Writing Prompt: Gardens

I do not plant my own garden, but I revel in the gardens of others. Across from my house, in an island of pavement is a small grassy triangle. Members of the community maintain this small, patch of earth each spring by planting flowers that change as the season progresses – evolving from tulips and daffodils to daisies and irises. I await the arrival of the first buds each year, seeing them rise as the sun ascends and shares its warmth with us. It is my signal that spring is upon us. Every time I see her, I rush to inform one of the women in town, the one who helps tend this garden, how much it means to me. She seems thankful, if sedate, as I gush over the flowers.  Her own lawn is equally adorned, so perhaps she cannot digest just how much I appreciate her efforts, how tied I am to those blossoming patches of color across the lawn. They have been a backdrop for photos of my nieces and nephews, a garden hideaway to retreat amidst the fairies, a place to witness their inner men and women emerge as they strike magical poses well beyond their years. It has allowed me a reprieve from computers and deadlines, a minute field in which to roam for 10 minutes, camera in hand. It has been a place to say goodbyes, a train platform to see my dying dog off to another world.

Vader died a year ago June 1^st and for the month leading up to his death, my nieces, nephews and I would frequently tote his limp form, along with his constant companion, his stuffed “Humpie Doggie” across the road to sit him in the flowers and allow him a few moments of sun. His body carved out a small sunken dent in the hollow of the flower bed and I imagine I see it there still, although the flowers this year have arranged themselves in a different pattern. There are yellow irises now, tons of them, although last year I remember varied colors. It would be easy to say that the color has faded since Vader’s death, but it is not true. I miss him, but the world is warm and golden. Waffles and Alfie frolic in the back yard and wait eagerly by the gate as I water the tomato plants my father chose to plant this year. Life wilts and grows, ebbs and flows.

The grandmother of the boy I loved is dying in the garden room of the local hospital where my grandmother, too, passed away. He and his cousins make plans to fly home for her funeral even while she remains alive. Our lives are busy and do not slow, but the world is green and full; the sky blue with marshmallow clouds. If we had a choice, we would not leave it today. We would sit in the garden and enjoy it a spell, feeling the warmth on our faces, reveling in the life around us.

I try to remember this. So on the anniversary of his death, I visited Vader’s tree on our front lawn; the place where I had rested with him in the hours before his death, looking up at the leafy canopy, embracing the light from the sun. I stretched out on the dirt and grass, not caring if my dress clothes became grass stained and soiled and I looked up once again – thankful for his small life and all the life that has occurred in the year he’s been gone. I sat up and stared across the lawn at his garden, thinking how tall my nieces and nephews had grown in a year, how much life had changed – my niece Ellie was only a baby in a basket when she visited last Memorial Day, now she is a rambunctious toddler – “go, go, go” is her catchphrase. I got Waffles once Vader was gone, joined a Writer’s Group, gave a reading, welcomed and bid farewell to three classes of students, started a blog. I traveled to Laguna Beach, Washington D.C., Woodstock, NY. My brother went off to boot camp and my Mom had a cataract removed. I wrote articles and stories, drew pictures and paintings. My niece spoke my name. Life is full. We bud and we bloom. We bid goodbye. And, on a good day we are aware of it all and thankful for our gardens.

Writing Prompt: Return to a memory from last year. Write about it.

Writing Prompt: Things of Beauty

Beauty is always there if you look for it. I walked into our torn up bathroom the other day. It was in a state of disarray with floorboards ripped up, fixtures displaced and a gaping hole where the bathtub used to be. Amidst the decaying floorboards was a brightly colored piece of linoleum. The color and design seemed to more closely resemble wallpaper or upholstery, but our handyman assured me that it was indeed linoleum. I wondered how long it had been there and who would have chosen such a pattern for the floor. Although strange, it was beautiful – the orange and red flowers and green leaves were the sole splashes of color left in the otherwise shredded room. It, along with a few original floorboards, were solitary survivors of history, holding stories they unfortunately could not spill. Ripped, molding, aged and covered for years, there was still something about this piece of flooring that seemed to be bursting with life. The orange flowers sprouted from amidst the green leaves and the gray floor mirroring the real flowers outside. There, the world was inverted, the gray sky opening up and reaching down to the welcoming tulips below with crystal drops of rain. The tulips lay open and vulnerable, their beauty fleeting. They would soon wither and die. The lonely linoleum would soon join the rest of the bathroom’s rubble in the trash heap. For a moment, however, both burst with color and life, begging for us to do the same.

Writing Prompt: Write about a time you found beauty in the unexpected.

Writing Prompt: I Wish Her the Sky

I wish for her the wide-open sky

Someone with whom to soar

A place to safely fall

Wings to take her higher

A nesting place

No limits

A gentle wind on which to glide

A branch on which to perch

And sing

I wish for her to fly

Beyond our horizons

To discover her own heights

To go up, up, up,

Again, again, again

Up past the balloons she loves

Up until we are but a small blue ball

That makes her giggle

Up so that she plants her face to the sun

And feels its warmth and its light

And knows only happiness

And freedom

And potential

And unfettered joy!

Writing Prompt: I wish...

Writing Prompt: Waffles' Example

Sometimes I sit and study my petite pug Waffles. She is a portrait of perseverance and determination. The aspects of her personality I find annoying – tipping over trashcans, jumping gates – she considers an occupation. She is steadfast in her goals and she never detours. I watch her when I awake in the morning and her pattern is always the same. She watches me, waiting for me to drop my vigilant gaze, so she can jump the baby gate that blocks her way upstairs and then she is at it – thump, thump, thump, thump. The upstairs garbage pails go down one after another like a string of dominoes. She methodically checks them for secret delights – purposely sorting toilet tissue to the left, dental floss to the right, the choice and most stinky items directly in the mouth. She does the same for each trashcan and then starts on the laundry basket, discarding socks and tees for panties. These she pulls all the way out and drags to her nesting place. She dedicates herself to the cause, neither veering right or left, freezing if she thinks I see her, going into stealth mode.

When I go to retrieve something from the spare closet located in my nephew Christian’s room, she follows, jumping up on the small desk chair and from there onto the futon in hopes of nabbing another cherished prize – a stuffed dog I had given Christian for Valentine’s Day. She knows this is not her toy, but his, and thus, it has become a thing of value. While I browse the closet, she grabs the dog in her mouth and drops it near the edge of the futon. From there, she nudges it with her nose onto the chair, and this is where she always gets caught. I turn to find her pondering the situation. She cannot figure out how to get both she and her treasure off the chair and as she stops to consider the situation, her wrinkled brow even more deeply furrowed than usual, I foil the whole scheme, grabbing her and the dog and placing it back on the futon. We repeat this again and again, every time I enter Christian’s room.

It is easy to get frustrated with Waffles. Many times throughout the day you hear one of us in the household yelling “No,” or her name sounding as a sort of warning or threat, but the more I observe her the more I realize that there is something going on here. When Waffles lived at my friend Joan’s house, she learned many skills to survive. Joan’s house, filled to the max with other dogs, becomes a jungle of sorts. It’s survival of the fitness of sorts, each pug for itself. Dog toys are few to prevent the pugs from fighting over them, and so they find their own amusements – an empty dog food can, a toilet paper roll, or a pair of discarded underwear.

Landing a place on Joan’s comfy bed becomes a coveted goal, but since Joan would be endlessly occupied if she stopped to help each one up, the pugs are left to find their own way there. They do so by jumping from the floor to a cubby by the bed and then making an almost impossible second leap from inside the cubby to the bed itself. I visited the other day and watched Waffles’ mother, sister, and grandmother each do this maneuver and realized that in her two years living at Joan’s, she too, must have done this hundreds if not thousands of times, often with a pair of Joan’s panties in her mouth. This was her life and whether I consider it nature or nurture, instinct or learned behavior, the antics she undertakes now are ingrained in her. She seems to consider them her vocation in much the same way I do my writing. It is what she wakes up for each day.

Perhaps Waffles has little choice in her fate, compelled by powerful drives to engage in these behaviors, but I admire her anyway. So often I let outside voices deter me from my goal or I see a project as too big and give up. I can yell at Waffles, put up a gate, steal her away from her finds and moments later she is right back at it. She does not give up. She is tiny and the odds are so often stacked against her. She never waivers. I watch and I learn and I wonder what drives us. Why do we move forward and why do we give up and how can such a small, black creature be so fearless when I so often am not? I think of Waffles and her sister, their mother and grandmother making that blind leap from cubby to bed and I try in my mind to do the same. It may not be model behavior, but in the end, it seems behavior to model.

Writing Prompt: What behavior do you model?

Writing Prompt: Now it Springs Forth

Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? ~Isaiah 43:19

I discovered this scripture a couple of years ago and was struck by it; drawn to the phrases “a new thing,” “springs forth,” and “do you not perceive it.” We live in a cynical, weary world, where it seems we have seen it all before. In such a world, what would a new thing be? And, springs forth? That’s such an energetic phrase. It implies something visible, tangible, happening, and yet at the same time, the phrase “do you not perceive it,” implies being blind to such an event.

I’ve thought of this scripture often since I first heard it, looking for the new things springing forth in my life that I might be overlooking. Today, the words hit home literally. The temperatures have warmed up, hinting that spring is here, but while my friends in slightly more southern climes have been talking about gardens and posting pictures of blooming flowers for days, if not weeks, already, I had yet to glimpse such signs in my own back yard.

Suddenly, I realized that I hadn’t been looking. I grabbed my camera, put on my favorite 50 mm lens and went outside in search of new things. I found life all around me. Although the ground was still mostly comprised of brown tufts of earth, torn up by winter snowplows, plants and trees were budding everywhere. I just had to get close enough to see them.

If by taking this verse literally I found so much life springing forth around me, I wondered how many other new things are occurring daily that I just don’t see. So many days seem filled with the same routine – get up, conduct interviews, write articles, correct papers, teach. I am so caught up in the weft and warp of daily life I forget to see how the threads weave together. A creative spark lies within each of us. I feel it bubbling beneath the surface. I sense something new around the corner. I now work to train my eyes to see it.

Here, is what I saw today:

Writing Prompt: What Springs Forth in Your Life?

Writing Prompt: Hopen 4 Peace

Four years ago I stumbled upon information advertising a memoir-focused writing conference in Woodstock, NY. Because I teach memoir, I signed up. I have to admit that I was drawn to the allure of the famous or should I say infamous town, known in name at least for being the home of Woodstock, the 60s music festival. The actual festival took place in Bethel, but it is Woodstock that is forever linked with this cultural milestone.

I fell in love with the town and the festival and have been going back annually ever since. It’s always been a bit of a retreat for me. It was one of the first places that I actually “escaped” to on my own – traveling alone and not really letting anyone know where I was – so that first year, I felt a wee bit of a rebel. I celebrated my freedom and honored the Woodstock mystique by getting a spontaneous tattoo of a peace symbol on my way out of town. I had two other tattoos when I got this one, but both of those had been planned out and held very specific meaning, this one I got on the fly without thinking. And, I was so proud of myself for doing so.

It was at the Woodstock Writers’ Festival that I befriended or was befriended by Maria Wulf and Jon Katz, two people that have become friends and powerful creative influences on this blog and my work. Last year I was sick when the festival rolled around, so I missed the first day. I remember showing up in time for an evening event. It was cold and rainy, but I was excited to be there.

To me one of the joys of the event, in addition to being exposed to a wealth of world-class writers, is wandering the streets taking photographs. Color, light and character fill the streets. I have stumbled upon drumming circles and a  “hippie” parade that made me feel like I had actually traveled back to the sixties. My first year there I visited this eclectic gift shop and bought myself a pink wig. When I am there, I am unfettered and free. The pink wig reflected this somehow.

Shortly after I returned home I attended a class on using the computer to create art. Unfortunately, the class was horrible. Students had so many computer problems just getting started that the teacher never even got a chance to start the class. The good thing was this gave me plenty of time to experiment and I ended up creating my first digital collage, using images I had snapped in Woodstock. It was a self-portrait and looking at it now, I realize I was already doing some of the things that have become my signature such as combining hand drawing with the digital photography. I loved the result both as a work of art and as a self-portrait. I didn’t think much when I was creating this, I just enjoyed myself, but there is something about it that is just me.

The woman in this picture is a free-spirit, she seems to be smiling, happy, energetic, but she is also peering from behind a curtain, lace covers her ace, she is not looking out with her own eyes, but rather those that are bedazzled – you question whether the eyes mask her from you or vice versa. There is a part of me that is out there, open and free, a part that is veiled. Perhaps that is the case with most of us.

The cranberry peace symbol in the upper right corner, by the way, is my actual tattoo. If you look below it the girl in the mirror where’s a different face. Her reflection is more open. It is not veiled. I like the words for which the piece is named, Hopen 4 Peace. These were snapped from a sign on a Woodstock storefront. They speak of something both universal and personal. It is what we all seek.

I leave for the Woodstock Writers’ Festival tomorrow and will return on Monday. I will be bringing my computer and ipad with me and will try to blog as I can, but the days are pretty packed with activity, so bear with me. I’ll post as I can.

Writing Prompt: Where Do You Go to Escape?

Writing Prompt: The Magic of Dogs

Hollis sat in his stiff-backed Victorian chair barely making eye contact. He sounded weary discussing his bed and breakfast business as if he actually hoped the article I was writing would discourage guests to his establishment as opposed to promoting them. He sounded ready to retire and yet, here I was interviewing him for a magazine.

Interviews such as this are difficult. Inside, I feel like a failing magician rummaging through a bag of tricks, frantically searching for something that will get the job done – a rabbit to pull out of my hat and start the interviewee talking so I’ll have something to write about. Sometimes I am lucky and I find the key. Sometimes we stumble along, what should be a short, breezy conversation turning into an agonizing bout of stops and starts punctuated with awkward silences. This was one of those times. And, since my livelihood depends on getting the job done, I found myself developing an increasing dislike for the slender, soft-faced Hollis, who so obviously was dissatisfied with his own lot. I stared at his dull blue eyes behind the wire-rimmed glasses and inwardly pleaded for him to say something helpful. “And, why did you choose to redecorate the Rose room?” I ask him. “It needed painting,” he mumbles. No gems there.

“What led you to Vermont?”

“Can’t really say.”

A part of me wanted to jump up and strangle poor Hollis, but we both struggled on, me reluctant to end the conversation without more information, he, not seeming to care either way.

Finally, when I realized I had rung him for all he was worth, I got ready to excuse myself. And, this is why I love dogs. Just as I was getting ready to leave, Hollis mentioned his Jack Russell Terrier, Baby. It was a passing remark, not meant to elicit any response, but I rose to the occasion. “You have a Jack Russell? I have pugs,” I said.

And, thus, I released a font of information I did not think possible from Hollis. Suddenly, he turned his face to me and his dull blue eyes began to sparkle. He took me through a journey of Baby’s 13 years on the planet – her litters and potty training, breed standard and show history. He showed me photos and discussed where each of her puppies had ended up. I listened and chatted, forgetting the clock and thoroughly enjoying this man unfold from his shell.

What is it about dogs that do this? Why could Hollis not master a single, happy word about his work, but could ramble on, smiling and sharing about a wee bit of a dog? Why did I find myself suddenly warming up to this man?

I could picture him late at night when the guests were asleep curling up in this very same chair, glasses on the end table, Baby in his lap. His jaw would slack and the tight lines disappear as he and his dog would drift off to sleep.

Looking at Hollis during our interview I would have said he was a tired and lonely man, but in the half hour I listened to him recount Baby’s life, I learned of breeders and handlers and people who bought Baby’s puppies that all were woven into the web of his life. What do our Baby’s do that transform us so? They turn unhappy men into delighted children again. They so often are the rabbits we pull from our hats to work magic on our lives.

Writing Prompt: What Lights Up Your Life?

Writing Prompt: Rest

Some days are harder than others. Sometimes you can't wait to take some Nyquil and curl up in bed with a box of Kleenex and some snoring dogs. And, even though you're sick, you sleep soundly embraced by dreams and watched over by your own guardian angels.

Writing Prompt: Who Watches Over You?

Writing Prompt: Excelsior!

If you’ve seen Silver Linings Playbook then you’ll understand this reference: I feel like it has been a week of “Silver Developments.”  In the movie Bradley Cooper’s character, who suffers from bipolar disorder, has been released from a mental institution and is trying to improve himself with positive thinking. His mantra becomes “Excelsior!” and he attempts to see the silver linings in his daily life. When something good happens, he declares it a “Silver Development.”

I have had such a series of Silver Developments this week. Number One: Our mentor, Jon Katz, announced this week that the Hubbard Hall Writers Project, the group I’ve been a part of since last June, will be having a reception and reading of our work at Hubbard Hall in Cambridge, NY on May 31^st. This is an exciting opportunity for each of us to share our writing in a wonderful venue.

Number Two: I received a call from a fellow writer on Thursday. We used to work together at The Valley Business Journal and she now writes for our region’s primary newspaper, The Valley News. She is writing an article on memoir writing and wants to interview me for the piece. I think it will be fun being the one interviewed for a change and it is great exposure.

Number Three: After a lovely lunch with the Common-Thread-Give-A-Way members at Jon Katz and Maria Wulf’s new Bedlam Farm, I had a great talk with Jon helping to define some future goals for my writing and this blog. I have some brainstorming and hard work ahead, but am really thrilled with the possibilities. I share all this not to boast, but to celebrate. This blog has been the beginning of a new creative journey for me and I can’t wait to see where it takes me. Excelsior!

Writing Prompt: Write about a Silver Development in your life.

Writing Prompt: Family

Conversing with family can sometimes seem like a fencing match – Attack – Parry – Cut – Thrust – as you duck barbs and sling a few yourself; all in an effort to maintain your dignity. Family, better than any enemy, knows how to wound. They are familiar with the soft sensitive spots, the hidden underbelly of self, so susceptible to harm. Sometimes you see the blade coming and sometimes you are blind to it, finding it masked behind humor or feigned concern. Like a Changement de Rythme, broken time, a sudden change in the tempo of their actions, you become fooled. You respond when you should have remained silent. You say nothing when a word would do; you drop your defenses and allow them an in – they draw blood quicker and with more venom than any opponent and just as quickly, they change face becoming your savior and shelter, your comrade on the battlefield. Suddenly they appear at your side, embracing you and dragging you out of harms way. You may feel their sting, but damn anyone else who tries to inflict injury! You can never tell on any day, which face they will wear and so often they wear both – your mightiest foe and greatest defender in one. You flee from family, but always return, forever bound by blood and home, and that most complex of emotions – Love.

Writing Prompt: Write about a family gathering. How did everyone act?