It’s been over twenty years since Natalie Goldberg urged us to “free the writer within” in what seemed, at the time, her groundbreaking (well, in some circles) book, Writing Down the Bones, first published in 1986. Yep, Reagan was still President…
Current of Life
And so, for the first time in my life perhaps I took the lamp, and went down to my inmost self. But as I moved …
Pillow Talk
A while back, I took an online class that was all about getting past writer’s block. I’m not even sure that I had a case of writer’s block at the time; I’d been writing away fairly regularly, with the usual peripatetic ups and down but somehow something felt—and thus kept getting—stuck. Looking back now, I think what I mostly needed at that moment was…
A Day Like Any Other Summer Day
It’s almost sultry here in Oregon as I type these words, sitting outside listening to the temple bells make their music to my ears. I’m alone this week with J. down in Corvallis. And I’m thinking more about Cynthia, and how much I’ve missed her …
Hammering It Home: Poetry’s Nuts and Bolts
Mary Oliver is a beloved contemporary poet. Her work is read at weddings and funerals and by Garrison Keillor on his radio show, “The Writer’s Alamanac.” Even my yoga teacher in Corvallis, Oregon, often began our class with inspirational lines from Oliver’s work…
Sunset, Sunrise
Last night, I dreamed of being on the ferry from Mukilteo to Whidbey Island in Washington. It was crowded with people, what I imagine it might feel like to travel in steerage, and the weight of all the passengers …
Into the Maze, Blindfolded
Every one of us has one of those books—assigned in a class, passed along from a friend, found in the bottom of the box you bought for a buck at the annual Friends of the Library book sale in Ithaca, New York…
There’s No Place Like Not-Home
Trigger is not one of my favorite nouns mostly thanks to its too frequent use under sad and horrific circumstances in this gun-toting, trigger-happy country of ours. But one of my favorite books about writing is a little gem by Richard Hugo called The Triggering Town…
Art, Sun, Gardening
Alberta Art Hop Day. The Al Forno Feruzza bus had its completed paint job on display (this is the in-progress version) as we wandered by, up and down the closed thirty or so blocks of Alberta Street, our neighborhood, our neck of the Portland woods….
City Days, City Scenes
I really feel (finally) like I live in a city this past week. This in spite of just coming in from digging out spreading day …
