The Sweetest Place in the World

I must be almost at the midpoint of my program, and I am so thrilled by what I can sense happening in my writing and understanding of all I'm studying -- in myself. Words, like these falling autumn leaves outside my window, fall off the branches and reveal the tree's brilliance beneath -- its striations. There is little more thrilling, I think, than discovering our voice, and keeping discovering...this thing that always develops and is never 'done.' A wonderful immortality.
Every day that I get to do this, to live like this, to pursue my passion, surrounded by the people I most love, the little island that is my family, I want to get down on my knees and thank whatever power or fate it is that has allowed me this respite from all those earlier years of confusion and struggle. If I'd only known on those many dark days how blessed I would feel now, how I was always my own greatest gift. But we cannot discover this alone. I am so grateful for my teachers, formal and unintended -- my peers and my children as much as the wonderful mentors who read each month my work and say, 'Yes. Go on.' All any of us really needs, but how seldom we find ourselves in such a sweet place.

October already?

A beautiful cool, sunny fall day. A time to shift over, in the kids' case to sweaters and blankets on their beds; in mine, to reading of a different sort -- Phillip Lopate (who I keep wanting to call Larkin) and Sven Birkerts, one of whom I hope will be my teacher next term. Interesting to see how a man responds to my work. I need to open up to it -- more good life lessons...