Beth Kephart's Blog, page 12

language creeps back in

In the early days of November, at dawn, I walked along the sea.

I had been away from myself for a very long time. Anxious about the world, saddened by unkindness and untruthfulness of both the personal and political sort, not at all certain whether I would ever again find joy in many of the things that I love most.

I'm still anxious. I'm still saddened. But I cannot remain, I realize at last, inside this held breath, this paralysis. I'm no good to anyone if I'm no good within myself.

And so I again am taking refuge inside story. I am returning, in my imagination and in fact, to a young woman I came to know last spring—to someone whose dignity, voice, and absolute compassion deeply heartened me.

I will wake up thinking about her. I will write for her, perhaps just a sentence every day. I will move forward and again forward because her story must be told, and because I know how to do that telling now, and because language creeps back in.

I need the language I had lost to live in this world, to make a difference.

we read to understand what it is to be another

I recently wrote of my time, this past Tuesday, at Conestoga High School, where I met with teachers and administrators during a district-wide Artistry of Teaching program.

I entered my teaching classroom early, as I tend to do. The room, shared by teachers of English, was perfectly fringed with books. The walls were lined with lists of favorite books, quotes from favorite books, evidence of conversations being had about Pulitzer Prize winners, National Book Award finalists, banned books, classic books, new YA titles.

I was moved, deeply moved, by this shared library—this proof of deep, border-smashing literacy among the young, as encouraged by the not-as-young. We read to find out. We read to know. We read to feel. We read to understand what it is to be another.

bridges and not walls

Yesterday I participated in a gorgeously-rendered Artistry of Teaching program for the T/E School District. Walked the hallways of my son's old high school. Saw again some of his favorite teachers and remembered why I loved them. Sat briefly at lunch with the great artist/writer Judy Schachner. Stood among teachers and thought out loud about how memoir breaks down walls, opens lives, provides a place of refuge—and might be taught.

The world was about to change, dramatically change. My heart was folded up inside my chest. I kept talking about bridges, about true stories as solace, about the yield that comes with trust. The teachers wrote sideways, from fiction to truth. They wrote of loved places, first memories, extruded and inverted details. They wrote. We talked. We hoped out loud.

The Artistry of Teaching program was an act of faith. It was a demonstration of our commitment to the children who come next. The power and the promise of them. The things they yet will teach us about goodness and grace, community and resilience, bridges and not walls.

an interview with the old memoirist; Cape May in November

The thing about the sea is that it's theater. Dawn and the people gather, waiting for the break of sun. Dusk and the people return, their friends, or memories, near.

All eyes on the horizon. All bets on the sun.

This past week, in Cape May, New Jersey, there was weather, there was light. The dolphins traveled in pods. The birds sliced silhouettes. The hours changed. Nine memoirists had joined us for our second Juncture memoir workshop, and in between the exhilaration of their work, their metamorphosis, and our conversation in an old painted lady, I traveled to the beach, alone.

While we were gone, a two-part essay/interview about my memoir-teaching work and book (Handling the Truth) appeared in the November issue of The Woven Tale Press. (Part 1. Part 2.) I have Richard Gilbert to thank for the intensely intelligent appraisal of Handling, and for the questions, which moved and engaged me.

Thank you, Woven Tale, Richard, Sandra, and Angelica.

Thank you, Sea Changers.

pondering private lives lived out in public places, and a new memoir workshop at Longwood Gardens

Today I share news of an upcoming one-day memoir workshop, to be conducted next October 15, 2017 at Longwood Gardens. Information is available here. Sign-ups begin in a week. Class size is limited. I'm thinking we all could use a turn in a beautiful place. I know I could.

Meanwhile, in this hard right now, when violent forces swirl, afflict, threaten, when words (abused, thwarted, erased of meaning) take on a life of their own, I have been pondering democracy and private lives lived out in public places. I wrote about the dark of that and the possible light in that for today's Philadelphia Inquirer, a story that can be found here. I centered my search for meaning in a famous Philadelphia square.

all ready for the sea (Juncture Workshops)

What a time it has been. What lessons still rush in, at any age.

In the deep mist and midst, we prepare for our nine writers, soon to join us by the sea for the second Juncture Memoir Workshop. I have read their beautiful early essays. I have learned about their hopes as writers. I have added Springsteen and White and a Nest to a reading list, transformed assignments, reassigned hours of the day, and now we look ahead to waves and weather and community, eager for all the good that will come.

And good shall come.
 

lock and key

Autumn, it seems, is finally setting in around here. The breeze carries a chill. The leaves are color. My son is home, for a few essential days. He comes by when I am standing here. A kiss on the cheek. Hey, Mom.

How hard it is to anticipate how much we'll miss our children when they are grown up and mostly gone.

But today, this Sunday morning, everything I need is right within reach—my husband, my son, our small home. We'll eat cookies, take a walk, watch a movie, talk—and that is all, because that is all we need.

the glories of Tulsa (and Nimrod): a photo diary

I arrived home just after midnight.

I still had visions of Tulsa in my head.

A Nimrod conference expertly curated and managed by Eilis O'Neal, on a very pretty University of Tulsa campus. A group reading with Chloe Honum, Sherry Thomas, Brenna Yovanoff, Will Thomas, and Toni Jensen that will always resonate as warm, real, affirming, proof that no one genre corners excellence, that great writing is great writing, period. A chance to work with the rising memoirists of Tulsa, to sit in the audience of Robin Coste Lewis and Angela Flournoy, to hear the winners of the Nimrod contests (my friend Ruth Knafo Setton, Chad B. Anderson, Markham Johnson, and Bryce Emley ) read from their chosen work. A most extraordinary gathering at a generous and intrinsically fascinating home. A delicious (that will now always be her word) conversation with Poet Laureate and long-time Nimrod editor and champion Fran Ringold. A chance to talk to the very wonderful Jeff Martin of Booksmart Tulsa, whose organization ignites readers nearly once each week as it brings in authors like Stephen King, Hisham Matar, Brando Skyhorse, Elizabeth Gilbert, Jonathan Lethem, Ransom Riggs, James Gleick, Geoff Dyer, Stewart O'Nan, Adam Haslett and, yes, I know you were waiting for it: Michael Ondaatje. A Sunday morning spent with my friend Katherine, and her four-month old twins.

In between, the walking. Into the urban streets of Tulsa, early morning, where I saw the proud Art Deco, the proliferating churches, an old Sunoco sign dangling from a top-floor of a brick building. Over the bridge—with Ruth and then alone and then with Katherine—to stand beside the minor league ball park, to watch a U-Haul truck spin in the sky, to walk among the food trucks (Mexican street tacos, jumbo corn dogs, garlic fries, spicy pickles, grilled bacon fluffernutter), to find the Blue Dome, to imagine the streets as poet Markham Johnson encouraged us to imagine many years ago, in the wake of a devastating race riot, to recall the iconic lore of Route 66 (and indeed, I bought the Springsteen memoir on my way home).

"I Believe in Good People," a sign in a closed store read.

I believe in Tulsa.

celebrating my husband's most-excellent pottery news (Craft Forms)

A few weeks ago we got the stupendous news that my husband's work had been juried into Craft Forms 2016, an internationally recognized premiere contemporary craft exhibition showcased at the Wayne Art Center from December 3, 2016 through January 28, 2017.

This year's juror is Stefano Catalani, Curator of Art, Craft & Design at the Bellevue Museum, who will be here to lecture on the chosen works on December 3rd, at the Wayne Art Center.

I am infinitely proud of William Sulit, this husband of mine, who disappears for many hours of many days into the basement to create sui generis work with extraordinary care. His work has sold well at Show of Hands in Philadelphia, where the gallery owner extended Bill's solo show an additional two months and has now maintained a dozen pieces for the shop. Bill's work will again be exhibited at Jam Gallery, in Malvern, PA, this November.

And this selection into this international show represents yet another turning point in Bill's clay career. I married an artist, through and through, and nothing makes me happier than to see his work make its way into the world.

I'm off to Oklahoma to teach memoir (among other things) at the Nimrod Conference (and to see my beautiful Katherine and her twin babies). I'll be back next week with news on what I learned while away (and my thoughts on the extraordinary National Book Award finalist The Turner House, by Angela Flournoy, with whom I'll share a Saturday panel).

All best to all of you in the meantime.

loneliness does not mean one has failed (Olivia Laing, The Lonely City)

I have carried Olivia Laing's The Lonely City from place to place this past month. Laing is a thrilling writer. A form breaker. A true, adult, expansive thinker. In Lonely she weaves together her personal story with the lives of Edward Hopper, Andy Warhol, David Wojnarowicz, and others.

I'm going to be writing about this book in the next issue of Juncture Notes, so no need to say much more about it here. For today, I simply want to quote from the end. Here Laing is speaking about the healing power of art. She holds in her hands the works that others have made. She finds, in them, necessary connection. We live at a time of jarring national discourse, social media degradations, easy, anonymous strikes.

But art speaks of and for the honestly questing self. It speaks not just for the artist but to those seeking proof that their own yearning is neither aberrative nor, somehow, wrong. Loneliness is human. It binds us to each other.

When I came to New York I was in pieces, and though it sounds perverse, the way I recovered a sense of wholeness was not by meeting someone or by falling in love, but rather by handling the things that other people had made, slowly absorbing by way of this contact the fact that loneliness, longing, does not mean one has failed, but simply that one is alive.