Taking leave

Who has turned us around like this, so that
whatever we do, we find ourselves in the attitude
of someone going away? Just as that person
on the last hill, which shows him his whole valley
one last time, turns, stops, lingers--,
so we live, forever taking our leave."

~Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), The Eighth Elegy,  

 

 

I apologize for the length of this blog.

 

All I can say in my defense is that over time it became addicting, and also a true companion.

I tried to open it every morning, even if only for a brief moment, and often it was not until I wrote here that I found what it is that I want to say.

 

My other line of defense is that many of the entries here are rather short, at times only a picture and few words. Those were, are, my inspiration. In analyzing my writing process I find that quotes, and pictures, start the flow of thoughts that later leads me to write. I wonder at times if they can create the same magic for others.

 

I meant to cut it short at the end, and tried several times to do it, but as a true reflection of my thought process during the course, cutting it, I felt, will take away from its coherency.

 

So bear with me and feel free to jump over anything that does not strike your fancy.

 

Thank you everybody for the support and good advice.

 I will miss it, I already miss it.



 some links;
http://unschoolin.weebly.com/index.html
\
http://onewordatatime.weebly.com/

https://twitter.com/ldplus4u

Finding out what one has to say

 

 

Then one precedes, finding out what one has to say and finding it out in the only possible way: by writing.

If a picture can paint a thousand words.

A picture can paint a thousand words but at times few words can paint a picture, draw a vivid image, capture a feeling, make us giggle; create a good feeling or a feeling of a looming doom.

For awhile now I have been collecting those one line wonders and here are few of my favorites;

If tomorrow never comes

Summer faded into fall

I stumble amid the words

We see the brightness of a new page where everything yet can happen. Rainer Maria Rilke

So many years in one yesterday - Carla Phelps Wert

He was a missing person who no one missed at all

All things on earth point home in old October - Thomas Wolfe

Each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. ~Edgar Allan Poe

Like a ship trying to sail on yesterday’s wind’

For forever you need once upon a time

When patterns are broken, new worlds emerge.

If we have any sense of who we are it is because we live inside the eyes of others – Paul Auster

So we live, and are always taking leave - Rainer Maria Rilke

Writing is power, as a writer one can make the world stop and pay attention

I can hear the truck tires coming up the gravel road – Rascal Flatts

Perhaps only migrating birds know–Suspended between earth and sky–The heartache of two homelands.—Leah Goldberg, 1970

My write place

This is clever, a nice play on words. I am in the write place, where is the write place for you? How do one describe his/hers write place?

Got it?

For years my 'write place' was any place with a lot of people. Inside the noise I could carve a small private bubble and write. I liked the noise, the movement, and the feeling that I am not alone. Coffee houses were a natural choice since I like coffee (with a cake) and the offering, included, in the price, a table and few chairs. Big bookstores with a coffee corner were just as good, and the added bonus of books breathing around me was a nice touch. But even noisy bus stations, train stations, airports, everywhere that a sitting place was provided was just fine.

Things changed dramatically when I discovered the computer and the word processor.

Within night I was transformed from that person who loved to write, by hand, to a depended, needy slave. This conniving machine takes my words, line them neatly on a lighted screen, and then starts messing up with them. Red marks, green scribbles, sometimes even blue. At times it even tries to finish my words for me, or will announce with smugness that the last sentence I wrote will not do.

So this is my write place now, on a chair, across from a screen, being continuously abused by a ‘thinking’ machine.

Writers live twice...still hang up on the title

This one is truly inspiring. If it was only mine. I wonder if Natalie Goldberg will mind. Writers live twice, it has a nice ring to it and it is aiming right to our atmost fears and desires. Immortality. Maybe it should say, writers live forever.

An inspiring friend

Almost at the end of this blog and I feel a little sad.

Actually there are way too many entries here and to be true to the assignment, I should go in and cut them to the 30 needed. I am not sure that I can do that. This blog accompanied me for four months now and was such a loyal friend. Whenever I needed to clarify my thoughts, get some inspiration, sort the main ideas from the ones that did not work, I used it. Whenever I got anxious, restless, uptight, unsure, lost, I used it. My usual morning writing was often done here. And at times when I had nothing much to say I just put in a quote, or a picture because let’s face it, a good quote or a clever picture are worth a thousand words....ha...ha.

So how does one abandon a friend or cut him down?

You are never too old to fight dragons

“Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

 

A writer is someone that writes

Publication - is the auction of the Mind of Man. ~Emily Dickinson

Showcase

Showcase  your work

http://educhoices.org/articles/Get_Published_-_50_Online_Writing_Websites_for_New_Writers.html

Get Published - 50 Online Writing Websites for New Writers

http://www.squidoo.com/writingfulltime

List of Freelance Writing Sites

http://www.be-a-better-writer.com/writing-platform.html

Why a Writing Platform is a Must: 13 Ways to Build Yours

http://writersresidence.com/welcome/tour

Writing Is Your Business. Treat It Like One.

In the company of writers II

Follow the leader

What Kind of a group leader?

 

 That is how I don't want to feel

 



 

 

 

That is how I sometimes feel

 

Community -communities or is it just a matter of approache

So as I am planning this writing workshop I am conflicted between several approaches.

1. The prompt centered one, where the 'leader' supplies the group with mind bugling, or just simply inspirational prompts, to get the juices flowing and to write consistently.

I used to enjoy that, and still do. Especially seeing the results and how differently people responded to the same prompts.

2. The multigenre centered approach, in which to a specified genre every member of the group can choose his/her topic to write to, and the only rule is 'follow the genre'.

I enjoyed that just as much, if not more. It is a very challenging method that helped me as a writer to find my comfort zone, as well as those writing genres that I felt uncomfortable with. I found, very surprisingly, that I like humor and irony, and am quite good at that. I liked the freedom to choose my own topics. I found however, that many people find this approach a bit too vague and hard to follow.

3. The theme centered approach; these are writing groups that center, usually, around memories, life stories, or autobiography themes.

I used to find them appealing and can see how they could be seen as the best approach for groups of older adults but personally, and maybe because I was involved in so many hours of this type of writing, I find in myself a certain reluctance to use it. Definitely more structured but as a writer, one needs to tread carefully and at times confronting emotional topics heads on can be intimidating.

4. The single genre approach, namely workshops that are centered on poetry, fiction writing, sci-fi, horror etc.

These ones can be great for those writers who know who they are and want to build up on that direction, but  maybe not for the beginner writer, who are hesitant about its writing voice.

5. And finally the completely open ones where the 'leader' says "just write about anything." I was in one and found it to be quiet ineffective.

I did not mention those groups where writing is being done ‘on the fly’ meaning it is done solely in the group and it is usually a timed writing to prompts. I am not sure how I feel about this practice. Though I can see how it can be used effectively to encourage writing.  After reading Kenneth Koch book about writing in a nursing home I discovered another face to this type of writing and can see how it can be used effectively. 

Get a cat

UNIVERSAL WRITERS' TIP:

GET A CAT.

(The one pictured is Sid.)
Monica wood

This morning I feel, that this is so far the best advice I received today.

With my cat sitting practically in my lap

Between me and the keyboard

Shedding white hair on both of us,

Me and the keyboard

Purring softly in my ear

She will not budge an inch

So with one hand I embrace her

(and keep her body from the keys)

With the other I click away

Leaning over her

I know it looks strange

But the radiating warmth

Mingles with fluffy soft hair

Reminds me every time not to take myself

Too seriously.

In the company of writers

 

 

 

This seems to copture the idea.

It is all about the right title

 

Communities and writing environment, I am still contemplating the idea for my future writing group. I am searching for the title that will express everything in few exact words. It seems to me as I am wrestling with different names that if I'll manage to get it right it will open the road to the rest of the ideas to come forward and reveal themselves to me. It happened to me before. Getting stuck on what seems like a mere technicality but really is not.

 The elusive title, how hard can it be? and yet so often I will find myself stuck. I am sitting there gazing at my screen frantically trying to come up with a title that will free my thoughts. Numerous times I say to myself "Just start writing, it will come." But no, I can't. It is like a bone stuck in my throat, so overpowering, nothing else can happen until it will be resolved and breathing resumes.

Work the plan

So this how my head looks at this point, many ideas, endless directions, very colorful but at the end it all amounts to one big nothing.
I need to tame this splash of ideas into a workable plan with some logic and practical ideas. I need to make it so that other people will be able to see where I am going and attempt to connect with me even if partially and on crossroads.

So how about this?
Making ideas visible, I like that alot. From my head to the paper and from there to a plan that can actually be executed.
Making ideas visible, this have a nice ring to it, something that will continue to hum in my head all day long and maybe will produce a seed that I can then plant.

A plan to improve writing in my community part II

Writing in the community, developing a plan to enhance the environment for adult writing.

 

"It is the following trio that finally gets my attention; authentic writing, supportive audience and the freedom to use multigenre writing."

My first step is to search these ideas a bit further and find practical ways to implement them in my community. I search my memory, and notes, from several writing groups. Many which I participated in, and the few that I tried to run myself. I realize pretty fast that I will have to dig further to come up with answers and I approach some of my former writing comrades and ask for their input.

The answers that I receive reinforce what I already knew.

S. wrote;

"I really enjoyed writing class; it was a way to meet new people I wouldn't have met otherwise. I learned allot about writing without the stress of being in 'class'. And with regret I am not writing anymore, I think I need the group camaraderie to keep motivated. Perhaps folks 55 and older might like writing about their own life experiences and contrast them with what they see today. The 'write what you know' idea."

R. wrote;

" I often think fondly of our time in the writing group. I am not writing now, but often thinking about starting again. I feel like I would need a new group to get myself going though. It really helped me to have prompts. When I started to write my own "novel" I began to falter. I think it was just too close, and too overwhelming. And I had too much invested in it. I liked having neutral topics that I could make personal...or not. I liked having the critique of the group, though sometimes my feelings would be hurt a bit. I really learned how much I needed an imposed structure to get myself going, even though I loved the writing when I was doing it."

 

So supportive audience in the form of the writing group, that seems to be spelled out, loud and clear.

A plan to improve writing in my community

Trying to think of a plan to encourage writing in my community I go back to my conversation with my 'adult student' searching for the thread, the clues, the ideas I might have missed. Something to provide me with a trail.
 

I find these words that I wrote at the end of the conversation.
 

"The immense power of words can carry us over miles, and miles, of roads, and create bridges to memories long forgotten. It could turn into a tool of clarification and control, for sure, but it can also be intimidating for the exact same reasons. This is the only way I can explain why talented writers, like M. refrain from writing, especially when they are on their own without a group to support them."

Somewhere here is my clue. A way to understand the inner making of an adult writer .It is maybe different from that of a younger student but how? It might be in the following trio; authentic writing, supportive audience and the freedom to use multigenre writing.

Truth is stranger than fiction

For the past four years I was chasing memories.

 

Through family stories, faded pictures and old documents, I was obsessively trying to reconstruct the indisputable truth.

 

Many of these memories once I got hold of them turned out to be completely false. Like colorful soap bubbles they exploded once I touched them, leaving nothing but air. I had to smile when I came across a filmed video of my mother, at age seventy, saying looking straight at the camera, how her grandmother died when she was three years old. I know this is not true; I am holding in my hands the document with the exact date of her death. I know now, contrary to what I held true for years, that I was named after my grandmother’s sister who died in Europe during the war. I also know that my name ran in the family going back to my great, great grandmother.

 

A strange mixture of facts and fantasy memories seem to acquire, over the years, an independent existence of their own, at times separated from the mere truth. I am at peace now with this dichotomy.

 

There is the factual truth and by its side the memory and both can hold their ground, and both have the right to exist.

Putting the "I" into the "eye"

Nonfiction can be tricky and yet I always find it closer to my heart than fiction. I think the saying -truth is stranger than fiction, often proves right. The ability to draw on my own experiences, and memories, is forever intriguing and the well never seems to run dry.

From my first creative nonfiction class till this day I found an endless fascination in chasing my own memories. Always amazed at how my own mind never ceased to play games and present stories in ways that seem real and yet when I get the chance to check the facts I often discover a whole ‘different truth’.

For awhile this used to bother me and I would delve into the memories trying with no apparent success to unveil the ‘real story’ that one story that will never change. And later I succumbed to the striking irony. Truth, much like beauty, is really in the eyes of the beholder.

My truth and another person’s truth can be as different as the night from the day and yet they are both true.

So while nonfiction is nothing but the truth what it is in reality is my unique ‘I’ the way I and only I can see it. It is unique to me and while based loosely on facts it acquires over time a special mixture of colors, and shades.

The book I might write

 

“Tell all the Truth but tell it Slant”-Emily Dickinson

***

Until I read the essay, A Braised Heart: Shaping the Lyric Essay, by Brenda Miller I wasn’t sure how I was going to write the document (maybe even a book) about my family. For four years I researched my mother's side of the family and collected an overflowing folder of papers and pictures, but when the time came to put it all together I froze. Too much information or perhaps too little, I had no clue how to deal with it.

And then I came across this beautiful essay, written by Brenda Miller, as part of her book, and two interesting ideas emerged;

Tell the truth but tell it slant, how brilliant, this was mind altering, and then the rich imagery in the essay in which Brenda Miller compares the writing of the lyric essay to the braiding of the traditional Challah. The separate strands (three or more) that weave in and out but at the end form one heavenly creation with a solid core. 

The minute I read it I knew how I was going to approach my project.

***

I am going to name it ‘An anatomy of a family search’ and it is going to include documentation from my search, written and verbal exchanges I had with other people who gave me information. A detailed recount of the process, and how the different pieces of data were matched together to create the big picture.  And last, my childhood memories, primarily those about people or anecdotes that are relevant to the family search.

Once I figured it out the rest became almost easy. I knew what I have to do:

 Not a collage, or a sophisticated puzzle, as I originally planned.

Not a chronological account (which I originally considered but seemed tedious and boring).

No, this is going to be a braided essay (or a book); a rich weaved cloth composed of separate strands with me at the core.

***

Here is what I already did:

1.  Organized all the written materials I collected over the past four years.
2. Contacted all the people I was in touch with and asked their permission to use the information they gave me orally, or in writing.
3. Jotted down every memory I could pull out from my ‘clogged’ mind.   
4. Created an outline for this project.
5. Looked at what I had, put it aside and took a deep breath.

My writing project is about a search, a search for my family history, a search for my family lost members, but most of all it is a search for myself. Separate strands, yes, but ones that once they are weaved together will create a whole.

I think I am ready.

***

Now that the preliminary work is done it is time to settle down and do the real work, write. Can’t avoid the challenge, can’t shun from facing myself when I will decide to let it all go.

Tell it Slant – Brenda Miler and Suzanne Paola

Let it go

Writing often is a process of elimination. Putting all my precious thoughts on paper, I look at them again for few minutes, or hours, or days later and know that some of them have to go. It's painful, I like them all, they might even sound good. I marvel at the way they sound, the clever way I matched them all together but it is time to say good bye.

That's why it is good to wait a little before phooing them off. Wait a little till the emotional connection lessens and a  clearer perspective resumes. And yet often unable to perform the act I will choose the cowardly one of making many versions of the same piece. Some with, some without. This way it is never really final. I can always pull out some old versions of the same writing piece and savor my words again and again or maybe even use these discarded words in another new piece.
So just like the Passover Chametz, I nullify some words. I let them go while still holding on. Here they are buried deep in my computer files, never really lost, ready to be reused, ready to be read. Once Passover is over it is OK to pull them out again and use them for the rest of the year.

*

• Chametz is a product that is both made from one of five types of grain, and has been combined with water and left to stand raw for longer than eighteen minutes. It is not allowed to be owned during Passover.

Biur Chametz

Biur Chametz (Removal of chametz)
A process of revision , valuation and elimination or... 

In the morning, getting dressed, I look at my closet, push back in few shirts, pull out others, turn them from side to side and shake them, they look worn but I can’t remember when the last time I wore them was. I am sure that at the time I invested a lot of thought in picking each one of them so I push them back in. I will need to make the painful decision one of these days but not today.

 The book shelves on the other side of the room are overflowing with books; I keep them for these desperate times when’ I will have nothing to read’. Paperback novels recommended to me, authors I used to like, just random books I picked in garage sales for pennies. Self –help books I purchased at this time or another, on a whim, none of them touched in the past years.

 On the desk a mounting pile of letters I need to answer. Brochures I couldn’t bring myself to throw as the information regarding motel amenities, furniture, novelties and gifts might come handy one day.

 On the couch a stack of folders representing the second step of my elaborate filling system, here it is in a nutshell. When the pile of loose paper (letters, bills, brochures) becomes too high to manage and keep sliding to the floor, it is time to push everything into a folder. This is a cleansing act in and of itself. The folder is then being laid on the couch (originally in the room for those moments in the future when I will sit, relaxed and look over the back yard) with my best intention to look at it at a later date.

Some other odds and ends; one TV that could be working if it had been hooked to the cable (too far) one DVD (the TV isn’t working). The plants I pull in every winter and fill up almost third of the room. My old desktop computer (too slow), few boxes of books in Hebrew I already read (definitely have to up my efforts to find someone to take them off my hands). Few unidentified plastic bags in the corner, I give them an inquisitive look, trying to assess the content without opening them, and give up. 

I am all geared up for the task. Sorting out the truly valuable from the piles of trash (chametz) collected over the past year.  I run in my head the three traditional methods of performing this undertaking.

Burning one's chametz – seems a bit drastic

Selling one's chametz – yeah, right

Nullifying one's chametz – Bingo!

 I recite the Aramaic statement that no one truly understands (it always feels like crossing ones fingers behind his back), nullifying all the chametz, letting go while holding on, brilliant.

Storks

 

Storks

Every spring, when we still lived in Jerusalem, I waited for them. I used to raise my eyes to the sky and search for them for hours until my eyes hurt, and I had to close them to give them some rest.

In the beginning it was just a small cloud on the horizon and we (my brother and I) watched it intently, not sure if this is the real thing, unwilling to miss the opportunity to be the first ones to see them.

And then the flocks of storks would materialize, almost like magic, and where the sky, just a minute earlier was blue and empty, suddenly hundreds of birds filled the air with the noise of their wings going up and down in a unified speed.

With their appearance we knew, spring is coming and with it Passover, which to me meant the biggest joy of all, going to my aunt's farm in the Jezreel Valley, a week full of wonders that I waited for all year long.

Years later when we lived in the desert we saw them, a little later, already on their way south. They would stop for a night rest in the nearby grove and we went there at dusk, trying to catch a glimpse of these big birds, as they got ready for their night rest.

Funny I would think, still in the spirit of Passover, how they were actually going in the wrong direction back into Egypt rather than out.

 

***

As always on the week of Passover (and the week, or two before) I get immersed in searching and writing about anything even vaguely connected with this special spring holiday. Special for me that is, being attached to so many memories. This one, that I almost forgot, was an unexpected present.

 

 

Perhaps only migrating birds know

 So Passover is next week and with it on my mind this poem takes hold of me, and as I hum the lyrics I wonder if I can find a translation to English and here it is (the wonders of the Internet). I compare the two versions and ultimately decide that the original Hebrew one is much better, and yet I think the mood is coming across. I also think that it has been a long time since I thought about the storks who showed up every spring in the sky above our town. They brought the message of the coming spring, and unknown lands, and freedom.
 

PINE

Here I will not hear the voice of the cuckoo.
Here the tree will not wear a cape of snow.
But it is here in the shade of these pines
my whole childhood reawakens.

The chime of the needles: Once upon a time –
I called the snow-space homeland,
and the green ice at the river's edge -
was the poem's grammar in a foreign place.

Perhaps only migrating birds know -
suspended between earth and sky -
the heartache of two homelands.

With you I was transplanted twice,
with you, pine trees, I grew -
roots in two disparate landscapes.

 

Lea Godberg – Israel. 1970

Writing and old age part II

What makes some people creative?
What makes some people who never wrote a word suddenly discover their creativity?

Reading about writing in an old age made me think about this subject that is so intriguing and so vague at the same time.

If you can make a group of 90 year old man and women in a nursing home connect with poetry, of all forms of writing you can make anyone write. This is a proof that we all have that light inside us waiting to be lured, waiting to show and reward us with hours of pleasure.

All it took in the book that I am presenting was someone who believed in the validity of the experience and was willing to take the time and thought to make things happen. To see beyond the barriers of age, physical obstacles, and lack of experience and truly believe that the creative spark is always present and all it needs is an opportunity.

I learned from this book few very important lessons;

1. Everybody can write.

2. We all seem to have an innate need to communicate our feelings and writing adds an additional weight.

3. Writing can be done in many ways, and dictating my thoughts to someone else, as forced and strange it might seem, is a form of writing.

4. Collaborative writing, writing to the simplest prompts, writing about personal experiences no matter how small or insignificant, these are just few examples of the endless ways that can be used to bring out the writer in us. All are worthy.

5. The power of the writing group cannot be overrated. Having a supportive audience, hearing your writing read aloud, receiving a feedback. The dynamic of this process adds an extra dimension to the experience.  

6. If writing works for adults of all ages and walks of life it should be embraced as a way to increase well being and inner health.

http://www.screenr.com/PxY7