"Break"

Okay, so now I've had some time 'off' or 'away' and know who my next teacher is to be -- Bernard Cooper -- I'm excited. Reading Andre Aciman, "Call me by your name." Blown away. Inspired. And, for the first time, too intimidated to write again yet. Can't wait for January's residency.

Holidays in Sight, Just...

Last packet of the semester, and I am desperately punching out pages and pages about my past romantic life -- having a great time, while also suffering from the remembrance and wondering if I could ever publish any of it without destroying my karma -- meanwhile avoiding the 10 page lit. essay I have to write. Hmmm, not much has changed there.
Have managed to almost get through this second term while also dealing with kids' school issues, head lice (twice) and generally wanting to give them both more of my time and affection before they get too old for my hugs and tickles, or before I turn grey, whichever is the sooner...

Crossroads

So now I am at a point where I almost have a finished manuscript and feel suddenly terrified, as I can't just write anymore -- I have to figure out how to make it work as a book. Thank goodness I have 2 terms left to figure it out...Hopefully I won't panic too much and do anything Oedipal...

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...

Packet in the Mail...

...now can I give myself a day off? I doubt it!

Fall-ing

Getting ready to send out my September 'packet.' It's been a rough and crazy ride, ideas flying out from the horse's hoof's like gravel. Dinah Lenney is a wonderful teacher (have I said that before?), pushing me, asking the difficult questions, but kindly. Marvelous, painful therapy, and the words get clearer every time I sit down to write. Direction? Onwards.
My son, now in first grade, has homework -- eek -- and it is a real lesson in patience and a reminder that writing is always, from the start, a hard process, but that as it comes, it brings great pleasure. The questions I ask him: "Can you think of another word?" "Would you like to say more about that?" "How do you end a sentence?" are the same questions I ask myself.
And my daughter? She's taking it all in from a distance. Can't wait till they are both off and writing stories and poems. Shame about the math genes!