email or nothing at all, rather than employ print, cursive, paper, and ink. But I can assure you, and with good old-fashioned penmanship, there are still people out there exploring their own thoughtful marks, writing in ink, slowing down, leaving a unique presence.

“Everyone you meet has some kind of purpose in your life,” I told her. “Sometimes you don’t know what that purpose is at that very moment, or who will end up a part of your life for longer than that moment.”

That day, as we explored career, education, future, we also talked a bit about how first impressions count, how sometimes all you have is that very first encounter. In our conversation we did not get into lasting impressions but she assured me just a few days later she knew how to make one: a simple thank you note on a folded white card, lined in silver, with detail, time, and sincerity pressed into page.

In life and writing, never underestimate a simple handwritten ‘thank you’.

Soft black flap
gold crossed buckle
glow flicker and still

There are some days when love shows up at your front door with open arms.There are days where conversations have less miles between each word. My husband and I, like children, soaked up love sitting across the table from my parents, our parents. Our three boys were swirls of joy, in and out of arms and smiles. Time passed as early morning spilled into dusk, the darkening skies wrapped with a few tears and goodbyes.

There is no blueprint,
just love and geometry,
as we build, engineer,
wonder solve, spread all over
the furniture, the living room.
There is love and silence clicked
and cluttered in those colored
plastic blocks, those endless
renditions, that time well spent.

“The important feature that design brings is this bridge between the science and the arts. And I don’t think many people understand the power of design to put these two things together.”—Bill Moggridge

khaki
print
olive
plum
wrinkled
pressed
cotton
silk
casual
dressy
color
neutral
girl
boy
mother
son

When you are away, we do not sit in your seat at the table. It is yours, and we honor it. Leave it as you left it pushed in or out, a piece of your clothing draped across the back of the chair, a dusting of crumbs near the cold center groove where you last sat and ate warm penne, garlic bread, a salad. In that chair, your thin legs dangling, you are somewhere between cherry and blonde wood, between disparate emotional spaces, between places you call home.

In a recent discussion with a group of other writers, we talked about “finding the choir”, those who are like-minded in wanting to write and celebrate creative process, reading, and writing. Anne Rice said, “There may be writing groups where people meet but it’s occasional. You really do it all at your own computer or your own typewriter by yourself.” And while that quote rings true in the discipline of writing and necessity to create that somewhat solitary space for getting those words on the page, writing also seems very much a public or social act in that before the writing happens or after the writing has happened, there is reading, observation, experience, and even a joining of those practices, crafting with others who are also writing. There is that persistent image of the lone writer at the tabletop or desk, under a glowing light beaming against the wall. That image is a familiar one, and is sketched across myriad walls as the shadows of writers doing all types of writing, everywhere.

With wisdom and a poignant tongue, Zadie Smith, spoke truth when she said, “All that matters is what you leave on the page.” And that a writer should, “Protect the time and space in which you write.” This is what many “writers” know is true. However, there are wide curious creative spaces between the actual act of writing, pen to page, fingertip to screen or key, and the inspiration, motivation, or sheer will to write. Inspiration and motivation will not get words on the page, but it is a part of the process. And just as much as writing is a process to be cured, it also seems a process to shared. That resolve a writer has when they are lone at their workspace facing their ideas, hopes, fears, or deadlines can be strengthened by the echoed harmonies of other such writers finding their way with their own words in their own respective critical and creative spaces. There is value in connecting with other writers.

Important is having a “choir”, a network of other writers in which to learn, be inspired, challenged, and supported. Writing is a lone matter, but a writer need not stand alone. We live in a time where building a creative network is within reach via social media, our communities, and in our professional realms.  That network or “choir” is the system a writer can call on, participate in when the writing is happening and even when at times it is not. A writer finding their way to their words is a process. And during that process, it is completely normal to feel unsure, less sturdy, exhausted, and lonely. But in this modern time when those who are writing or have to write, are within virtual reach we can literally and figuratively reach out (during our own respective process) for a bit of creative communion.

Where do you find creative communion? Where do you find your choir?

There might be magic in children’s books as they have a way to settle down wiggly awkward boy bodies, commanding stares and stillness. Even the busiest little people find time to take in words, images, and meaning. I love how without prompting my eight year old will read to his three year old brother. There is literacy between them, huddled on the bed together, leaning over a book, my eight year old acting out the character voices with such fervor. For a few minutes there are no arguments, no rolling around on the floor, no jumping on the bed. There is only two brothers, finding their way word by word, sentence by sentence, together.

Every now and then our Saturday is less scheduled, relatively uneventful, and just us. Three is company, and five is a lovely crowd. I’ll take my Saturday with a side of family.

The end of day
was unusually warm,
the playground,
unusually quiet. There
were children in the distance,

but I heard, as I have
so many times before,
his wail, his wrinkled face
a solemn song. His long
slender limbs folded
awkward like brittle branches.
His tears rounded
bunched skin, blushed cheeks,
left bits of spotted salty white.

A collision on the playground,
down the slide,
two friends,
elbow to ankle,
laughter then tears,
broken and bruised,
heal and repeat.

image: via silverfishlongboarding.com

“I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close.”

-Pablo Neruda

image: morguefile

We quarrel in beautiful couplets, sit
beside each other touching our fears
against our tongues. There was a time,
not long ago, we reasoned in a hush,
held our breaths for days, impassioned
collision, let the silence fall
from our mouths as careless flicker.

To find our stride, our turning over,
we learned to listen without wither,
every crevice, every breath, every kind
kind word between us, an opus.

photo credit: morguefile

This public participatory art-making and dialogue event is the work of a partnership between TransitArts and Ohio State University’s Idea Lab at Urban Arts Space. This creative collaboration will explore the art of making, communication, and building community.

The forecast calls for 5-7 inches of snow, and we’re making preparations for the day, and for the next few days. With inclement weather on the horizon, what is a writer to do? Stay in where it’s warm, write, and revise of course. Hope your Sunday isn’t as snow covered, but if it is, please stay safe and warm.

Handwriting Thank You (link)

A Split Second Decision (link)

Fatherhood, a Snapshot (link)

We go through love (link)

Saturday mornings were made for siblings sharing laughs, a yellow plush giraffe and a red caterpillar, for lying around in orange pajamas, and taking in the gray day.

With so much recent public discussion about the politics of parenting in this macro, policy shifting sense, I’ve been thinking a lot about the dozens of micro choices we make as parents every day. Every moment seems to be a shifting, a debate within ourselves as to how to parent, and what we do about time.

The other morning as I gathered my things, a bag on each arm, my wedges (and my flats), a snack for my commute, my three year old, with his pleading brown eyes looked to me and said, “I want to go with you.” It was in that split second that I had to think, to possibly craft a response, a clever one, a concise one (as I was already a bit behind schedule). I thought to myself, I needed to let him down easy, counter his request with a promise to pick him up from school or take him to school the next day. But in that split second, or maybe many more seconds later, I realized where I was headed (work) was fixed. My job (though I had a big program going on that day) wasn’t going anywhere, it would be there when I got there, even if I got into the office just a few minutes later than I had planned. I would still be early and prepared, the work would still get done, and the program would still go on.

But back in the living room with my three year old, I considered there might not be another ask if in this very moment I said, “no.” My husband questioned whether or not I had time to take him to school, but I thought to myself, “I could make time.” It was such a simple request. He wasn’t asking for anything unreasonable, it wasn’t a major crisis, it was an ask for more time. Time, the thing we all seem to grapple with; and as a parent, the thing that seems to elude me every single day.  In that very moment my son just needed more time with me, and as I rounded out all of the reasons (or maybe excuses) for why I could have said, “not today,” or “maybe later,” I simply said, “o.k.”. He put on his socks, his shoes, and his coat; then grabbed my hand, looked up and smiled. “I’m going with mommy,” he announced. In that very moment nothing else mattered but his hand in mine, walking out the door to school, to work, together.

“Love is what you’ve been through with somebody.”—James Thurber

Love is an ongoing conversation, like spring, a perennial stance. We go through love. We move through it, like daylight rippling across the surface of water, like splitting wood opening one fine splinter at a time. We stumble through love with ourselves, with someone else, as graceful as roots lengthening beneath winter soil, stretching beyond the soft ground, blooming still.

photo credit: morguefile

After nearly 12 years, she still sends me lovely notes on paper. The kind of note I keep, stash with the other years of notes, memories, signatures, change of addresses, friendship.

In a time of electronic cards, emails, text message, and many things digital messaging, I suppose I’m still a fan of the occasional handwritten note, letter, card. In a conversation earlier this year with high school seniors, many of them also expressed their love for the handwritten, for pictures, notes, letters they can hold in their hand, smell, savor, read over and over again. They admitted to keeping “pen pals” and returning to writing letters and notes to send greetings and pictures just to have a different communication experience. These students surprised and inspired me as they expressed an appreciation for moments that are “low tech”, and “high touch”, less about instant, anonymous, casual communication, but more about deliberate, thoughtful, human-centered rituals in communication and writing. These students were looking for a balance.

Of course there are creatively endless ways to communicate using our technologies and devices, but there is something multi-sensory about the experience of writing a letter, a note, and then mailing it. It seems that same multi-sensory experience is ignited when mail arrives and it’s not a catalogue or a utility bill, but a handwritten note from a loved one or a friend, a note that traveled a long or short distance, with its own narrative of how it arrived.

What do you think? Do you occasionally hand write letters, notes, or cards, send them by mail, or slip them in the hand of a loved one or friend? Do you still receive handwritten notes?

That sleepy baby lying across his father’s lap is a soft pod, warm in elbow bend. His tiny fingers barely curl around his father’s worn knuckles, cup his stubble chin, press thumb against kiss.

There are men that father, breathe in deliberate moments of time with the child or children in their lives. Sign a wisdom with deep voices, burly echoes as acts of love and parenting, raise that child, those children with their hands and their hearts.

After a bit of reading, re-reading, writing, I offer up words and wonder from the past week. I hope your Sunday is unfolding beautifully. Enjoy.

When it comes to you (link)

photo credit: morguefile

Good morning Chicago (link)

Waiting (link)

Orange and Blue (link)

In Love (link)

photo credit: morguefile

When it comes to you, I am a warm and gentle glow.

To be in love is to touch with a lighter hand. In yourself you stretch, you are well.—Gwendolyn Brooks

photo credit: Kim Webb

To be in love is to clasp a hand, to hold tightly, feel the grip dimple your skin, warm the inner most cusp of your hand, that dark middle, crossed with etchings, marked and worn. To be in love is to open that cusp, the soft round of your hand, to someone else, and hold on. ―dce

photo credit: morguefile

“Love is a blue balloon that wants to be orange.” ― Jarod Kintz  

Love’s tongue is on fire. One foot
out the bedroom door, one ear pressed
against sharp words lost in fault, in strike,
confused by the clutter of crisp interruptions,
awkward run-on sentences, clashing blue.

―dce

When you are away your younger brother leaves space for you to play beside him on the rug, he saves you a toy, even if when you are here he doesn’t always like to share. He calls your name as if you will walk through the door or down the stairs to be with him. He hears us try to explain the swaying shifts of our family, the days you are away. He twists his face in confusion as we try to give him words for where you are in exchange for that empty space next to him on the sofa, at the table, in the room you both share. He still stands in the window looking for you, waiting. And I understand that wait because I’ve now taken up standing beside him.