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 Laird and Janet Reich Elsbach by Christina Rahr Lane
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
