Sage Cohen's Blog, page 13

Love thy list

I found out this week, by chance, that my long-time veterinarian sold his practice and is moving out of town next week. Without even so much as a goodbye form letter, he is simply closing up shop and disappearing into the Oregon fog. Having a business of my own that is built on good relationships, this news astounded me. I imagined pets and their people all over Portland getting that "He's just not that into you" slap in the face when they called to see their trusted doctor and were told that he has moved on without bothering to mention it.

I promise you: there is a point to all of this. And though it is not as direct a link as the right turn signal blinking an arrow to the right (which I've been explaining and enacting for my son all week), this veterinary saga does somehow bring me to my latest technology saga: my database. I've been self employed for 14 years, and in all that time, I have been faithfully entering in the contact info of my friends, family, clients, colleagues, literary community members, media lists, and folks who specifically sign up to hear from me about certain topics. I started sending holiday cards to all 500, then as the list grew over time, valentines to all 1,000. And, of course, a handwritten note whenever possible, because that is my favorite way to connect.

One summer during my college years (I diverge again, with intention), I was temping as a receptionist for an organization that provided in-home nurse aides. I had two people on hold: an elder person with incontinence issues wanting to talke to a nurse, and a contractor renovating the home of one of the employees in the office. Somehow, those two "hold" lines bled together behind the scenes and the contractor ended up fielding the incontinence call much to his dismay. I discovered this week that something like this has happened to my database. A nice, streamlined list of 2,000 or so names somehow started leaping their fences and tidy fields and mingling with information from other entries, replicating whatever struck their fancy, to the tune of 16,000 spontaneously generated and mangled records. A database cancer of sorts.

I've spent hours and hours cleaning up the mess, and I'm down to about 9,600 files now. It's been frustrating, of course. But, as with all mistakes and mishaps, a very interesting gift has surfaced: a journey of gratitude through my past. As I've had to hand-sort thousands of names and parse the meaningful from the nonsense, I've had a rare opportunity to savor people from my past — people I like very much but haven't thought of for years. Just seeing how many humans have touched me enough for me to want to write down their name and contact info made me feel connected in ways that I don't often experience as I sit alone in my house at my desk with cats in my lap and an occasional conference call.

And then, something even stranger than database records mating started happening. A good friend/colleague from three cities ago called from his latest city to offer me a job. Another three friends/colleagues who I hadn't seen or spoken to in eight years or so sent letters of introduction to potential new clients. I was invited to read as part of a poetry series. One of my best friends from college–whom I last spoke to in 1996–called. Work was pouring in, friends were showing up to walk my dogs, feed me, play with my son. In short, just engaging with my list and appreciating my list literally seemed to make me magnetic to what I was wanting and needing most.

Which brings me back to my shock and confusion about the veterinarian. He has this incredible list of people who depend on him, who adore him, and he didn't complete the circuit to say goodbye, to say thank you, to say, I'm sorry your dog will die of that disease but I do hope the medication keeps him comfortable. He didn't love his list. And I'd imagine that is largely costing him a foundation he spent many years building.

Which is why I believe every writer needs to honor, cherish and tend his or her list–of friends, colleagues, teachers, publishers, family, media, readers/audience, students, etc. The writing life is solitary in some ways, but like any endeavor that involves other people — readers, audiences, publishers, editors —  a significant source of potential happiness or unhappiness lies in the relationships you cultivate. Keep in touch with these people. Make it clear that you value their interest, friendship, expertise, or whatever it is that is true for you. But even more important than telling them what you appreciate, tell yourself what you appreciate about the community you are cultivating as you hold those names and faces in your mind.

When you love your list, it will love you back. I don't know why, but that's just how it seems to work.

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October 20: an evening of poetry

I'm very excited to be sharing an intimate evening of poetry, wine, and community next week with two poets I admire, in one of my favorite book stores. I'll be reading new poems that make my knees wobble.

Come on out and join us, won't you?

Thursday, October 20, 7:00 p.m.

Poetry reading featuring Kathleen Halme, Carolyn Martin & Sage Cohen

Annie Bloom's Books

7834 SW Capitol Hwy

Portland, OR 97219

Hosted by Jennifer Liberts Weinberg.

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Interview with Poet Carolyn Martin

I admire Carolyn Martin, and I admire her poems; they take me places. Anchored to the ground of truth, soaring into the ether of wisdom, Carolyn's poetry invites me more deeply into myself — more expansively into the rudderless realm of the human. These poems have an authority about them that is suggestive to this reader of mountains — as if they had been here for all time, and we are simply stepping into their landscape to commune with them as we read. Queen of Wands Press, a little publishing house I founded in 2007, has had the good fortune to publish Carolyn's first collection of poetry, Finding Compass this year. (Check out the critical acclaim from poets and authors including Paulann Petersen, David Biespiel, Debbie Applegate and Penelope Scambly Schott.) Carolyn has indulged me here in a conversation about her life and work.

What called you to poetry, and what has kept you engaged with writing poems over the years?

I never wrote anything resembling poetry before I was twenty-two. Even then I could claim only one line that approached the poetic. I'm not really sure when I "got it," but I published my first poem at twenty-nine.

Several things called me to poetry. I love Tennyson's lines: "To have the deep Poetic heart/Is more than all poetic fame." I think I grew up with that heart but had no means of expressing it until I started to teach literature. Then I discovered the beauty and potential of language.

Secondly, mine is a poetic imagination that revels in image, intensity, brevity, and musicality.  A friend of mine recently told me that after reading some of my narratives, she felt she had read a novel on a page. Being basically lazy, I liked that! If I can get a novel on one page, that saves months and years writing hundreds.

What was your most interesting or surprising poem-writing experience?

The most surprising experience occurred in 1982 when, for the first and last time, a poem arrived fully formed in one sitting.  I was teaching creative writing and wanted a poem to share during the final class.  "Cinderella" appeared in the college library one evening.  It wasn't until years later that I realized the poem was about my own glass slipper life in a world that no longer fit.  The next year I hopped over the wall and left the convent.

You have had an incredible career ranging from Roman Catholic nun to keynote speaker. How has this trajectory influenced your writing?

After a rocky start, I found my essence in teaching.  For an introvert, being forced to stand in front of high school freshmen in 1968 was the boot camp for the energetic acting it took to be a keynote speaker.  During my twenty years as a Sister of Mercy of New Jersey, I was immersed in literature, theology, and natural beauty (There's a lot of the latter in NJ!) and they fed my poet's heart.  My first published poems were persona pieces about biblical figures.  (I wanted to rewrite the bible from a woman's point of view. Still working on that!)

After I left in 1983, I spent the next 24 years teaching all kinds of business topics from organizational development to management skills to generational diversity. While I did a great deal of business writing,  poetry was put on the back burner until I retired in 2008 and met you!  You introduced me to a literary world in Portland I didn't know existed.  And that's began my journey back to poetry.

You are one of the most spectacular public speakers I have ever experienced. What do you learn about your poems — or poetry in general — through performing to an audience?

Thank you for that compliment.  During my first poetry reading in 2009 with Kathleen Halme's Attic class, I had an epiphany: I could apply the same platform skills I'd honed over the years to my poetry: pacing, humor, storytelling, passion, connecting with an audience. Business audiences want to be delighted and inspired—so do literary ones.

Also, I believe poetry is "spoken music," so I've practiced at open mics this past year to see which poems sing and which are better left on a page. There are some I wouldn't read aloud again; they're just too complicated for an audience who will only hear them once.

In addition, I'm able to hear where a piece needs revision.  While I do practice out loud at home, it often takes an audience to tune me into the bumps that need smoothing.

You are president of the board of directors for VoiceCatcher, a publication and a literary community very dear to my heart. Why did you step into this role, and what is your vision for women writers in Portland?

I became president in 2010 when the organization was thinking of folding after four anthologies. The original founders and editors thought they had reached their goals and were rightly proud of their accomplishments. However, new leadership arrived who believed this enterprise was too important to shelve. I was retired and had the time, energy, and respect for this organization to take on this role.

We've just published our sixth anthology and have scheduled a series of readings and art exhibits during 2011-2012 to celebrate our 69 authors and artists.  Readers can keep updated at www.voicecatcher.org.

We're now re-thinking how we can best serve a larger audience, engage more local women writers and artists in our community events, find donors to support our 501(c)3 organization, and do all this in a way that doesn't burn out our dedicated volunteers.

What is the most significant wisdom that has guided your writing life?

This is fun: I'll often ask a poem to tell me what it wants to say and what form it wants to say it in.  Giving up left-brain control is difficult but the surprises that flow are lovely.  For example, I was struggling with a piece about Sophocles' character Ismene when she told me I should write about her not in her own voice but in her sister's.  The poem is now called "An interview with Antigone before the premier of Sophocles' play."  It works! Who knew?

How did you choose Finding Compass as the title for your collection?

For several years I had another title firmly stamped in my mind. But then I wrote a poem called "Intrusion" that ended with …find compass in the words at hand. There it was! I have been lost so many times in so many ways in my life, that the theme of finding is important to me.  Robert Frost's line in "Directive," …if you're lost enough to find yourself…resonates. I've often found the deepest truths when I've been lost. How do we find and then listen to our own internal GPS when there's a world of static out there telling us what to do and where to go? I realized that a good number of my poems examined that predicament and this was the right title.

Where can readers purchase Finding Compass?

I'm my own distributor, so just email me at portlandpoet@gmail.com.

[Editor's note: Purchasing Finding Compass will not only uplift you--it will uplift others. We donate 30% of each purchase to Mercy Corps.]

What are you working on now?

My friend/teacher/poet/editor Kathleen Halme told me that, as soon as the first book came out, I should get started on the second.  I'm following her advice. It's trying to find its compass!

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About Carolyn Martin

A former Roman Catholic nun and Associate Professor of English, Carolyn became an international management trainer and keynote speaker. Co-author of four books on generational diversity, she has written articles for numerous business publications including Global HR, Community Bank Notes, and Nursing Management. Her work has also been cited in dozens of periodicals around the world—from Beijing to Montreal, Buenos Aires to London.

Retiring in 2008, she returned to her first love: poetry. Her poems have appeared in Christian Century, Drash: Northwest Mosaic, Naugatuck River Review, Science Poetry, Sisters Today and Verseweavers. Her second collection is already searching for its compass.

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Learn more about Carolyn, her new poetry collection Finding Compass, and upcoming readings! Come join Carolyn and me when we read together with Kathleen Halme at Annie Bloom's Books on October 20 and get your signed copy of Finding Compass. Get the details here!

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Living the dream

In Facebook, the terrain of evocative one-liners, I got a note from an old colleague saying that he and his family were "living the dream". This phrase evokes the image for me of a snake eating its own tail. Living our dreams conflates two very different and necessary dimensions of consciousness into a single, goal-oriented trajectory. Having found dreams to be more dreamable than livable myself, I wonder if we dreamers could be chasing the wrong star.

For example, in the intensely confronting and exhausting two years where I became a mother and wrote/published/promoted two books while also the sole supporter of three people and five animals, it was suggested more than once that I was "living the dream".  The fact was: living the dream was exactly like — well — living. And, honestly, I'm not even sure what I was doing (not-sleeping, not-showering, husband-sleeping-in-garage, etc.) could even be qualified as "living."

Fulfilling two lifelong dreams in a one-two-punch, I learned, does not spare us the complexities of being who we are and living how we live. In fact, the dream realized does the opposite: it magnifies the bumps and fissures that we were thinking, somehow, we would be spared. Change, no matter how wanted, no matter how appreciated, can still be entirely destabilizing. All of those "living the dream" expectations are like a gorgeous paper parasol in a Portland winter downpour: poorly matched with the matter at hand.

I think before I was an author, I imagined there was some kind of author Eden whose membrane was impermeable, where writers felt worthy and got enough sleep, and were haloed in grace and the unwavering adoration of their readers. I thought these people were gods — they were my gods — and I therefore assigned them a kind of invulnerability and holiness that was first confronted in graduate school when I met a few of these folks and was devastated that they were not the people their writing had led me to believe they were. Ahem.

As I see it, living the dream requires us to stay asleep. Whereas moving towards and achieving the dream keeps us engaged and invigorated. The seeking is satisfying. Achieving can be really nice, too, for about five minutes. And then, it's time for a new dream. Living and dreaming are, in my experience, parallel tracks that are both necessary to move us forward and dangerous to cross. Living a dream is like living on a bridge. You can't make a home out of a crossing. It is at best a scenic rest stop where you take a swig of water and a few poor photographs.

When the child is born, when the book is born, the dream has done its work. It has carried us across the threshold of our deepest heart's desires.

Happily Ever After is a completely different story. Which is why the fairy tales don't mess with it. And, I propose, neither should the dreamers.

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follow the signs

When my son was a year old, he would pull books off the floor-to-ceiling bookshelf and make pretty patterns with them on the floor. I don't know how it happened in my exhaustion-blurred state, but my instinct was to register what another mother might name "mess" as "cosmic sign." I considered these book spills the equivalent of throwing coins to get an I Ching reading. The pattern was my trail of crumbs back to my self–my son my cosmic guide. I'd read the books that landed closest to me. And they were always just the right books for that moment in time.

I was reminded of this last night when the two of us–my son and I–were several hours into being awake through the night for the fourth night in a row. We had moved through the agonies of his sore bottom, his desire to eat things he could not digest, his achey fever keeping him awake into the no-name space that people share when there is nothing left to do but wait. He could not decide which side of my bed was more comfortable, so he traveled over me like a rolling pin from one side to the other. There was an intermission of sorts, and then my son appeared at my bedside with a present for Mommy (he loves giving me presents): a pile of magnets and a book.

Eventually, we got a banana in him, a fresh pull-up on him, and at about 5:30 a.m. my son settled back into his own bed to sleep. I finished the client video scrip from behind the fog of the body that seemed no longer to belong to me and limped sadly through the rest of my day. Four days deep into this minor illness and I was at my Calgon-Take-Me-Away ground zero. The gravity of parenting alone sang its rich, minor chord through me.

At the day's end, I came up to bed early and found the pile of magnets and the book my son had gifted me that early morning. I stood up straight as I took in the cover in my hands: A Cup of Comfort for Single Mothers. This is the book my three year old son chose for me on one of the hardest nights of single motherhood that I've had yet.

Now, I confess that if he'd given me a book on how to make a worm compost bin or one about baby yoga, I'd likely have found some meaningful symbolism in those, too; it is my habit to train circumstance to a kind of mystical logic. And, I suppose that this is what I'm recommending that you try–or continue.

Because if you approach your writing life like a treasure hunt, all information and circumstance that presents itself is a clue, a stone on your path. It's all important, meaningful, instructive. When your dog drags the garbage bag through the house, your child magic-markers her wall, the neighbor switches on the electric guitar when you've put head to pillow: it could be a disaster, or it could be a Rorschach test revealing to you who you are in this moment. This could be an opportunity to let the mystery of life penetrate you in all its edgy discomfort.

What happened this week that was unexpected or particularly interesting to you? If you were to consider it a sign, what might it be advising you to do? How can you use it to inform your writing life?

When my son pulled the book Sabbath off the shelf, I made a commitment to my family and myself to hold Saturday as our shared sabbath. When I nearly knocked myself out in the garage as my brother and I were digging around in the bikes, I found myself on the floor with a pile of toddler toys on top of me. Was this The Universe playing a knock-knock joke where the punch line was my lack of playfulness? I don't know; but it's fun to guess.

What if you were to dedicate a day to living and writing symbolically?  I propose that you notice what the signs are saying about your writing life, and accept the gifts you are given.

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Poet's Market, Writer's Market & You

For 20 years or so, my life poetic has been steered by a single compass: Poet's Market. In more recent years, when it occurred to me that all that other stuff I was writing happened to be essays and articles, I became a devotee of  Writer's Market as well. I don't know how to emphasize the comfort these tomes have brought to me over the years. Not only have they instilled an exhilarating sense of possibility about the vast array of publications seeking every type of writing, but they have also given me a crucial and transformative foothold into the unknowns of the literary and commercial publishing landscapes. I came to these books with my dreams and my fears, and I moved through their pages slowly and over many years into my own print (and online) pages of books and articles and poems that I have been so blessed to share with readers. It is through these books that I have found and continue to find my place in my writing life.

So you can imagine my excitement when a few weeks ago I received two, very special packages direct from the publisher of Poet's Market 2012 and Writer's Market 2012 – my contributor copies. My article "Making the Most of the Money You Earn" appears in Writer's Market 2012 and "Why Poets Need Platforms — And How to Create One" can be found in Poet's Market 2012. I flipped through the books, giddy about all I would discover in the realm of the 2012 publishing landscape. I took in the treasures of  wisdom from poets I admire such as Chloe Yelena Miller, Diane Lockward, Taylor Mali, and Sandra Beasley––and from esteemed authors Marc Acito, I.J. Schecter and Tony Palermo. Both guides are steeped in incredible interviews by Editor Robert Lee Brewer, access to online publisher databases, plus poetry & writing calendars, submission trackers, 60-minute webinars, and more. Suffice it to say, I was both energized by and impressed with what appeared to be the best editions of these guides to date.

Then I lined the books up on my desk front and center so they'd be an arm's reach away when I needed a shot of submission adrenaline or insight. Looking back at me from those respectable covers was something strangely familiar and yet completely unrecognizable: my name. On the cover of the two very most important books in my writing life: my name. The feeling was like looking into the sun. It's hard to take in those glossy covers, still.

Since this discovery, I have been experiencing a kind of literary vertigo. I am grateful to Editor Robert Lee Brewer for giving me the opportunity to give service through the books that have given so much to me. And I am humbled by the grace of a lifelong commitment to writing. Today, I can perceive how this craft has imperceptibly shaped me over time, as moving water carves stone, ever so slowly toward my true offering as a writer and a person.

I hope you will find your place in the pages that speak most to you, if that is your calling. But most importantly, I wish you joy in your process and your practice. Because this is our birthright as writers. No publication can accept or reject our dedication to the words that choose us as their pathways into this world.

And should you want guidance and companionship along the way as you seek rightful homes for your writing in places where it can be shared and appreciated by a wider audience, I encourage you to make a small investment in your future with your very own copy of Writer's Market 2012 and/or Poet's Market 2012. May 2012 be your year!

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A Bug's Life, A Writer's Life

If you haven't seen the movie A Bug's Life in the last week or so, I will give you a quick overview of a key plot "cliffhanger": A misfit ant faces an impassible canyon as he attempts to leave the only life he has ever known and make his way into the world. Like any hero's journey, this ant must leave behind all he has known on his quest to save the colony. As he stands at the cliff's edge, there is an ant behind him who says he'll be back in an hour, an ant behind him who believes he will die, and a perky little preschooler of an ant who believes he'll succeed.

Sound familiar?

Much like this strapping, deluded little insect, each of us stands at our own version of this impasse from time to time. With a chorus of voices at our backs chattering all kinds of nonsense, we sway in the vertigo of "How do I get there from here?"

Forgive me for giving the moment away: This inventive, purple ant climbs up a dandelion stem, plucks a seed from its possibility puff and then drifts it like a parachute into the canyon. Obstacle transformed with just a bit of Pixar animation.

We writers have a unique opportunity to write ourselves off of such cliffs into fresh terrain where the circus bugs might save us. In fact, I have come to respect writing lately as an unsung form of transportation. Where can it take you where you don't yet know how to go?

This past year, most of my ideas about myself crumbled, leaving me with no bridge between the person I thought I was and the person now standing at the cliff's edge, the life she had to leave to save at her back. Writing has been my little seed pod that has held for me the treasure of what can be known only through cultivation.

Sure, the landings have been comedic face plants (or face flowers, as my son calls them) into boulders. But, the fact remains that I turned my words into the wind and for the first time in my life let myself be carried far beyond anyplace I had traveled — far beyond anyplace I wanted to go or knew how to go.

What I am trying to say is: write, and the net appears. You have everything you need right now to write what you were meant to write–to live as you were meant to live. Follow the words. Trust the words. Trust the cliffs, the canyons, the face flowers. These are your story. Trust your lostness, your sense of direction. Trust what you find and don't find. The shadow gives shape to light. The insect, the dandelion, the human–the dance of interdependence is a hum of words.

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We the breeders

This week, in a curly-headed flourish of time marching on, my son turned three. This anniversary of our shared birth into the context of family has been accompanied by my interview in the We Who Are About to Breed series of We Who Are About to Die. Both have me thinking. About what it has meant to become a mother. How this identity has sculpted me many layers deeper into the quick of what is most tender in me. And how this evolution has seasoned me as a writer.

Just as chiaroscuro teaches us that shadow sculpting light is the tension through which shape can actually be perceived, motherhood has held for me the tension of obstacle cradling opportunity–thereby releasing a fresh perspective on what is possible in this latest incarnation of writing life. What's been uniquely valuable to me in the realm of parenting is a new, high-stakes sense of accountability.

Once entered, motherhood can be incredibly confronting in its non-negotiable, no-escape, rest-of-your-life claim on a person's life. In this way, it is uniquely useful in forcing our hand. The more we are squeezed in service to someone else, the more we are forced to decide how we make use of the crust of time that belongs to us. We no longer have all day. We no longer get to decide how or when we sleep or eat or do much of anything in those early years. So, if we're going to write, we'd better make it matter. We'd better carve out a space where we-the-writers get to exist alongside of we-the-life-support-system-diaper-changer-around-the-clock-everything-giver.

I wrote one book while pregnant and a second in my son's first year. My entire life distilled to the interior chamber. Together, we fattened on the sweetness of the present tense. One word at a time. Body on body. Stretched beyond who I believed myself to be into something simpler and more universal.

Of course, parenting is not the only path that leads to such discoveries. But what makes it so profoundly useful is that you don't get to quit. You simply have to find a way. And, often that way looks entirely impossible. Until the crossing is made.

Are there difficulties or limitations in your writing life that have shaped you? Have there been surprising rewards that have been available to you only because you found your way through constriction into some more spacious or possible place? What if we were to be grateful for all that we didn't have that we thought we needed to write? What if we were to recognize that this may even be the greatest gift of all?

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Secure your own mask before assisting others

The flight attendant came to our aisle to make sure we were paying attention. She signaled to Jonny–the sweet, 20-something man whose girlfriend was also gluten intolerant, whose parents are too busy to travel to see him–seated beside my son, and let him know that he should secure his own mask before assisting his child.

The flight attendant who had made us a family with this single, swift misunderstanding got me thinking. I turned over the metaphor as I do every time I'm on an airplane: Secure your own mask before assisting others. If I had to name a single principle to live and work by for helper-types like myself, it would be this. So many of us writers are working two, full-time jobs (one as a writer, and another that provides our primary income source) and making constant compromises and sacrifices to keep ourselves, our passion, our families and our sanity in tact.

We are no good to others if we have not been good to ourselves first. This much I know. So, how do we live this principle? I propose that we start by defining our own terms.

What does it mean to you to secure your own mask before assisting others? What are the essentials you must have in place so that might equip you with the foundation of energy you need to make your (writing) life happen — and even create the overflow resources you need to give to all the people and causes you wish to serve?

My "secure your own mask" list, in priority order:

Sleep (8 hours).
Basic financial foundation in place–as in: mortgage and bills comfortably covered.
Quality time with my family–I know very specifically what this means to me in terms of types of activities, amount of time, and the shared feeling of the experience.
Work commitments fulfilled–deadlines met, desk cleared, vision for the next day / week / project clear.
Writing vision articulated–even if not enacted. Meaning, I know what I intend to do so that I can hit the ground running when a window of time appears in which to write.
Spiritual practice–dog walk in the morning; bath before bed.
Fun–Because I have a tendency to fill every spare moment with work, I literally make guidelines for when and how I intend to have fun; then, I stick to them.

When I'm in balance, my client work gets done, my family and I have a blast, and my creative work has the space it needs to breathe and meet me at the page. I'll bet you find the same to be true. It's ok if you don't know what you need, exactly, yet. All you need to do is commit to finding out. I encourage you to experiment with the variables that are foundational to your well being. Make note of what energizes and what drains you.

Notice how your choices impact your experience. It could be you're doing something such as exercise that's time consuming but actually doubles your energy (and therefore gives you extra time for your writing.) Or maybe you have an energy leak somewhere surprising that could be resolved with a clear boundary–such as talking on the phone for a half hour to your friend in distress, instead of two hours.

With a steady flow of oxygen to your life and your writing, you'll be better prepared to follow through on your commitments to yourself and to others. The writing you produce and the experience of those around you will likely be noticeably improved.

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Thinking of you, today

I woke up this morning smelling like the perfume of the friend I hugged last night. Thinking: this is humanity, the bleed of one life into another, the carrying of each other's stories on our bodies, in our hair.

It's been 10 years since 9/11, and I've been working on a piece all week that I'll be reading this afternoon. I have my tissues packed in my bag. Two, full sets of pocket-size Puffs. Because the attempt to enter a grief so specific, so expansive, and shared by so many has split my skin. I have no idea what it will be like to try to speak, to cast my pebbles into this river that has us all in its rapids.

But then, this is what grief demands of us, and life: to shed skins. To accept there is no protection––only change, and the sweetness of the soft spot that no glass and concrete can solidify, no violence can destroy.

Who are we in the edited skyline, between the lives of who we once were and who we are becoming? What sounds and images will we choose to comfort us, expose us, unify us, destroy us, rebuild us, in words?

From the blond wood of this desk, my computer screen pocked with post-it notes, the small scribbles of an ever-urgent life, the fan swirling stagnant air around my ankles, I send out what I have to give: words. The gratitude that we all have words as transportation from here to there. As witness to our hopes, griefs, losses and triumphs.

What story may not heal, it can hold tenderly. I offer you this small stone today.

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