Laundry Line Divine

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

It is International Women’s Day. The Internet is buzzing with posts about women, by women and in support of women.

As an advocate for women’s voices, having recently gotten a hold of mine, I think today is the perfect day to tell you that I don’t always find it easy to settle in and write or make art. Today, it is 1:30 and I am still in my jammies because I fear that once I change, once I leave my studio and get tangled up with the people in my house, the thin thread I have tethered to my concentration will ravel and fray and there I will be, having a blissful moment out at the laundry line, when in fact, today is my art work day, the day I have set sacred upon the calendar of my family life where I don’t answer the phone or run kids to and fro. Or hang laundry.

It is the day I let myself read more on the web and a basket load of inspiration can be found there. Or here.

But, in keeping with my Favorite Frames of ‘Out of the Mouths of Babes’, today I get to write about Gina Hyams and announce the winner for our first ‘Out of the Mouths of Babes’ drawing!

Here is Gina. Can you resist her smile? Gina is one of my ‘Out’ authors. On Friday evening, she read a piece about mourning her father’s death while living in Mexico. Her sense of tradition, her curiosity about the world and her interest in learning the rituals of other cultures reveal her own tender spots- the places we all have where the conditions of our lives meet up with the standards of any given ritual and we are either jammed in to making ourselves fit in to cultural jeans that make our asses look bad, or, we shed the cultural size standards, and alter those rituals to honor our own personal stories.

That is what Gina does. From the sacred to the hilarious, Gina has found ways to celebrate. What one lucky winner gets today is Gina’s book ‘Pie Contest in a Box’.

‘Let the beauty that we love, be what we do. There are a hundred ways to kneel and kiss the ground.’ Rumi

Today I celebrate and honor the gift of being a woman. I wonder if I am doing enough to model for my daughter how to be a fully alive and inspired woman today.

Just as I was doubting myself, I got this feedback about ‘Out’ from my friend Susan, who is a wonderful photographer.

How blessed are we that there is an event such as BFWW that gives us the opportunity to spend a lovely evening with such creative and talented women such as Suzi, Jenny, Gina, Steph, Janet, Michelle and Alana! The writings were humorous, witty, enchanting, and heartbreaking with motherhood being the common thread woven throughout. How brave these women were in sharing their stories – thank you for planning such an amazing night! (and then about our teen aged girls attending)…It’s good for our teens to see that their mom’s are brave enough to put themselves out there! thanks again for this opportunity Suzi!

I guess I have to listen to my own advice and trust that today, I am doing enough. The thrill and honor of working with women like Gina and the other ‘Out’ women to create our premiere event is evidence that I am on to something.

So, about this drawing!

This morning at the kitchen table, my kids drew the names for the winners of four different books.

If you would like to participate in the next drawing, just subscribe to my website by filling out the little box, there in the upper right hand corner of this page. Or, you can enter on my Laundry Line Divine Face book page.
Entries will join my subscriber list and I will not use your email address for anything other than alerting you to new posts here on the Line and other LLD news.

Here are the results:

Adele Lee won Gina’s Pie Contest in a Box
Corey Sprague won Gina’s Searching for Mary Poppins
Steph Campbell won Edwina Gateley and Sandra Mattucci’s Mothers, Sisters, Daughters: Standing on Their Shoulders
Michelle Gillett won Alana Chernila’s book The Homemade Pantry

Winners, I need your mailing addresses.
You can send them to me at suzi@laundrylinedivine.

The next drawing will be on March 30 to celebrate the closing events of The Berkshire Festival of Women Writers. Subscribers to Laundry Line Divine will have a chance to win a copy of The Homemade Pantry and other wonderments.

Until then, just stretch out in the sun today and know how expressing your own brand of brilliance contributes to a better world for all of our daughters.

“If you ask me what I came to do in this world, I, an artist, will answer you: I am here to live out loud.”
― Émile Zola

Sing out Louise!

Love, S

Here is your pre-Valentine’s gift from me.
All week, I will be coming ‘OUT’ with video blogs.

The first one is here listed with the other blog posts in the ‘Out of the Mouths of Babes’ series.

I found this poem today,from the amazing truth telling Laura Hershey. She was a poet,writer, consultant and activist. Laura an outspoken advocate for disabled people.
She died November 26, 2010. Please go to her website to read more about her powerful stand as a woman, gifted and challenged, and celebrated.

Telling
by Laura Hershey

What you risk telling your story:
You will bore them.
Your voice will break, your ink
spill and stain your coat.
No one will understand, their eyes
become fences.
You will park yourself forever
on the outside, your differentness once
and for all revealed, dangerous.
The names you give to yourself
will become epithets.
Your happiness will be called
bravery, denial.
Your sadness will justify their pity.
Your fear will magnify their fears.
Everything you say will prove something about
their god, or their economic system.
Your feelings, that change day
to day, kaleidoscopic,
will freeze in place,
brand you forever,
justify anything they decide to do
with you.
Those with power can afford
to tell their story
or not.
Those without power
risk everything to tell their story
and must.
Someone, somewhere
will hear your story and decide to fight,
to live and refuse compromise.
Someone else will tell
her own story,
risking everything.

xo S

share 1 (shâr)
n.
1. A part or portion belonging to, distributed to, contributed by, or owed by a person or group.
2. An equitable portion: do one’s share of the work.
3. Any of the equal parts into which the capital stock of a corporation or company is divided.
v. shared, shar·ing, shares
v.tr.
1. To divide and parcel out in shares; apportion.
2. To participate in, use, enjoy, or experience jointly or in turns.
3. To relate (a secret or experience, for example) to another or others.
4. To accord a share in (something) to another or others: shared her chocolate bar with a friend.
v.intr.
1. To have a share or part: shared in the profits.
2. To allow someone to use or enjoy something that one possesses: Being in daycare taught the child to share.
3. To use or enjoy something jointly or in turns: There is only one computer, so we will have to share.
Idiom:
go shares
To be concerned or partake equally or jointly, as in a business venture.

I love to share.
Sharing means so many things. In this post I am using the verb form of share.
To me, share means to spread the wealth of attention, the wealth of pretzels or the wealth of appreciation. To share can also mean, as in number three in the definition above, verb transitive, to offer a story. At the dinner table, we always ask the kids to share one good thing about their day. This can lead to an argument about ‘always being asked to share’ but as long as JNB and I are supplying the butter for the family bread, we get to ask things like this at the kitchen table. “Share One Good Thing About Your Day”. See? It sounds like a movement when I put it in capital letters and quotation marks.

Sharing, on the Internet, can mean linking to or copying an image from one place and using it in another.

I am a long time collaborator with people, really with life, I guess. I love to share what I learn and how others inspire me. If you go to my Face book page you will see many links to sites that capture my eye or speak to a need I know someone else has. The sidebar to your right has links to websites that intrigue me and I bet there is at least one that will intrigue you too.

One good thing about parenting is I have been teaching my kids to share since they were tiny. Looking at the two of them across the dinner table last night, big as anything, I realized that whatever I have taught them about sharing, making connections, of real time offering of some part of themselves, whether it is a story from their day or a pad of college-ruled notebook paper, the teaching time is over. Now, I just have to live it and hope they are noticing.

Living the way I do, paying attention to the subtle and not-so-subtle clues that the Universe gives me on any given day, I can be awash in serendipity.

Just last week I was driving to the grocery store, listening to Joe Donohue on WAMC’s show The Roundtable, I heard Joe interview author Nathaniel Philbrick about his new book “Why Read Moby Dick?”. I tingled with glee. Just days earlier, at the Rhinebeck Sheep and Wool Festival I had met a young knitwear designer, Ann Weaver, who just self-published a collection of her knitted designs inspired by “Moby Dick”. And, to keep the connection even more electrified, I saw that her book “White Whale” was illustrated by mixed media compositions created by artist Matt Kish, who I had also just read about on one of my new favorite websites for culture and news, www.brainpickings.org. Matt has created an illustration for every page of “Moby Dick”. Yes, that door stop sized novel that opens with “Call me Ishmael.”

Is it serendipity that “Moby Dick” shows up in my life four times in one week? I have not even read the whole book. Or that I live not far, like about 20 miles from where Herman Melville lived when he wrote the novel? Or that Joe Donohue, who is one of the best interviewers of artists that I have ever heard, should ask Nathaniel such great questions that I was mesmerized while driving?

You know I started my life, my professional life, as an actor, right?

I learned quickly the importance of attribution, of my bio and credits on a program. I learned from stinging disappointment the heartache of not being mentioned in a program or being omitted somehow from the roster of contributors to a project.

That is one of the reasons you will see lots of links on the Laundry Line. I like you to know where I get my information. I love to share what I have gathered throughout my day, even from my drive to get groceries, or reading a new blog, I love creators to get all the attention they need to affirm in their minds that the world is receiving their work.

Nina Paley, a cartoonist, filmmaker and activist for artist rights created one of the most delightful movies I have ever seen. Here is a trailer for “Sita Sings the Blues”.

My postal art collaborator, Karen Arp-Sandel shared this movie at her yearly Vibrant Visionary Art retreat at The Kripalu Center last year. Nina’s work about the combinational nature of creativity is dynamic and thought provoking. See a great piece on her work on Brain Pickings.

It is beyond the scope of this post to discuss the nuts and bolts of copyright and sharing rights for art in general. What I would love to ask of you my readers is to do what I do and that is to “Link With Love”. If you share something you like here on the Laundry Line, whether it is my art or photography, something I have written or quoted, poems that I post- please give credit where it is due. I just put a “Link With Love” badge here on my sidebar. If you click on it, you will be led to a great site with lots of information about this topic. If attribution and copyrights really call out to you, go to Nina Paley’s website.

And, in terms of what I share on the Laundry Line, these words and photographs and art express my personal experience. I share them with you because it is my life mission to share. My Mom used to tell the story that when I was old enough to use the telephone, a nice heavy black plastic one in a niche in the wall of our Chicago apartment, I would call all my friends on Wolcott Avenue to let them know I was heading outside to play. This was not to boast about my whereabouts, but to call everyone out to play with me. I have always always always loved to share.

“Friendship doubles our joy and divides our grief.”

Mom shared this Swedish proverb with me too.

Fun. Grief. Quince. It is always better shared.

xo S