There was a huge barrier to writing–and see, here I am writing about writing again, despite my noblest of intentions–that had its roots in a pressure to perform. One could say the same for living, for being. The pressure to perform draped my existence much the way a wet wool sweater might: heavy, weighing down. […]
Archives for October 2014
The Writer Writing
“As I write these words, dust drifts across the floor. Stacks of urgent mail grow tall. The dollhouse curtains stay unmade. Laundry ripens. I need you to understand that I write because poems do not break. They do not follow a clock. Like us, they breathe the air of hamburgers frying, but it is air […]
The Writer Pausing
No writing tonight. I’m busy talking across time zones with a friend. {{Happy Sigh}} (Day 8 of the Writing Challenge: where I’m “Just Writing” daily for 31 days.)
The Writer Climbing
We hiked our favorite trail today before the sun arched high in the sky, and I remembered a hike we’d taken when Eddie was still an infant. It had felt like such a milestone then, to be out there on my own with five children. Now there are six, and somehow six seems easier than five. Today I had […]
The Writer Emerging
Emerge: move out of or away from something, and come into view. It was a day in May in Oklahoma, and 30 years had passed since shame had silenced her tongue. A mama now, that girl from long ago was lifting the window to listen to her children play in the spring-green field behind her […]
The Writer Coming Forth
“Lazarus, come forth!” –Book of John, Chapter 11 Where Adam had hidden, swathed by death’s foreshadowing, Lazarus laid literal, enshrouded within a tomb. Death had conquered completely, but when Jesus spoke, deep called unto deep at the sound of his voice, and Lazarus awakened. The magic is that when Jesus said come, he came. That’s where the magic happens for […]
The Writer Hiding
For it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted to them his property, giving to one five talents, giving to another two, and to another, one. The servant who had received the five talents went at once and traded, making five talents more. The servant who had […]
The Writer Fearing
I’m not sure what fears snag me when I sit down to put pen to paper, or fingers to keys. Probably there is the pressure to hold up an image and then the terror of feeling that the words, once sensing freedom, may charge down paths ungoverned. The art, it has something to say. But I am not so […]
The Writer Cowering
One of the things that makes it so hard for me to write–even though in writing I find an avenue of peace, of life — is that I am totally bound up in a consciousness of other people. Other people think things, after all, and what if they think of me? As far back into […]
31 Days of Just Writing
Since 2012 I have wanted to join in on the 31 Days October Writing Challenge, but have balked on October’s doorstep. Write? For 31 consecutive days? I barely […]