Laundry Line Divine

“I believe I am worth the time it takes to create whatever I feel called to create.”
Jan Phillips The Artist’s Creed

Do you feel stingy with yourself sometimes? That taking time for yourself is just too luxurious an act when there is so much more to be done in your day. Dinner to cook, clutter to clear, papers to grade, people to listen to…all these things that make up the pastiche of your home life, those things can soak up your hours like a fresh sponge takes up spilled wine. Completely.

And there you are at the end of the day, with your manuscript untouched for the fifth year, your paint drying in their tubes, the hat you started to felt a lump in the bottom of a forgotten basket. How could you possibly write a letter, it has been so long, the recipients have lost the threads of your connection and it is just too much to bear?

How?

I have felt this way. I have wept as I frosted cakes or washed the 75th cup of the day, shed tears over unwritten words. But there, in those acts, those quotidian acts of mothering, I began to feel the beauty of my life unfold when I began to take pleasure in and love the work I was doing. I began to see even doing laundry as an entry point to my creativity, as an expression of myself. Here is what my friend Beth Bornstein Dunnington wrote on her Face book page yesterday. Beth and I studied acting together in New York City with Deborah Hedwall at Ensemble Studio Theatre. Over the years of our friendship, we had no inkling that today, nearly thirty years later, having children and marriages and travels and our careers, we could share the inspiration wrought at a laundry line.

“Today hung clothes on a clothesline in my back yard (hidden to everyone by us, so no one has to look out their window in Hawaii and see our sheets when they’re trying to see the ocean) and I have to say how AMAZING everything smells and feels!!! More work to hang things up, but it doesn’t compare to a dryer. Memories of watching the old Jewish bubbie, my grandmother, and my aunt hanging clothes between buildings in back of their 3-decker house in Revere, MA. Clothespins in Bubbie’s mouth as she used the pulley thing to reel the clothes in and out. Everyone on top of everyone in those homes, but this amazing village of women! Not even sure where the men were back then, but they aren’t in these memories at all… Great to watch all of it when I was a kid. I thought about them today when I put a clothespin in my mouth. Especially my girl, Nana Anna. ♥” by Beth Bornstein Dunnington

Do you see how Beth allowed the act of hanging up her sheets to inspire a long string of memories that gave way to a story. The comment thread on her FB post bears witness to the communal experiences connected by a clothesline!

Then, last night, before the bat started sweeping low in our bedroom interrupting precious sleep, I read these words by another she-ro, Laurie Colwin.

“This made Nellie think of the thousands of things they did not know and would never know: that family glaze of common references, jokes, events, calamities- that sense of a family being like a kitchen midden: layer upon layer of the things daily life is made of.”

We, women, mothers, artists, are fabricating a new archeology by creating art from the immediacy of our daily lives. In celebrating these acts, by harnessing the massive power of women’s voices- muffled for centuries and strengthening daily, by telling just how it is for you and me telling just how it is for me, we construct something not meant to compost with the banana peels, but to reside in our collective memory and to be carried on. Beth’s memory of her Bubbie, mouth full of wooden clothespins, smiling in the sun, squinting to see across the glare of white sheets in to the next laundry maze where aproned woman and overalls and socks create a panorama of daily life- yes- this has value today because this life is vanishing quickly. More and more people are living in cities where the chance to hang laundry, to stand under a 250 year old maple and look at the sky, where the pace of life prevents us from taking these moments to pause and reflect and be inspired. I love city life, but if I still lived in NYC, I’d need to be vigilant about keeping connected to the natural and daily rhythms of life.

Laundry Line Divine came to be when I stood out at that line and knew it is mine as a full time mom to hang that wash and it is also mine to express myself, as a creative person, using the language and metaphor of my daily life. I could not deny who I was and pretend to be someone who did not have to be free by three o’clock to meet the bus or cancel an appointment because I have a sick child or need to help on the class play.
I am a woman, a rampantly alive woman, who is a wife and mother. I am also a woman who is vigorously determined to stand for my value and the value of others willing to tell their stories. Particularly women’s stories.

And, so, the blog series goes on. Beth has given me a piece to open this next chapter of ‘Out of the Mouths of Babes’. Leigh Strimbeck will be here. Jennifer Boire. Lori Landau. Karen Arp-Sandel. Miranda Hersey. Susan Hajec. I will keep you posted.

If you have no idea where to start or what your own authentic voice sounds like, read my friend Regena’s post today about intuition. I will continue to share with you resources for tuning your ears to your own voice.

Until we meet again, look up Laurie Colwin’s cookbooks A Writer in the Kitchen and A Writer Returns to the Kitchen. They were just inducted in to the James Beard Cookbook Hall of Fame. Janet and I are thrilled. We are planning a Laurie Colwin event with our friend Alana. More on all this later.

Time to work on that yearbook.
All my best love to you and thanks for returning to the Laundry Line,

S

Almost Always on Thursdays

Where do you write?
When, what time of day can you hold your pen to a few sentences?
Who do you write about?
What is the sentence you are afraid to write?
Are you willing to write one small sentence today that is a step toward your innermost truth? Even when it is hard?

At night make me one

With the darkness.

In the morning make me one

With the light.

Wendell Berry

Every morning I sit in my red chair, this red chair
and write in my journal.
I began daily writing when I was 14 when my English teacher required us to keep a daily log. I began collaging and writing in to spiral notebooks. There have been gaps of time when I did not write so diligently and you could probably parallel my well-being and sanity levels with whether or not I was writing. Whenever I return after a hiatus, I tumble as if in to the palms of the Divine- the open pages a prayerful sanctum, the place where my deepest fears and thoughts have safe harbor and where, with listening forged from discipline, I am able to create.

I don’t take the time I have to create lightly. There are many who would prefer if I would help with this or that effort. I have to be vigilant in how I divide my hours. After years of full time mothering with brief dips in to my own work, I have leveled the scales a bit and given myself more and more time to create. Though I have not yet generated a strong income stream with my work, the engagement of pleasure in everything I do has so massively offset the discomfort of changing my availability to outside pulls on my time, I am encouraged to just work on. My husband supports me in this. He picks up the areas of childcare that I let slip for a few hours each day and almost always on Thursdays. Our partnership is founded in the belief that our marriage is here to shelter each other’s flames. My greatest joy is to feel JNB’s engagement in his life, in his work and parenting. He is a brilliant man and I love that his work supplies us with all we need to raise this family together. My tenure as the full time Mom who makes art within the hours of my daily life is firmly at the center of how we operate. I cannot thread sentences together consistently without his support. He cannot do his work without my support. Together, we share this gift of parenting our two children and within a few steps of my studio, he works at his desk, changing the mold for how certain areas of law are practiced.

That red chair is my starting place. I pray. I meditate. I Spring Clean with my Sister Goddess friends. I check in with my partners in the practices of The Seven Sacred Steps. I write my daily pages, I brag, I state my gratitude and my desires. I read Rumi and Jan Phillips and Mary Oliver and Clarissa Pinkola Estes. I read Eleanor Estes and Diane Gaboldon. I read Tillie Olsen, Grace Paley and Anne Lamott. I watch crows, bluebirds and the laundry flapping in the spring air. I set my sails for a day like today, which being Thursday means I don’t have to take care of a kid thing until about 2pm. I wish it was til 6pm, but today that is not the case.

My friend Lori Landau sits in a red chair too when she begins her day. Her chair is her launching pad too. We are both yoginis, taking our practice of meditation and asana in do our daily lives, in to our art and our communications. Lori and I and Karen have shared our writing and mail art. Our budding friendship is a result of us intersecting on Face book, supporting each other’s work and flourishing in that light.

Sharing is becoming a verb of the highest magnitude these days. Between Pinterest and FB and Google and Tumblr and all the other social media outlets, you could spend hours upon hours drifting the waves of the web and picking up inspiration. I do not take your time lightly and thank you for finding yourself here on the Laundry Line.

I had a discussion with my kids last night at the dinner table. I was quite pleased with the meal- roast turkey breast, faro and veggies and a raw green dip that Ben slathered over the meat. We began with a feverish argument about our summer plans. But, by some alchemical action that I only witnessed, Catherine steered the tension towards another topic and soon Ben was holding forth on ‘commodification’ The three of us began talking about their Waldorf grade school experiences. I drew examples from their upbringing of our family value of hand and homemade living. Of being the source or close to the point of origination of our food, and other necessities. We have raised our children in the presence of laundry flapping in the wind of our backyard. We have cooked meals with and for them, stressed to the point of nagging at times the virtue of making things if we can, before we buy things. In their adolescent years this has become more challenging. Potato chips seem to taste much better out of a sealed bag shipped to us from far away. Just yesterday our friend Alana’s cookbook arrived with a recipe for potato chips I am eager to try.

Locally sourced food and locally sourced collaborators fill my days. My art collaborator Karen Arp-Sandel and I connect with mail art nearly every week. The authors from my first ‘Out of the Mouths of Babes’ event are women that I cross paths with here in the Berkshires. One of these authors, Jenny Laird, harks from around the block and though we hardly ever lay eyes on each other, we are connected by our care for one another, our witness of our children’s growing and our willingness to be transparent with each other.

Jenny’s reading on March 2 was chillingly fierce. She described a night she and her husband spent in a Ronald McDonald House hotel room having just given birth to their amazing son Quinn. Jenny’s dark night birthed her fierce beautiful mothering. We were mesmerized by the humor she found in a desperately sad situation. And, as her friends today, we are constantly inspired by the grace she brings to her mothering Quinn, a diminutive wonder of a boy. I see Quinn out walking with his various friends from my red chair, see him pause to watch a vehicle pass him, his eyes locked on the motion whizzing past him.

Jenny sends out writing prompts to her students and friends who like that sort of mail. Today I wrote on this one: The dark space between the stars.

Here, I fall
limitless black
no claim on shape or dimension
your hole, gravity evaporates and my million parts fragment to triune dust.
let me hide here
from all I know not
all I fear for this and that
let me be, in this limitless expanse
away from budding crocus, purple lobed beacon of bright
and stay my pressing pulse against ebon emptiness.

I take Jenny’s prompts like sightings of the Northern Lights over the oaks that stand between our homes. I know she is over there, expressing her brilliance in the sky of her home life, shedding her light on those close to her. I feel lucky to be near her. And am so grateful for all she has shared with ‘Out of the Mouths of Babes’.

Today’s new ‘Out’ blog post is by Sarah Buttenwieser, from Northampton, MA. Sarah came to my attention through Bess Hochstein and Gina Hyams, two more ‘Out’ supporters. Sarah writes from a different space, nearly a closet. Sarah writes a wonderful blog here.

Where ever you write or create, in whatever corner of your home over which you hang your ‘do not disturb’ sign, the courage to take the time to express yourself- to make your ‘inner’ ‘outer’- is vital to the evolution of our species. Sharing our stories, the grizzly and the glorious, all have the positive action of drawing near another soul in need of warmth. Just today I heard from a friend I have known since 5th grade, who has quietly been reading these posts on LLD and took the magnificent action of submitting her first piece of art to the Arthouse Coop. What joy!

Jan Phillips writes this in her book, No Ordinary Time:

What inspires us? The creations of others, in any form- stories, poems, images. We love to see what people are creating. It’s what feeds us, sustains us, entertains us, alters us consciously, emotionally, spiritually.

Thank you for reading me here.
Thank you for following the ‘Out of the Mouths of Babes’ blog series.
Thank you for taking a stand for your own creativity.

I honor that step.
Right now, my laundry flaps in the spring air.
I will step out to stand in the sun and give thanks for another chance to tell you mine, hoping that you will tell me yours.

Love, S

Standing in a circle yesterday morning at Kripalu with 19 women, some of whom were strangers to me until this past Sunday evening at 7:00 pm, I knew that one place I belong is in circles of women.

I love to live and work among and with women.
I love to spend time and work in solitude.
I love to make connections through my work in the world.

None of this to say I don’t love men or like to work with them. I live with 2 fine men I am fervently in love with and am madly in love with a bunch more.

I am simply passionate about the particular vulnerable grace that happens when women decide to stop bitching about stuff and do things together.

I have spent the last 4 days making vibrant visionary collages at a yoga and art retreat at the Kripalu Center in Lenox, MA. My collaborator Karen Arp-Sandel leads an extraordinary workshop blending art practices and yoga, Zen philosophy and doodling. We made many collages this week, walked the labyrinth and enjoyed our circle time. From this yoga center, which is formerly a Jesuit monastery so there is a certain cinderblock style that makes me feel like I am back in my Lutheran School again,

only the food is way way better- I can see the top of Monument Mountain which hides my town from view in the valley of the Housatonic River. I was on a retreat within spitting distance of my family, if you can spit 12 miles.

When I consider the real and virtual community that is growing up around ‘Out of the Mouths of Babes’, the 15 bloggers we have heard from so far and the 15 I have lined up for this month, the radio interviews with Serene Mastriani & Gabrielle Senza, Jeanne Bassis, the 5 authors, my dear Lynnette Najimy, 2 video people, BFWW producers and presenters, the audience, the artists whose work we shared and Matt Tannenbaum, plus my wider writing community support- we are growing quite a circle around this project.

I could not be here without a few people.

One of them in Janet Reich Elsbach. She was walking with me last fall when I shared my idea for ‘Out of the Mouths of Babes: An Evening of Mothers Reading to Others’ and before I had really completed my thoughtful and comprehensive presentation to her as we pumped over dead logs and miles of browning oak leaves, Janet was off and running, leaping tall buildings, making connections to other writers and helping me enflesh my idea with her unique brand of brilliance. And, in the meantime, while I grew ‘Out’, she grew her own blog spot, in fact two blog spots.

Not only has Janet leant momentum and joy to ‘Out’, she contributed her writing. Her blog post on the blog series is quintessential Janet- funny, erudite, contemporary and contemplative. Janet’s piece that she read on March 2 was another piece of her writing about food and the inner and outer politics of being a conscious consumer while also being a full time mom, and a sheep farmer, and a writer. She brought her audience up close and into her inner world of weighing the value of what she does daily with what she sees in the world. She is a force of nature. Stormy at times, but predictable as weather.

I am fortunate to have Janet in my circle of Women. And, my family is fortunate because knowing Janet is to learn the ways of pickled foods you have never tried before, of brownies better than you have ever nibbled and of parties that become events that become family traditions you can hardly live without. Like the weather, our friendship is strong and serene and a condition of being who I am today.

Today’s ‘Out’ post is by Dahpne Cohn, known to many as The Pleasure Nutritionist. Daphne blogs, leads e-courses and teaches about pleasurable eating that leads to things you might like to be led to like weight-loss or improved health. I love her videos because her kids are often there, dropping Brazil nuts in to the mixer for smoothies or shyly tasting her concoctions and attempting to be serious tasters while grinning from ear to ear. Daphne has an enthusiasm for community that just makes my day.

While we made art at Kripalu, we also lingered over well-made meals rich with salads and greens and only one meal with dessert attached. Too bad they did not have Janet’s recipe. (You can have Janet’s recipe if you enter in to the March 30th drawing by subscribing to this website). The laughter and sharing that increased with our hours together, the tears shed as stories were told helped to solidify our circle, stamped our individual fingerprints in to the mosaic of the group. Here is a grouping of the small canvases that we made.

Because I love to sing, I shared this song with the group:

We are a Circle of Women
When we get together it is healing
We raise our voices in gratitude and praise.
We’re open to the wonders of grace
I see the Goddess in your face.
We’re blessed by the miracle of love here.
We’re blessed by the miracle of love here.

While the circle of people gathering around ‘Out of the Mouths of Babes’ stretches through cyber space, our hands still touch as we type our comments, our blog posts, as we press ‘send’ on our offerings of creativity. As women, mothers, or lovers of both, this gathering is laced with the fragrant and potent presence of truth. Surely, there is more to be shared here. There are miles of stories to be witnessed. I have every desire to travel with ‘Out of the Mouths of Babes’ and invite other mother author artists to share stories and inspire audiences as we did on March 2.

And, until I pack my bags with my chicken call and rice pudding, I will be here at the Laundry Line, shaking loose the knotted socks and the colorful tales of my life. Thank you for standing in this circle, both women and men, I am grateful for your presence.

Now I suggest you get in line for that brownie recipe.
xoxoxox Love, S

I’d be fooling you big time if I did not tell you I am having a hard time visualizing my success. I would be fooling you big time if I did not admit to you today that my creative process which so intricately lives within the organism we call Suzi Banks Baum, has led me to a field where I cannot see the way out, I cannot picture my desired outcomes, nor can I see that I am worthy or capable of venturing to the next higher ground.

I am not slipping back in to my own skin- the ‘me’ who was content to assist in other’s success, the ‘me’ that found ultimate satisfaction in being at home and unvoiced.

As my beloved friend Sandy told me on Sunday, there is no going back for me. I am playing bigger and moving to the next level of expression of my work in the world.

So, today, will you just sit with me not knowing what is next for ‘Out of the Mouths of Babes’? Or how that work will escalate the birthing of my book, Laundry Line Divine: A Wild Soul Book for Mothers? Or, how, as a full time Mom I can be present and engaged with my children and speaking in my full voice in the world?

Will you just sit with me here?

I am on retreat with a bevy of amazing women at Kripalu making collages and doing yoga and considering the impact of ‘Moon Salutation’ on my tender heart today.

Here is what I made today.

Karen is sitting with me here, her arm around my shoulder.
I am so well loved and cared for here.
I am completely grateful for my whole life.
And for putting myself in the way of transformation.

Time to get back to class.
Love,
S