Wendy Brown-Baez's Blog: Wendy's Muse - Posts Tagged "creative-writing"

Writing is the way I love the world. Writing is the way I make sense of life, to sort through its terrors, joys, and challenges, and to reach out and connect to others. Writing is an act of empowerment as I reveal my deepest truths and struggles. It has given me courage to go on despite a descent to the darkest “night of the soul” and it has helped to rekindle my passion for life. Poetry keeps the candle burning, cracks open the darkness, transforms pain into beauty.

I am an eclectic reader from Robert Frost to Joy Harjo, from Rumi to Miguel Hernandez. I love poetry that gives me back a reflection of my heart and soul and poets who share their struggles, doubts, fears, victories and exultations. I collect poetry wherever I can to muse on and to share how the Muse can point to the blessings of living in this strange beautiful world.

I have learned to live with more and more. Long gone are those youthful days of traveling with only one bag, a Bible, a toothbrush, a nail clipper in my pocket, and one change of underwear. Long gone as well the ability to sleep on a table, a cement floor piled with ragged clothing, a hammock, a springy pull-out couch, a piece of porch, a few blankets thrown on the desert floor. This is not only a matter of my physical discomfort, the aging process, the newly acquired security of a paycheck and a condo bequeathed to me. This is also choice. This is knowing the limitations of being blinded by vision that required sacrificing pieces of my soul and realizing the deep connections felt in those fleeting encounters were only that—fleeting.

I have learned to live with more and more blessings and I know how to count them. The children have increased from the ones I birthed to the ones I raised as a nanny to the twenty in my classroom, each unique, each bringing gift of challenge, of satisfaction, of endearment. The friendships that solidify with each admittance of failure and need of assurance,. that age along the path with me, the people I allow to see my tears, my frustrations, who let me be wild, who like it when I am delighted, who aren’t afraid to tell me what they think and when I admit I am following my own star, they trust that it is ok even when it doesn’t make any sense.

The blessings of poems as well. How they gather, how they are given away. The presence I have grown into when I communicate with an audience.

I have learned to live with more and more and sometimes I imagine going back to simplicity. What if I had only one small bag, one room, only one best friend next to me? If I could chose only one poem to be taken along, which would it be? If I had only one year or one month to live, what would I let go of? What would I give away if I knew I could take nothing with me but my own heart and my own song?

Live as if love were a garden, filled with succulent fruit, decay and growth in their seasons, nourishment after the planting, the tending, the weeding.

Live as if spring was a fountain of joy rushing through your being, summer the way you do your work—opened wide, daring to be tasted, daring to be plucked, casual in the heat, determined to ripen.

Live as if tenderness was your birthright, as if gentle touch is the way the world caresses you, as if you were a dancer with a piece of sky in your hands.

Live as if you are an old lady with ribbons around your hat and flowers in your hair, unstoppable, wild.

Live as if everyone you meet is a friend, everywhere you stop an adventure is about to begin.

Live as if surrender moment by moment is possible, a work of art crafted by your own two hands.

Live as if beauty was the way you love the world, the beauty of thunderstorms, the beauty of the pearl created by friction within the oyster, the beauty of conversation, the beauty of not knowing the future only moving towards it in good company for the sake of becoming whole.

Who knows how often I hugged loneliness to me like a prodigal daughter, how often I have draped the shawl of grief around my shoulders, how many nights I tossed and turned alone on the edge of understanding and not caught a glimmer in the moonlight of my own holy face? Feast on memories of loved ones around the table dipping bread into oil, drinking wine, toasts and laughter. Feast on songs that carried my bones into dancing, feast on the unbroken web that is between us, irridescent. Who knows that I struggle with the shadow within, claimed finally after allowing others to be the mirror image? Who knows that I now have asked for the blessing, no matter the limp from the broken thigh? Feast on the light, enkindled by words, by touch, by love, by willingness, holding the lantern to the sky no matter how fierce the wind.

Beneath my skin is the tingle of sea touching sand, the ebb and flow of moon tide, the ricocheting cries of seagulls, the thud as waves hit the boat. I dangle my feet close to the wet stern; I leap onto sloping sand; I follow my friend to hot cobblestones of an ancient street; the smell of fish and lime entice me to a sun baked porch and the smoke of fire blazing beneath the banana leaf-wrapped salmon. Beneath my skin is happiness wanting to bubble up like champagne and sadness coating the waters like an oil slick, dangerous, unpredictable. Beneath my skin is a dark cave lit only by a torch held high in the hand of a medicine woman, her hair blown wild, her eyes full of wisdom, the quaking of my insides. Beneath my skin is a universe of stars expanding and spider webs patching the wound. Beneath my skin are the stories that spill from my soul across the arch of time and make me whole.

It seems only days ago I was posting a complaint on fb about my neighbors installing their Christmas lights right after Halloween. "Can't we celebrate one holiday at a time?" I scolded. And now suddenly here it is the New Year with the celebrations of Solstice and Christmas behind us.

2012 is a hot topic as we wonder which of prophecies will come true. End of the World or just more technological and environmental changes? Crisis or transformation? Revolutions that are violent and bloody as Middle East protestors are gunned down or revolutions in mind-body-spirit that bring us to authenticity and truth?

The publishing industry is undergoing a revolution. More and more authors are taking the short cut of self-publishing rather than the long wait to have a manuscript accepted, then another wait for its debut, with the necessity to have a marketing plan, a platform, and a willingness to invest one's time and money into promotion in either case. I once had a manuscript accepted only to have the publishing company go out of business before the release date, thus needing to start all over to find another (and haven't yet). I just read one success story from a woman who made her manuscript into an ebook and sold 4 million copies within months. I also know that sometimes even with the best marketing strategy--the book launch which takes place at the best local bookstores and which includes other well-known local talent, the radio interviews, the review, the platform of readers and friends created over time, the previous readings--may still not come up to our expectations and the box of books seems not to dwindle down at all. The cost of magazine ads may not even fit into out budgets; even to enter the Minnesota Book Awards cost the equvilent of $150.

I believe 2012 will be a good year for me. The past year was both challenging and exciting. Healing from the right hip replacment, publication of my chapbook transparencies of light, attending the Austin International Poetry Festival, watching my dad's dementia worsen, the death of my son's fiancee from burns suffered in a gas explosion, the birth of my fourth grandson, a whirlwind of writing workshops and 14 appearances, one under a spotlight on stage and others as part of a group effort, are some of the highlights. It has been productive and horrifying, heartbreaking and uplifting all mixed together.

I look forward to the reading sponsored by Saint Paul Alamanc with the high school students from the after school writing workshop next Monday because I am so proud of them for showing up and completing the work despite their own challenges of young children at home, working and supporting themselves, or low reading comprehension, and yet taking the risk, diving into material that was not always easy literarilly and emotionally.

My favorite story from this past year comes from the writing workshop at The Aliveness Project, a non-profit that serves people with HIV or AIDS. One of the participants told me that he has joined a men's support group 6 months previously but had not yet contributed to the discussion or even introduced himself to the group. "I read the writing we did in the workshop to introduce myself," he told me. His story brought tears to my eyes. I know that must have been hard, and yet, what a wonderful way to break the ice! It is proof that writing together, self-reflective writing with a focus on healing, can have dramatic results.

I hope 2012 will be a time of inspiration as well as transformation: inspiration to use your talents, to show your support for others who may be struggling to get their work out into the work, cooperation and joyful exchange of ideas as well as hands on helpfulness and loving kindness. I am excited to enter this new year with some of my challenges behind me and with the strength to face those coming. But most of all with awareness that my dream of being a poet, a writer, a teacher is my true north and thus cannot but point me where I need to go.

Celebrate with me! I want to share my good news: I am the recipient of a Minnesota State Arts Board Grant. The grant will enable me to take writing workshops into 12 non-profits from May '12 - May '13. The proposal I submitted was to offer 4 sessions of 2 hours each. This can be for the clients or tailored for the staff to share my techniques.

I can also offer a presentation of my own work which is performance-based, that is, I act out my poems dramatically with story telling and props. The idea is to bring accessible, relevant poetry to audiences who are not usually readers of poetry. The goal is to create an intimacy with the audience and take us through a transformation as I share my story of healing and awakening.

I also use contemporary poetry as jump starts for the writing process. Self-reflective writing is a therapuetic tool for healing. Writing and sharing our words can help us change perspective and find courage and comfort. Poetry helps us to access the right brain, the seat of intuition. As I get to know the individuals in the circle, I select poems that I think will be relevant or resonate. It is my ability to pay attention that makes me the facilitator. Also, my job is to create a safe space where we are not judged as so many of us are our own worst critics. I am often surprised by the quality and honesty that I hear as well as what flows from my own pen.

The idea for this proposal came to me years ago. I submitted a similiar proposal in 2007 but I didn't get the grant. In looking back, I see that now the timing is perfect: the hips are healed from surgery, the poetry books are published and I have more experience in leading writing groups.

I feel like the poor widow in the parable: I found my gold coin, rejoice with me!

What I want to tell you is: Don't let go of your dreams. They take perserverance, they take work, they take faith. Yes, there are some of us out there with first published book becoming best sellers and the best teaching positions. I can not tell you how many rejections of poems and stories I have received and how often no one registered for a writing group or not enough people to make it happen. But I have this year to live out my dream and I am gratefully awed. Thank you, more please.