Drew Myron's Blog, page 51
July 7, 2014
Are you Pliable or Payable?
Things are often not what they seem.
Lately, many things are not what I see.
I’m in a loop of misreadings.*
While reading a church service program
What I read:
Following the service you may stay for prayer, or exist silently.
What it actually said:
Following the service you may stay for prayer, or exit silently.
While reading a fashion & style blog
What I read:
An Object of Desire: The Perfectly Colored Blog
What it actually said:
An Object of Desire: The Perfectly Colored Bag
While paying bills
What I read:
Accounts Pliable
What it really said:
Accounts Payable
I much prefer a pliable balance.
Do we see what we want to see? And is the tired mind a conduit for surprising, better lines of our own?
I have a friend who writes every night, in bed, before going to sleep. Even when she is tired. Especially when she is tired. That's when the good stuff happens, she says. The mind is slogged and lets loose what is normally corrected and contained.
May we all have tired but willing, pliable minds (and bank accounts).
What are you reading, or misreading?
* With a nod to Sarah J. Sloat, a writer who often shares misreadings on her blog, The Rain in My Purse.
June 29, 2014
Thankful Thursday (all week long)
Where I Belong, by Tristan Dimick, at Summer Writing Adventure Camp
I spent the week at Summer Writing Adventure Camp.
At Seashore Family Literacy, on the central Oregon Coast, learning and laughing with a group of delightful young writers, ages 9 to 14.
Combining creative writing with high-energy explorations, we hiked Cape Perpetua, crawling beneath the 500-year-old Giant Spruce tree; walked the span of the Alsea Bay Bridge, with cars rumbling beside and the bay lapping below; traveled by public bus to Newport's Nye Beach, where we toured an art gallery and invited visual art to inform our literary art; kayaked through the Alsea Bay and Lint Slough, spotting herons and hawks.
We learned restaurant manners in an artful cafe. And created dance sentences and movement machines. And, with Pablo Neruda as our guide, we asked unanswerable questions.
We listened, touched, tasted, and laughed. We read together. We grew still and quiet. We wrote under and through, around, and about — poems, stories, sillyness and seriousness — then learned how to shape, polish, revise.
Like Tristan, for five full days I knew where I belonged.
Thankful Thursday lasted all week long.
June 23, 2014
The Joy of Personal Essays
Lisa Romeo - writer, teacher, coach
After only moments
inside these pages, I'm
challenged, charged up.
Come, they seem to say,
you can have a space
on the page too."
— Lisa Romeo
From 3 Good Books, a series in which I ask artists and writers to share their favorite books on a given theme. Go on, head over to Push Pull Books for 3 Good Books.
June 19, 2014
Thankful Thursday: Stacks
Even better than holding, touching, smelling, and hugging news books is taking them home and reading them in your own bed, under your own covers, with your own lamp shining beside you until someone yells for you to turn it off and get some sleep.
— The Reading Promise: My Father and the Books We Shared
by Alice Ozma
On this Thankful Thursday, let's praise the summer reading season!
Oh, the beauty of light days and long nights.
Of books stacks. Of anticipation.
Oh, the sweet, sweet immersion a good book brings.
It's Thankful Thursday, a weekly pause to appreciate people, places, (books) and things in our lives. What are you thankful for today? What's in your stack?
June 16, 2014
Sisters: "Our home of friendship"
Peace, love & understanding: Drew and Cindra
She called me It.
As in, Why does It have to tag along?
I taunted back, called her Big Calves (then recoiled, years later, when my own body ballooned into awkward adolescence). We were five years — and a world — apart.
I was a brat, there's no polish to put on it, and she was unbelievably patient. All those growing years, she was my kind protector — doing my chores so I wouldn't get in trouble, caring for me while my parents worked.
Once, when we were just 13 and 18 years old, long before cell phones and hovering parents, we took a roadtrip from Colorado to California.
Once, she dropped everything — a new husband and a year-old baby — to rescue me when I was sick, alone, and living 1,000 miles away.
Through asthma attacks and deep depression, my sister has been at my side.
We're very different. She's a stay-at-home mother to six children; I'm childless by choice. She watches American Idol; I barely watch tv. She sings and sobs through The Sound of Music; I search for sad, dark films.
Now, separated by time zones, we've never been closer. Last month, enjoying a rare visit together, my sister and I fell into our shorthand: fast chat, laughter, and knowing nods. My teenage niece tried to make sense of us.
"So," she said, turning to me, "You write about people you know?"
"Umm," I said, "sure, sometimes."
"Have you written about Mom?"
"Umm, no."
"Why not?"
Her innocent inquiry stopped me short. My sister, my friend, my heart, I've struggled to write about you, to understand and express the deep and complicated love we share.
In a synchronicity, the next week I picked up The Knotted Bond: Oregon Poets Speak of Their Sisters. In this collection, dozens of writers — including Kim Stafford, Ann Staley, Paulann Petersen, Dorianne Laux and more — explore the tangle of family bonds and baggage, ranging from utter joy to penetrating grief.
Liz Nakazawa, the editor who pulled the collection together, offers a lovely dedication: "To my sister . . . You are sunshine when it rains, wind in my sails, and the shared pillar of our home of friendship."
Here, in these pages thick with heartache and love, I didn't find the story of my sister and me but I did discover the work of writers who did what I cannot: put words to the beautiful twine of sister-friends.
June 12, 2014
On Mixed Heritage
Mari L'Esperance — writer, editor, psychotherapist
To be hybrid is
to anticipate the future,
wrote Japanese-Irish American
artist Isamu Noguchi in 1942.
Here in Los Angeles in 2014,
that future is now."
— Mari L'Esperance
From 3 Good Books, a series in which I ask artists and writers to share their favorite books on a given theme. Go on, head over to Push Pull Books for 3 Good Books.
June 8, 2014
What's your myth?
reminder • no. 5 • by drew myron
This is one in a series of reminders that serve as notes to myself (and now you).
See reminder no. 1.
See reminder no. 2.
See reminder no. 3.
See reminder no. 4.
June 4, 2014
Thankful Thursday: Without Words
People like to talk.
A lot.
And loudly.
I realize this on a long slog home, traveling east to west, through multiple airports and time zones.
On the first leg of the flight, toddlers squirm and scream. Parents look away, oblivious or exhausted or both. This is all now routine. In the aisle a man swaggers about a merger; he is important and this is urgent. Stink-eye stares are futile. Even an iPod can't cover this squall.
On the second flight of the never-ending journey, the man seated behind me has left his girlfriend and is moving out west. He's looking for a job, and just may land one thanks to the man across the aisle who tells his new pal about an awesome video game that involves wizards and killing, and then gives him a job lead. Video Game Man recently started a business with the woman sitting next to him, because "the construction business is, like, booming big-time."
I don't want to know any of this; I'm not even trying to listen. I catch all this with plugged airplane ears, that's how loud the conversation.
In front of me, a woman is coughing up a lung — for a full four hours.
Once landed, the bus ride to the parking lot features a woman screeching into her phone about losing something — her wallet? her mind? — who then panics as she nearly misses her stop because she's so distracted with herself.
Weary and worn, we finally get to our car. The engine offers a solitary start. I hear only the rhythm of tires on road. No radio. No talk. Just beautiful, beautiful silence. Cocooned in the midnight lull, I'm thankful for a world without words.
It's Thankful Thursday, a weekly pause to express appreciation for people, places, things and more. Joy contracts and expands in relation to our attention and appreciation. What are you thankful for today?
May 24, 2014
(Un)Natural Resources
Lee Lee — artist, mother, thinker
Where science
offers authenticity,
art is rooted in our
emotional core and
has the capacity
to touch people
in a way that
encourages
action."
— Lee Lee
From 3 Good Books, a series in which I ask artists and writers to share their favorite books on a given theme. Go on, head over to Push Pull Books to learn about 3 Good Books.
May 21, 2014
Sweet Grief at Benton County Museum
We're hitting the road! Sweet Grief, a painting & poetry collaboration by Senitila McKinley and myself, is heading to the Benton County Museum in Philomath, Oregon.
Will you join us for the party?
Sweet Grief: Paintings & Poems on Love and Loss
Benton County Museum, May 23 - July 5, 2014
Opening Reception on Friday, May 23, from 5 to 7pm
We're happy to share the exhibition with Permission 2 Play, a support-through-quilting group for cancer patients. The quilters, both novice and experienced, share their passion for textile arts, try out new and interesting techniques, and give themselves "permission to play."
Sweet Grief debuted in April 2012 at the Windermere Triad Gallery in Seal Rock, Oregon, where it enjoyed an eight month-long run. In 2013, Sweet Grief was on display at the Visual Arts Center in Newport, Oregon, and in Summer 2014 the show exhibit at the historical Benton County Museum.
To learn more about Sweet Grief and the special-edition exhibition book, visit Push Pull Books.
