Back Home

Arrived yesterday for the fourth of my five residencies here at Bennington. Vermont -- ah, the greenness, the gentle air, the books, the words, the people. My husband and children brought me and they ran with me in the field here down to 'the end of the world' and I was happy -- knew in my skin and my lungs and veins the gift I've been given.
Last night, Donald Hall reading aloud his piece about aging that I happened to have read in The New Yorker, and this coming week so many wonderful writers reading and sharing their wisdom. This term I will work with Phillip Lopate and will get to be in a workshop led by him and Sven Birkerts. Lucky me.
So many people here who feel like sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles, old old friends. Home indeed! Ten days, then, again, the work!

Love

Progressing, slowly, hopefully surely -- actually, intermittently surely and then full of doubts, immobilized by fits of crying, which means, I think, I'm on the right track. I keep thinking, 'Wish I'd started a decade earlier,' but then I wouldn't have had the necessary distance. Manuscript growing; heart open wide. Hope I stay healthy/alive till 90 so I can get it all done -- die absolutely vital; 'in media res.' And so I can be here to watch my lovely angels grow; be here for them. Seven is already painful, I can tell; five is happy, but my girl, like my boy, will suffer I know and I want to be their cushion; their oxygen when they can't get enough. I posted a picture of my daughter on Face Book and so many people said, in effect, 'She's you.' I can only wish -- and wish she can get through it all stronger than I did. Can't stand to think there will be dark times, but these are what has informed my writing, so who am I to say? Let the light shine. As the song goes that we sing on our way to school, 'Shine, shine, shine, shine, shine, shine, shine.'

Earth Mother Writer

Managed to participate in kids' Earth Day celebrations at school this a.m. AND got three hours intensive editing done before picking them up, which all goes to prove a clear head and time spent with several hundred adorable, thoroughly engaged children, and some nice guys talking about trees, is nothing but a creative boon. I wouldn't have done any better if I'd just sat on my butt all morning.

"She did not think herself a genius by any means; but when the writing fit came on, she gave herself up to it with entire abandon, and led a blissful life, unconscious of want, care, or bad weather, while she sat safe and happy in an imaginary world, full of friends almost as real and dear to her as any in the flesh...The divine afflatus usually lasted a week or two, and then she emerged from her vortex, hungry, sleepy, cross, or despondent." (Louisa Alcott, Little Women)

Yes, but she was not writing memoir...and she did not have kids whose spring break collided exactly with the need to go to her desk and lose herself in that vortex...

Yes, but she did not have kids.

Whoooaaaa

Somewhere in the middle of this third term come the giant spiritual questions. The closer I get to the achievement of the dream, the more terrifying. What if the memoir DOES get published? Do I have the right to tell a story that might challenge others I know? Yes, Yes, but, but...

Why I Have not Posted for Ages

I have written myself into an exhausted heap. I cannot put another extra word on paper let alone computer. Have nearly 150 pages of a completely new manuscript and am feeling excited about it. I hope I'm not deluding myself -- third manuscript lucky, perhaps. Have a more pragmatic teacher this term, which is an interesting contrast to Dinah Lenney, but I miss her. I'm still writing so I guess it's working though I'm nervous about next term, my last -- I so want to have a good last hurrah.

"The Common" is publishing a short essay I wrote, so that's exciting. Exciting, however, goes hand in hand with exhausting, it seems. Need sleep, hot tub, movies, but will I let myself have those things? Perish the thought! Seem to be getting good time with the children in any case, so the balance thing is working out. I know how very lucky I am, I really do. Now I just need to publish something, and/or get a teaching job and pay off the loans!

Road Block, Circumvented

Sent and received back comments on my first packet of work with new teacher, Bernard Cooper. He is astute but doesn't cushion the blow with any female padding, so I reeled for a day, then got determined, then reeled  bit more, procrastinated, and finally today sat down and began again. My confidence is seriously wavering. I know I can do this now -- write, but how to put together a coherent manuscript is another thing altogether. Agggghhhhh.

Have been reading like crazy -- Geoff Dyer's "Out of Sheer Rage" -- amazing stuff, and thinking, thinking about the essay I have to write and then turn into a lecture. Ambiguity. Ach -- it's so exciting and so exhausting that it's giving me a headache. I need yoga and I need a break already. I can see why two years is the extent of the MFA course. When you start, you think you'll want to do this forever, but it's pretty unforgiving. Of course, the pressure is what's needed, but a body needs to stop at some point along the way!

Trying to fit it all in in my three 'free' mornings, in between grading and getting ready for my classes. The kids are wonderful -- so full of life and loving to play outside these warm winter days. And next week I have a birthday party to plan. My little one is turning five.

Planting

With only a week till my first packet of the term is due, I sat down and, not quite ready to start afresh, went back to the piece I started at the beginning of the program about arriving in the South and going home to watch my Grandma die. Ah. Reflection, compression -- where to cut, what to keep, what to add. Yes, I have learned something. And my grandmother is still with me, guiding my hand.
Somehow I have learned, too, to write in any circumstance -- children calling, TV blaring. I never thought I would be able to, but how we adapt, and with that adaptation evolve, of course. To grow and be actually aware of that growth, now that's a gift. And planting 100 bluebells with my family, and seeing my son whiz down the road on his new scooter, his own confidence finally coming, his enormous smile...

Reentry Blues

Quite a homecoming! Woke up to my wonderful ones, to a holiday we got to spend together, but contending with a cold and the thought of teaching the next day with no time to prepare myself, a doctor visit for my daughter, and then my son's major meltdown about doing homework (should a first grader really have that kind of pressure, I ask myself?) and his teacher's testing comments about some problems he's having in school -- well, suffice it to say I ended up out in the back garden (read 'yard') trying to nurse my psyche back to some kind of health. Felt like I'd taken into my body a battle-load, and so, so tired. I knew of course on some level it would be this hard, but not what it would look like.
Now the children are back in school (difficult morning for them) and I must get myself to work. Feel so open, so vulnerable to further attack, but I know by now that that openness is the thing -- the way to truth. I just wish I had another day to hide away, to get ready for the onslaught.
Answer? Tea!

End of the Residency

Well, time's almost up and I have danced and listened and written and thought my way once again into a state of delirious, mind-saturating exhaustion. Funny how the body knows when the brain and heart are full, and sends out messages to stop a full-on disaster. It has snowed a little at last, so I am happy -- been given all the gifts I asked for -- time and space and friendship and dancing and stimulating, mind-altering connections via talks and readings and all those many wonderful breakfast and lunch and dinner and afternoon and late night conversations. I am in love with all that is, and when I pushed open the doors to the outside this morning, I saw the snowy world, took in a great breath of the day and the words "Beautiful world" escaped my mouth. Blessings abound, and I am rolling in them, drinking them, breathing them, and now it is time for one great, long exhale, like the one at the end of a yoga practice, time to say goodbye, get on a plane, go home to my family, where the real work of the heart resides, a work that is lovely and without which I would appreciate none of this, for it is that family, those generous beings, who teach me daily how to open the heart so that the great gifts of this experience might enter there. Oh, lucky, lucky life, oh delicious exhaustion!

Term 3, Day 6

It's Wednesday which means I must be crying -- all the words and beauty and creativity and freedom and late nights building up to a great need for release, not to mention a hot bath and an early night, which I have yet again denied myself! Wonderful readings by Alice Mattison and Rachel Pastan tonight, not to mention student readings and lectures that just filled me with inspiration like cream fills a cream puff and spills out the sides when you bite it! Snow forecast tomorrow!

Term 3, Day 5

Met with my new teacher, Bernard Cooper, today and went to a fantastic lecture by David Daniel on the imagination. So inspired and fired up -- one of those talks where everything converges and almost everything someone says, every reference raised somehow joins up the dots of an idea you were beginning to think about, in this case opening the self to the primary or primal imagination in order to make the words on the page hot with life -- getting naked on the page. Free night, so we're off to dinner and I got to sit in the sauna, too. Getting tired, and still this residual illness lurking in my throat and chest, but enjoying every moment now. Time for FaceTime. My poor hubby has had to teach my class as well as his and then sort out picking up the children from unfamiliar locations. His gift to me, a precious one, though not much fun for him this week, I think. Heard a piece will be published in The Common -- my first prose publication. A small wonder!

Term 3, Day 4

Still no snow to play in but an array of wonderful voices that make me feel like I'm falling in love over and over again every day. Today, Tracey K Smith and Sven Birkerts and Suzanne Koven and all my wonderful friends. It's beginning to feel a lot like home here, and that our class is soon to be the graduating one makes it seem even more dear to the heart. Not sleeping much, but my brain is a wonderful bundle of wires shooting its messages from synapse to super-stimulated synapse. I couldn't sustain this kind of creative madness but for now it feels pretty fantastic. So lucky. Feel good things brewing in this particular crucible of good people and beautiful words. Wish things were easier for my husband at home with the kids but I have to remember this is good for US too. We need to feed ourselves.

Term 3, Day 3

Challenging days, but I can feel my brain expanding, bursting at the seams. Disappointed by the lack of snow to play in, but hula-hooped tonight and listened to some fine, moving voices. I swim in them, I let their music fall down around me, and I am so inspired. I didn't get to talk to my family today and it feels weird and distancing, but I am so grateful that my children have a dad who loves them and that they get this time to grow together without the mom-helicopter circling (landing again soon enough, God willing). I am not used to being among so many people. They are such fine people, but I realize how much I need at times my own space, the sound of just my own breath. 'You live through your writing,' said my wonderful teacher, Dinah, today, and she is so right. I am so blessed to have been given this opportunity -- and the freedom, let me never forget, to speak and write my truth without fear of reprisal -- that no one will shoot me, I hope, for saying what is in my heart: for putting it out in the world.

Term 3, Day 2

Blessed by wonderful company -- as I remarked to someone here, no egos, just a bunch of bright and beautiful people to go walking with, to talk off the anxieties and frustrations of the more difficult procedural stuff. And so many talents -- singers, violinists, humorists, marathon runners, other parents all being brave about being so far from the warm little bodies we know and love so dearly. Facetime is wonderful until your little girl starts to cry and you cannot hold her...

Term 3, Day 1

Long, long day. Beautiful one - the sky a delicious confection of cloud and light and moon from morning till night. Long walk with my wonderful fellow participants, stopping in the meditation room with the open skylight to sing Dona Nobis Pacem, then readings, lecture, meals, more readings and finally. An impromptu reading of ours own work by my graduating class in the lounge of my dorm. Everyone's work has progressed so far - amazing, and I felt so proud of everyone - my people, all of us, growing. Met my teacher and felt terrified that the piece I've been working on of which I feel proud and about which I'm excited will be torn down and torn apart. Don't know why this anxiety, but then met my favorite friends, walked again in the twilight, came back and sat and listened to their amazing work. Women in control of their destinies at least on the page - a thrilling, enlivening experience. Saw my little family on FaceTime on my husband's IPad and they looked happy and busy. One of the graduating women is here with her baby and the baby's soft head and sweet searching eyes filled me with a moment of that blessed mystery of love I first knew seven years ago now. All that waiting and look at the gifts it has brought me! If there were aNy snow on the ground, I would fall down in it and thank heaven. I thank, in any case, dear heaven.

Back in Bennington

So here I am, tired, plane sick, sporting a charming array of post viral symptoms and scars following a nasty holiday cold. Left the family at 7am and arrived here at 5pm. Completely different feeling to before -- no surprises, just the sense that there is work to be done. Wow -- not what I expected at all, but a good feeling still of seriousness necessary to what's ahead. Halfway through the program and a book to finish. Some problems covering child care arrangements on the homefront, but mostly the kids just want to know if I'm bringing home the maple sugar candy they have come to expect! I am ready.