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

Often poems come to me unbidden, when I am not looking. I am quiet, meditative, calm, and suddenly words pop into my mind that beg to be written down. Other times, I am nudged by stimulus that comes from a writing exercise in a group or from a feeling or thought that I want to examine, clarify or process because it is profoundly disturbing or confusing. But sometimes poems come to me out of celebration and hope that rise from the ashes of difficulties. These are transformed by the beauty of words in an effort to extend beyond my self.
The following poem is such a celebration. To know that spring will come, the real spring that will make me forget the days I cursed the blasted cold, the metaphorical spring that will smooth the ragged edges where my heart has been torn, is a gift of the natural cycles of life. To remember, as well, that Mother Bird nudges her young out of the nest so that they can fly is a way to understand something universal when we might feel kicked in the butt by life's circumstances. Enjoy!

On the Edge

I am spring. I am green with an ache to heal,
blossoms unfolding on a slender stem
and sap rising to the sky.

I am mothering that folds over you
feathers soft and warm, sings
a lullaby, teaches you gentle touch and

I am the blood that rises to tumble and
shout, the feel of bared skin and the
lazy itch, to the beach

to the lake, to the west, anywhere
cool and wet. Adventures and
a test of skill, strangers in a strange

land, perhaps fly away to Italy
or descend to the caliente country
of Mexico, live on tacos and grit.

I am the restless craving in the back
of your throat for kisses or maps.
I wave my green lacy hands

and shoo you on, push you
out the nest.

I am proud to announce that the project "In the Shelter of Words" received a McKnight Foundation grant provided through COMPAS Community Art Program. "In the Shelter of Words" will be a multi-media art installation developed from a writing workshop for young people who are homeless or living below poverty level. The project is based on artistic expression in the context of economic hardship, unstable home situations, and the physical and psychological challenges of these circumstances. The art installation will present a visual interpretation of the participants’ lives, an iPod of their digitalized writings, and photos that they take. It will be a portable shelter, filled with artifacts that represent the transient nature of their lives and the places where they find comfort and safety. The students of Face to Face Academy where the main writing workshop takes place will build the shelter from found and/or donated materials. Clients of SafeZone drop in center are also invited to contribute, as well as clients of the Transgender group.

Writing will be used as a springboard for discussion of the issues the participants face. Discussing excerpts from poetry and writing will add the meaningfulness of literature to give insight and dimension to their lives.

After it is installed in the high school for their peers, families, and staff to experience, the art installation will be placed in a community venue such as an arts organization, gallery, community center, non-profit, or school, in order to create awareness of the challenges of homelessness, poverty, abuse, neglect, loss of family and identity, cultural diversity, and the courage of young people in facing those challenges. The art installation acts as a catalyst for the wider community to generate discussions about these issues.

The students of Face to Face Academy come from diverse cultural backgrounds and sexual orientations. Face to Face Academy requires that their students are either below performance level, experienced homelessness or abuse, are pregnant or parenting, or have mental health problems or chemical dependencies. Face to Face Health and Counseling Services Inc is the parent organization which runs a clinic and serves more than 2,500 homeless and underserved youth annually who live at the federal poverty level and face numerous obstacles to their healthy development. Due to circumstances of lacking a stable home environment and living in poverty, these young people are below academic standards of their peer group, have physical and psychological problems, and experience difficulty with identity and owning a sense of belonging within the larger community. Their day-to-day existence takes much of their energy. Besides the lack of financial stability, these young people also face violence, inability to take care of themselves during times of illness, and uncertainty about their futures.

The art installation will emphasize cross-cultural, cross-generational, and inter-community communication as the art installation serves as a catalyst for people in the wider community to listen to the reflections of these young people on their situation.

"In the Shelter of Words" is a way to engage these young people in an interactive activity for literacy development. It will empower the participants by giving them a vehicle for self-expression and to offer that expression as a way to educate the community of their plight as impoverished and disenfranchised.

I have been writing with the students of Face to Face Academy using a simple technique of spontaneous timed writing. We read a poem together, discuss it briefly, then I suggest a "prompt" or "lead" for them to free associate from. I have been impressed with how quickly the participants have opened up about their lives and their willingness to share their reflections about the mistakes they made in the past and their hopes for the future.

I invite you to follow our story as our project develops on my website. http://www.wendybrownbaez.com

We have a fiscal agent "Springboard for the Arts" enabling us to accept tax deductible contributions toward the materials needed for the art installation.

My original idea came from the "sukkah" that the Jewish people build after Rosh Hashana during the holiday of "Sukkoh" to represent the 40 years they traveled in the wilderness, living in tents. During one of the years that we lived in Israel, my son built such a structure on our porch out of old boards that he found. You are supposed to see the stars through the roof, so we were fortunate that the city of Haifa was trimming their trees and provided him with the perfect roof material. During the holiday, meals are taken at a table placed in it, you can sleep in it (in contemporary times depending on the weather), and friends and neighbors drop by to visit and have tea and cookies. Sukkahs are often decorated with fruits and other harvest designs. You are supposed to let it disintegrate but, of course, our shelter will be moved and re-installed in another location.

My belief that writing is a way to heal, to coach oneself through difficulty, to reflect on the past and plan for the future, and to validate one's experiences is reinforced by this workshop. The courage of these young people to overcome their challenges has inspired me. I hope it will inspire you and if you live near the Twin Cities, you will come to visit the art installation. We expect it to be up in the fall.

As we sit in a circle, we are strangers to each other but I anticpate that soon we will be connected, by words, by tears, by laughter, by the revelations that come unexpectedly from this technique of writing. There is power in a circle, writing, reading, and listening with concentrated attention takes us deeper, is healing, is a hand of kindness caressing us even as the old griefs and new fears swell up to be written down and shared. One revelation I had this week-end is that in those moments of crisis when we feel most alone, when we stand on the edge and do not know if we will fly or fall, when we walk the knife edge of despair that could mean life or death, or the quality of our lives or deaths, we really aren't. Someone has experienced this, someone else has been through this, we are always part of the web of life. Will I remember this as I walk my tightrope over the abyss of anger, guilt, fear, remorse, and sorrow? Will I remember to keep my eyes on the goal where YOU, the reader, the audience, the cherished ones who care about me, are waiting with opened arms?

This is one of my writings this week-end, from a prompt of the first line of the poem Happiness
by Jane Kenyon.


There’s no accounting for drunkenness, the kind
that sweeps you off your feet
the second you fall in love.
Falling. That’s the word. Rain
kissing soft petals, a spider
steering toward dinner in his web

or your knees in the sanctuary
falling graceless and needy
onto cold marble or
maybe a wooden kneeler
damp from the peasants who were
here for mass, praying to saints you
do not recognize.

There is no accounting for drunken gratitude,
the boat that skims the waves
across a turquoise bay, as you peer
over the side to see the leaping dolphin
some shoutable tourist has just spotted

or the hand that closes over yours
as you lie in your fatal decline, withered,
ready, hearing the call of the choir
you had signed up for
the day you were born.

Join me in my lovely Northside garden and gazebo for writing practice and gentle critiquing. In the heat of our dreams and passions, we will nourish our creative rejuvenation. Using simple techniques of spontaneous free writing, we will delve into the core of our story. Writing is a way of listening to the deepest self and the inner voice of wisdom as we gain confidence to write with our authentic voices. By sharing our stories, we find commonality and connection, transformation and grace. We will learn techniques to deepen our writing practice, energize our writing skills, and develop our vision of ourselves as writers. All levels of writing skill welcome.
Six Tuesdays June 2 - July 7 pr July 21 - August 25 6:00 - 9:00 pm
$75 per six weeks session
for location and more info:
www.wendybrownbaez.com

I have been slowly going through all the boxes, files, and old notebooks I brought from Santa Fe. Occasionally I transcribe something that feels worth keeping and usually I rip up what I don't want. It is my habit to rip up rough drafts after they are transcribed. For one thing, I don't have the space. For another, once they are transmuted into text, I no longer need them. They are superfluous.

I found this piece of writing and could not remember the circumstances of writing it. It seems to be from a writing group or workshop. It is not dated nor is it in a section with other writings. There is no code in the sequence of writings to inform me. Perhaps I just felt stuck and went to a cafe to inspire myself. Or perhaps the revelation of my tears during the therapy session (which I could almost remember now with these words in front of me) had puzzled me so much that journaling was not adequate and this piece was born. Anyway, I am glad I kept it. It is 80% accurate.

Should we date our writings and note the circumstances (prompt from writing group or class, prompt from book, writing exercise taken solo, desperate to keep going, working on novel/memoir/book of poetry, bored with current material, inspired by last night's reading, a gift) ?
Is it important to connect the work to a time in our lives, our surroundings, our emotional state, our support system?
I don't have the answer. I don't even date my journal entries, adding a date here and there, although noting special, important dates. But I do write the month, year and place started and finished in the frontspiece of the journal, illustrated with a recent photograph and other interesting pictures and words I clip or find. Enjoy!


The walls were yellow, not canary yellow, not lemon yellow, not mustard yellow, not sunshine. There was a complete absence of green or orange. Bright like a Mexican wall, like the line painted down the center of the highway. So that every particle of light would reflect back. But the rest of the room required something bright and invulnerable. The stained cement floor and rough wooden chairs. It wasn’t a yellow to stare at and soothe the eyes. So she had to look at the others, engaged deeply in conversation (women) or absorbed in newspapers (men).

He had left the table, two ounces of fresh squeezed orange juice still in the red cup. She sipped it absently, wondering if she felt abandoned now, now that she had heard the few words she had not been expecting. Sitting there in front of the counselor, just like going to a marriage counselor, she thought quickly, then wondered, Do I erase that thought as well?

She had been surprised at how emotional she had become. Surprised when tears sprang into her eyes, surprised that they were honest and how in the few seconds as she fought to get herself back under control, she felt something break apart in her, something unravel completely. Later she knew she was at the end of her rope with exhaustion, with crazy menopause hormones, but it still didn’t explain the effect he had on her when she had tried so hard to dismiss all of it as something she was willing to let go of, to give up. When he wrote the word Marriage on the email, she had read it as Mirage. And it was a mirage, pretending to be married for the sake of a legal document. Yet feeling in her gut that she was bound, committed. To what or whom, she no longer knew.

Afterwards, after what felt like a marathon race on the bicycle or a long rock climb, they went to the café to have breakfast. Her heart was pounding so hard, she shivered despite the warm May sun. It wasn’t the weak-kneed pounding of his nearness. It wasn’t like anything she had ever experienced before or recognized. She thought maybe she needed to eat, low blood sugar. But after the bagel and eggs, when he had left her to sit there at the table and come back up for air like a deep sea diver, slowly decompressing form the depths, full of treasure and secrets, she began to shiver again, harder. Until she had to walk out of the increasingly chilled interior of the cafe to the sunshine outside.

She knew she had given her life away. She had not been able to break the bonds; indeed, they had tightened. Around her heart. He had charmed her once again and she was caught.

It is the time of Christmas cheer and Christmas memories that make me long to gather with my loved ones.

I can recall Christmases when I lived communally and we spent weeks in preparation. We collected gifts for each other and for the homeless that came to celebrate the day with us or who lived with us full-time. We collected turkeys that someone would spend all night basting for the feast on Christmas Day. One year we were divided into two groups: those of us in Washington made dolls using a Raggedy Ann pattern, those in Oregon made teddy bears. My son's bear traveled with him for years until we returned to the states and had our first puppy, who ripped it to pieces one day that he was left unhappily alone. That bear was named Nicholas and is it any indication of his place in my son's heart that his child is named Nicholas? I also remember the time I was put in charge of collecting items to divide into gifts. I spent days walking around town to ask merchants to donate something, anything. From gloves to tea cups, from books to toys, from games to pen sets, we collected all of it. The closet was stuffed to the top. We spent days deciding which item went to which guest, or to which brother or sister, large or small, and then wrapping it. A labor of love. I barely remember Christmas as I was too exhausted to stay awake after Christmas dinner. The children put on a play and the adults dozed, slumped against the walls, done in from 3 nights of hardly any sleep at all in order to put the finishing touches on our projects.

Winter is a good time for writing. Light a few candles, the glow of afternoon softened by clouds or snow, the contrast between going out into the icy temperatures and coming in to warmth, perhaps a fire to dream by. All this makes me want to hunker down with a good book--perhaps the one I am writing! There is no time like the present to take the leap into your imagination. Write about Christmas. Laugh as you remember how your brother woke you up at 2am insisting the clocks had stopped, it is time to get up and open presents. How your parents arrived back home from having an egg nog at the neighbors to find the gifts they had spent hours assembling under the tree unwrapped. Write about how your heart broke open the first time you celebrated Christmas without those you love because you were too far away, you couldn't afford air fare, or you were too ill to travel. Write about the way snow erases sound and the way your beloved's cheeks turn red and how lonely it feels to wait for a bus under the lights when your feet are frozen and even your mittens in pockets cannot keep out the chill. Write about the crazy Christmas display down the street where every available yard space is covered with floating blown-up Santas and lights and dancing elves and bloated raindeer. Write about good will to men. Write about the people who ring the Salvation Army bells, hunched into their jackets and stepping into the shelter of a store front whenever they can and how cheerful they are when you drop those dollars into the can. Write about being hungry and write about being full.

Here is a poem about the time I accompanied a street person to get his daily intake of booze.

Cheap Wine

I learned to spill a drop on the earth
before the first sip, no matter the

thirst in the back of the throat that
drove him to panhandle, close

enough to the liquor store that everyone knew.
But still they paid the quarter,

put a buck into his trembling hand.
Better him than me, they thought.

Or maybe it was the way the corners of his eyes turned
up, the intimation of a man down on his luck, not a man

forsaken and drowned. Or if we sat
in a basement refuge beside rumbling washing

machines, the drop was spilled on the jean leg.
Any place warm, anywhere out of wind.

We had trudged, he forging ahead and me following
in his wide booted steps, the red kerchief

wound around his head the only
hat he ever owned, chains rattling against his

thigh as he strode towards the cruel fate of
wine. He taught me to say “for the brothers”,

those who had gone down.
Who had been hit by a bus or died of hyperthermia

or hitched their way to being beaten by the
side of the road, the ones locked up in prison,

the ones who huddled against him under the bridge
if it is possible to huddle without touching.

He said it was communion. He told me he never took a
drink it without thanking God for one more day.

A poem has breath, pause, rhythm, repetition, word play, imagery, leaps of associations, structure, hyperbole, metaphor, and layers of meaning that create resonnance, take us deeper into emotional nuances, or surprise us with an unpredictable twist. And sometimes the meaning is intuited more than understood.

I asked the students in the afterschool writing workshop what they thought is the pivotal point of the poem
Why I am not a Buddhist by Molly Peacock. It starts:

"I love desire, the state of want and thought
of how to get; building a kingdom in a soul
requires desire." ...

and goes on to say:
"But why is desire suffering?
Because want leaves a world in tatters?
How else but in tatters should a world be?"

The students picked other lines but not these. I asked them to re-read and re-consider these lines. One student raised his hand. "But why does that mean?"
"That's the beauty of poetry," I replied, "Sometimes you can't figure it out logically. Of course we don't want a world that is in tatters. Sometimes a poem makes you think." I didn't want to tell him that yes, the world is in tatters because that is natural, is the unfolding of Divine Nature, is part of the suffering that comes from desire and want which make us alive and splendid, and can be uncomfortable. That Molly Peacock is showing us leaves falling from the tree, hearts breaking from grief and betrayal, shadows on snow, ashes on the hearth, jail bars, separation and doubt, all the things we want to keep whole but cannot. He is young and some things have to be discovered for oneself.

That's why I love poetry. No easy answers. A walk into the labyrinth and standing at the center, awed, humbled, a little dizzy, ready for whatever comes up out of the heart. Back out, with deep slow breaths and steps to the world again, transformed by a glimpse of what we are unable to articulate and yet will spend the rest of our lives in search of the right words.

One of my favorite website writing workshops is back up and active after a period of being closed.
http://www.northography.com is a website based on ekphrasis, writing a response to a stimulus that is a photo or painting. One of the things I love about it is that it is interactive and I feel part of a community as we read and comment on each other's work. The other thing I love is that it is mostly local poets and writers, people I might eventually meet at a class or conference or workshop in the Twin Cities. It enables me to stay in touch and yet not have to take a bus!

When I first came to Minneapolis to help care for my grandson, I felt isolated. I had lived in Santa Fe for twelve years (the last round) and was part of two strong writer's groups. Words Dancers was a group of women who met to write poetry and became performance poets. Write Action was a writing support group for those challenged with health issues. When my son died, my soul flew out of my body and my creativity died as well. When I returned to my groups for the sake of company and comfort, putting pen to paper was a natural reflex. But the writing I did seemed to skim the surface and was not fulfilling. It took many months (and a side trip to Mexico to open an art gallery) until I could tap into my creative side in order to write my story, my truth, my emotional turmoil, and my healing.

When I came to Minneapolis, I was with my grandson who had just turned 1 for 40 hours a week. The other grandma took him on Wednesdays, providing the freedom to run errands, such as the library and the post office. Northography was a godsend. Not only did I have the ability to connect with a stimulus and other writers, but I could do it with Joshua sitting in my lap! I could take all day to think about the stimulus and let my thoughts and words bubble to the surface. There was no pressure to read aloud, the agonizing over whether it was too personal or I felt too sensitive to share with strangers. In a way, it was an ideal way for me to shake out the cobwebs and begin all over again. Little by little, words came back to me. Little by little, my poetry deepened, sharpened, came alive again. I also learned how people in the Midwest do it, how they think, how they write, what works for them in my writing, and it honed my work to make it better.

The concept is simple and I believe it would be easy to set up a website like this in your area. Britt Fleming manages the website and it did take a lot of his attention and energy for a while. We are hoping that he has simplified the process this time but it is his kind generosity that enables us to email him with questions and problems (I forgot to add the last lines, I want to have it formatted, how about fixing that avatar for me?) And wouldn't a little grant money to pay for his time be nice?

Join us for a glimpse of working in progress together:
http://www.northography.com

Red Room gave us a writing prompt about the four directions and it made me think of my women's Moon Lodge in Santa Fe where we begin by calling in the directions. We start with the East, place of new beginnings; travel to the South, place of passion and playfulness; to the West, place of endings and letting go; the North, place of illumination, and then Mother Earth where we are grounded, Father Sky where we are inspired, and finish in the center of our own being and the circle.

This made me think of various writers who live all over the globe and how their cultures and their climates have impacted their writings. You can read more at the blog:
http://redroom.com/member/wendybaez


But what I want to write about here is how the qualities of the directions are a template for writing.
We start with a fresh clean page (or screen) and allow ourselves to open to the Muse, the spirit of creativity. We play around with ideas, concepts, words; we find our theme with passion; we are overtaken by it. Someone once said that all writers write about the same question or delimma over and over, perhaps in different formats. If you think about the arc of human history, there are a few simple common themes: safety and mystery, war and peace, love and jealousy, freedom and injustice, courage and weakness. How each writer shines a light of imagination onto our own experience is what makes us unique. How we let go of what doesn't serve the poem or the story is what makes us a craftsperson. Especially poetry. Any published poet can recall that instant when you know there are lines that have to go, no mater how beautiful they are and how much you love them.

Illumination: the light of truth, our authentic voice, the focus on what motivates us to speak with joy or regret, in wisdom or foolishness.

And then we ground ourselves by standing on the reality of the page or the stage. And reach out to the stars, the universal, the timeless and unknown.

But ultimately we return to the center. Our inspiration comes from within the soul. Authentic writing comes from the gut, the heart. As one writer said, Just open a vein and bleed onto the page. That is what connects us to the reader, that keeps the pages turning, that returns us back to the poem again and again.

I am scanning my memoir of living communally for ten years from pages that were written on a word processor to computer files, editing as I go. On the one hand, I am grateful that I wrote everything down because I see as I edit, that I have already forgotten many details. On the other hand, this is reawakening old memories, some of which are not pleasant. My naivite surprises me, and yet I was young and idealistc, why should this be a surprise? I am glad that I captured that naivite and that I can look back at that young girl with more kindness now. At first when I started writing the memoir, I was angry that she was so stupid, so gullible, so eager to please, that she didn't stand up for herself and wasn't aware that she was placed in situations that were dangerous, demoralizing, and emotionally damaging. And worst of all, despite her strong maternal instincts, subjected her children to situations that were also dangerous and emotionally damaging. And yet, I envy her the joy, the daily miracles, the faith, the encounters with others who were special, seekers of truth, pilgrims to the holy center.

In writing a memoir, we want to tell the story, share our experiences, brag about how we survived or perhaps how we transformed. Were transformed. We want to remember. But we also process, we come to understand who we are through where we have been in a different way. Through the objective lens of words on a page. They may be our words but we craft them, we seek to have a fine literary sense, we want our reader to be inspired enough to read to the end, to want to know what happened to us. To cheer us on, to sigh with relief, to become our friends, to know we are more than just acquaintances passing in the night, that we, too, have suffered and survived, grew and celebrated, took wing and soared.