Do the Thing…
Don’t have the energy to do what you want to do? Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Do the thing and you will get the energy to do the thing.”
Blog Challenge: Best Night Out
from Gwen Bell’s Best of 2009 Blog Challenge
The Question: Did you have a night out with friends or a loved one that rocked your world? Who was there? What was the highlight of the night?
There were probably a few nights, now melded in memory, from my last residency at Pacific in June. There was the uncontrollable laughter–the kind that you’re almost concerned about whether or not you’ll be able to take another breath, but the thought of losing consciousness owing to oxygen shortage makes everything even funnier… the kind that makes your obliques hurt more than they have from abdominal crunches.
When I laugh that hard tears stream down my cheeks.
There was that time when Aaron raised his hand, and we just lost it. There were homemade brownies. There was red wine in real wine glasses thanks to Eric. There was that all night conversation… To say that that night, or nights, rocked my world, would be vastly understated.
Pictured here with my fiction writing friends, Jason Sandefur and Alissa Nielsen.
Blog Challenge: Best Book
from Gwen Bell’s Best of 2009 Blog Challenge 
The Question: What book – fiction or non – touched you? Where were you when you read it? Have you bought and given away multiple copies?
I’m re-reading Marianne Williamson’s A Return to Love right now and it’s pretty much altering the way I perceive everything — again. Of course there is the famous quote that is always a good reminder…
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us, it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
But there are so many other, equally potent gems scattered throughout the pages. My copy is already filled with underlines from the first go-around, but I’m finding new ideas on almost every page that somehow resonate with me in a way that is both novel and familiar.
Want to play along? Check out the list here and blog about your favorites for ‘09 all through December:
http://www.gwenbell.com/blog/2009/11/30/the-best-of-2009-blog-challenge.html
God and the G-Spot
One of my favorites by Ellen Bass…
God and the G-Spot
He didn’t want to believe. He wanted to know.
~ Ann Druyan, Carl Sagan’s wife, on why he didn’t believe in God
I want to know too. Belief and disbelief
are a pair of tourists standing on swollen feet
in the Prado–I don’t like it.
I do.–before the Picasso.
Or the tattoo artist with a silver stud
in her full red executive lips,
who, as she inked in the indigo blue, said,
I think the G-spot’s one of those myths
men use to make us feel inferior.
God, the G-spot, falling in love. The earth round
and spinning, the galaxies speeding
in the glib flow of the Hubble expansion.
I’m an East Coast Jew. We all have our opinions.
But it was in the cabin at La Selva Beach
where I gave her the thirty tiny red glass hearts
I’d taken back from my husband when I left.
He’d never believed in them. She, though, scooped
them up like water, let them drip through her fingers
like someone who has so much she can afford to waste.
That’s the day she reached inside me
for something I didn’t think I had.
And like pulling a fat shining trout from the river
she pulled the river out of me. That’s
the way I want to know God.
Red Lilies
It has been a very long time since I’ve read this poem that I love, Red Lilies, by Richard Speakes. When I got out the old December 1994 edition of Poetry and reread it, I thought I’d share the beauty…
Red Lilies
by Richard Speakes
For Joan Didion
We tame with explanations any red, provide
meanings into which we dive, the human
foxhole where the mind finds protection.
It’s fabulous out there, and one clump
of red lilies beside the house could be
the bullet that rips through the body of
all those connotations, our symbols,
the stories that make sense of our world.
Red Riding Hood and Christ’s wounds, mother’s
blood,
and the color the sun must be as one’s death
gives sunset its purpose, its passion at closure.
And then, rising, the moon punctuates the sentence
one’s life made, its last word that somehow rhymes
with all the words preceding, love and work
and sex. One’s death is by nature that moment,
all the meanings folded into the bundle
one carries, tied to a stick of bone,
as one goes forth into eternity.
That exquisite nonsense is the world
the mind makes from the world it didn’t,
with words that are themselves blossoms
of the invisible, the world as we see it.
As a side note, it’s interesting to think that I read this, and loved it, long before I knew of Richard Speakes and Joan Didion. I was in high school at the time, fancying myself a writer, and here I am today, fifteen years later, having gotten cozy with Didion’s writing last semester, and still loving that poem.
The Little Fox
My friend and fellow writer Adrianna Buonarroti introduced me to the little fox from Google’s tea house theme. I am always curious what he is up to. For instance, in the image below, he’s sitting on his pier with his lantern watching toy boats in the evening. If you check back an hour later, he’ll be stargazing with his telescope.
The tea house theme for gmail depicts another view, on the opposite side his pagoda. Sometimes he is picking flowers in his courtyard or as of five minutes ago, he is cooking dinner inside. Why does this little guy’s activity intrigue me? Perhaps it is simply another form of procrastination, one more thing to check out before getting down to the business of writing.
Book Release Party Success
Thanks to everyone who showed up for last Friday’s book release party. We had such a great time that evening and are glad you could join us. It’s been an exciting year so far for the co-authors of Wake Up Women. Here are a couple pics from the party.
Mindie Kniss reads from the bestseller Wake Up Women
MFA Notes: Kwame Dawes
I can still hear poet Kwame Dawes saying, “born at de right time,” in his smooth Jamaican accent. He opened his craft talk with a brief biographical sketch: born in Ghana where he heard stories of glorious Jamaica from his father. When he moved with his family to the island, he discovered a far different place and culture than he had imagined. “I was trying to find home,” he said. Was he a Jamaican living in Africa or an African living in Jamaica?
Questions surfaced regarding the search for self in art. How do we fit into the works created by authors in other lands, other cultures? How does their writing define our own culture? Or how do we place ourselves in art that does not typically include people like us or cultures like ours?
I did not realize at the time that Kwame’s book on the lyrics of Bob Marley is the most authoritative text on the subject. Kwame spoke of how Marley wrote the narrative of Jamaica and the culture through reggae. It was a “present music” including both the collective history and the events of the day. We were left with a reminder to “be engaged in what makes the times what they are.”
