Friday, June 22, 2007

"Once upon a time, in a dark forest"

Whenever I sit down to write, my beagle, Sidney, gets up and wants to go out and so does Sunny, my white, fluffy mutt. Once they are taken care of, I settle back into my thirty-minute writing time.

So what do I have to say—what does my writer have to say?

I’m thankful for a great night teaching composition on Wednesday—thankful for the floor in the family room being fixed, for family and friends. I’m thankful that the universe is bringing my heart’s desires to me now.

I don’t know what to write here. Julia’s correct about how starting to write thirty minutes every day will be good practice.

My writing is rusty; reddish-brown crust has oxidized on my words. The words have been exposed to so much longing, pain, insult and disbelief they figure what could a little rust hurt. The words believe: if we stay here rusting, they’ll put us in the junkyard of language where all words that could have been written are tossed, rusted and unused.

Writing works best when we don’t let it have too much idol time to break down, to lose some of itsef by not finding the page, not being offered a chance to present the words to the universe.

When our writing lapses, the page is never given a chance to provide refuge for the random verbs and nouns, adjectives and adverbs that play and twist and turn in our brains, in our hearts. The page waits; the words rust; the hand, arm, or pen forget how to dance their cursive writing or printing or typing into being against a background of what has never been.

Maybe that’s what is so frightening about writing.

When we scribble down what has never before lived, we may fear what monsters our words might create on a page, not the beauty-queen words, polished and positive, the world longs to see. Writing is more than beauty-queen words. It is the way we get to our inner beauty, our inner royalty, our inner truth.

But we must slay the dragons first.

We can’t get to the other side until we’ve written through the sixteen demons hiding in our bodies’ dark places, until we allow their fire hot breath released to the page in inked heat, until we are ready to admit that writing for the beauty-queen life alone is the most irresponsible of fairytales—one that demands happy endings, shuts down the gifts writing brings and lays at our feet.

Knowing ourselves doesn’t always mean the happily-ever-after tone for our writing, but sometimes means writing that is like tangled vines covering the entry to ourselves, words of the frozen kingdom stilled by spells of the mind—dark veils covering the heart, words silenced until the truth of a single tear falls and light and movement flow into the kingdom once again.

It concerns me how many people want writers to be positive, to write positive things so much of the time. And I know that positive is good. Happy is good. Joy is exceptionally good. But to demand happy-go-lucky writing of our daily words, starves the soul, empties it of possibility, empties it of the feast of opening to whatever is.

Whatever is in the moment contains the story that the pen must tell. Whatever word agrees in contract with the page to join together is the word that is supposed to come. The words may be ragamuffin words or twin-headed dragon words, yet all hold the golden chalice which overflows with knowing and opening once pondered upon the page.

No one gets to the light unless they move through the dark entities first, and when they break through to a shining place, it doesn’t mean the halls won't harbor dank, foreboding crevices we must continually examine, patch, mend and bring to light again.

As a teacher of writing, I’ve seen more lives changed by those who are willing to open the dark night of the soul to the page and share it with others, than from those who squish about in Happiness is thoughts all the time.

I guess to some degree it’s about balance. Yes. But consider the legend of young Arthur. He couldn’t pull the sword from the stone without coming into the open to make his claim. And we, too, won’t know the glory of our own stories unless we draw to the light the Excalibur buried in heavy stone inside us.

Fairytales have happy endings. Legends hail heroic efforts written down and told again and again.

An artist I admire, Sylvia Luna, has a wonderful website (www.silvermoonstudios.com) which displays her work and links to a blog (she calls her LUNAcy blog) about her life. Sylvia has known darkness—Excalibur buried deep in the stone. She came home one evening ten years ago to find her 20-year-old son, Steve, dead on the floor of his room where he had been completing paperwork to apply to the police academy. Steve was her only child.

One way Sylvia honors Steve now is by placing these words on her website and much of her art work—“P.S. Steve I love you.”

The loss of her precious child forever changed Sylvia. She has embraced art, but she lets it be an expression of where she is, how she feels. And on her blog she reveals her life in process. She posts pictures of the ebb and flow of her creative living and labels them: Mess 1, Mess 2, Mess 3, Mess 4, and so on.

I dare you to take a look at her site. As humans, we don’t want to look at messes, clean up messes, deal with the messes we’ve made. We smiley face, Mr. or Mrs. Clean everything so we'll appear to always be one step ahead of the mess we just cleaned up or stepped over or pretended wasn’t there at all.

I’m saying the world is changed by truth—artists and writers telling their stories in truth—dark to light and every shade of gray, green, orange, or hot rod red that comes up for us.

We never want to lose the possibility of there being a fuller life than the one we have because we are afraid to take our turn at pulling Excalibur to the light, of letting our true self—sometimes messy and ugly, vampirish and weak, sour and crude—be exposed to others. However, when these darker qualities reflect off the light of a community of words and love, the spell is broken, the words free us, and in the writing and hearing of the truth of those words, maybe others’ words will be freed as well.

And when we think we don't know how to begin this journey, we might start by writing, “Once upon a time, in a dark forest . . .”

Friday, June 15, 2007

Back to My Basics--The Heart of Teaching

When I started teaching English Composition to Freshmen over four years ago now, I didn't know much about teaching. I was thinking about this recently. I thought how my getting dunked in the waters of teaching could be compared to my experiences dating as a teenager.

I think my main objective on dates then (especially with guys whom I loved, like Ken Hannah) was not to make a complete fool of myself. But while on dates, it seems some megawatt spotlight is always shining down illuminating each little time you mess things up.

One time while at the drive-in, I remember cuddling close to Ken Hannah while we sat in his cream colored Cutlass Supreme with square headlights. Lord only knows what movie was showing. I do remember we were in the front seat. I was such the prude.

That night Ken was wearing, get this, a black fishnet shirt--OK this is the seventies and these shirts were in style, I promise. My head was resting on Ken's shoulder and chest. When I tried to move my head, I was aware that my earring and consequently my ear were attached to his fish netting.

While making out with Ken Hannah, I'd caught my earring in one of those tiny triangles of his shirt. I was embarrassed. I felt like I did when I'd stuck my tongue inside the freezer to lick up fallen juices from Koolaid Popsicles I was putting in the fridge and my tongue had gotten frozen there.

Ken and I fumbled around trying to untangle me like I was some cod on a fishing line or something. Once separated from each other, I think we were hesitant to hug or touch anymore that night for fear of being permanently attached. I'm sure I never thought about just taking the earring off.

Another time of dating firsts was when I accidentally left my pants unzipped while on a double date with Ken Hannah and my best friend, JoAnn, and her boyfriend Jim. I recount that experience in my first blog entry on this site (On Leopard Print Panties and Writing) so I won't tell that story again.

In those early dating days, it didn't seem to matter what I did it still came out beyond awkward. That's how it was my first year of teaching as well.

The first semester I taught I had late night classes. My last class ended at 10:45 p.m. One night in that late class, one of my students kept looking at me kind of funny while I was in the middle of discussing Eudora Welty's essay from One Writer's Beginnings.

I thought a grandaddy long legs was on my head or something. I gave this student, Carey, a guy, a quizzical expression, and he mouthed some initials to me. I don't even remember the initials now. I didn't have a clue what he was talking about, so I kept staring at him trying to figure out what he was saying.

Finally he just said it out loud--trying not to be too loud--but loud enough that I heard. "Your pants are unzipped."

"Oh." I got it immediately, zipped my gold brushed jeans up and laughed. I told Carey thanks and told the class that I figured it was good I had gotten these embarrassing events over with early during my teaching career so I didn't have to keep anticipating something like this happening.

Since then other things have happened in class. As a teacher who tries to write and read out loud along with the class, I've had moments of unexpected tears when I've read my words to them. I've had times when I've said the wrong thing or revealed too much.

Many times I have completely forgotten what I was going to say--my mind for some reason empties of all thought--I am standing in front of 25 sets of eyes looking for some wisdom and guidance on writing and I don't even have wisdom and guidance about how I got to the classroom. These moments I usually recover from pretty quickly by saying I'm old (fifty) or gave some of my brains away when I had children, etc., etc.

Last week, however, I had a new chink in my forgetting moments during class. Room 68, a computer room in the English Building is always hot, hotter and hottest. This summer it has been almost unbearable. My students' cheeks are red. I notice this lack of concentration look as if we are all sitting in a steam room rather than a classroom. No deodorant that I choose works under this much pressure and heat. Add to this hotness and sweat and lack of connection the fact that I forget what I am going to say.

Well, it's not like I forget. I have notes. I've read the material time and time again. But you see, I'm not a from the book teacher. I'm a from the heart teacher. When I start looking at a textbook to try to teach, my inner wiring gets crossed and begins to misfire and I can't begin to see much less say the next coherent note on my pad.

I have to excuse my sweating self from class. "You all I'm sorry but I've just got to take a minute." I say that to the kids after an eternal 45 seconds of me not being able to pull it back together.

I need air and hallway space and coolness on my face that hot rooms don't provide. I leave the room. I am sweating like 23 pigs. I've never left the classroom because I can't remember something.

But I do.

I clomp my sandals down the hall while I breathe deeply the soothing air in the hallways, sip some water from the fountain, take some more deep breaths and walk back into class knowing I cannot teach from my notes.

I return to my tried and true teaching method--speaking from my heart. And it works. Of course it does. When you are acting from a space of truth in your heart things always work.

I had tried to use notes and a more formal lecture to please some "other" people, but it didn't work for me, would never work for me. Well it might work for me if my students like expanded moments of silence during one hour and fifteen minutes of class. But since this is a class of writing, of language, of words, I feel many glitches in my presentation might seem a little weird.

I make it through the class even though I wouldn't put a blue ribbon on my teacher wall for this particular night. Hey, at least I come back in the room and don't run out into the dark night never to be heard from again.

On the drive home, I try to get on to myself for forgetting, for being human, for not always doing things perfectly. Something in me won't take the rap. Something in me knows it isn't about forgetting how to teach my students in class, it is more of forgetting who I am as a teacher, as a woman, as my true self.

As soon as I step off the block of Karen Shelnutt and try to edge onto the block of another teacher who uses notes and lectures with ease, I give up the gift I have of teaching from the heart. I know it. I knew it when I had 32 pages of notes in front of me and I know it as I type this now.

I can't pretend to be what I am not. When I do Spirit interrupts with something--unzipped pants, awkward silences, blistering hot classrooms. The silence I experienced last week in class was really a gift of Spirit saying, "Hey sister, shift gears. You are way off course. Go down the hall. Drink some water. Tell your heart you're sorry for not including her. Then go back in and do it the way you know how."

Friday, June 08, 2007

Where Change Meets the Past--and Sometimes Never Gets Up

"Tone it down."

As I sit to write in my journal, I hear this message in my head. It's a message from the past.

I don't know why it's chosen to present itself now.

I was often told as a child to settle down, be still, stop squirming, stop being so prissy. The way adults in my life saw it I was too big for my britches, I needed to watch my mouth, needed to be seen not heard.

I see why I still don't want to bring my full self to light even at fifty years of age.

At fifty, I hear echoes of the in-charge voices around me when I was five or six or seven or eight or ten and on.

When I hear those voices, I go into my children-obey-your-parents mode or my respect-your-elders behavior. If there wasn't room for fancy-pants, full-of-herself me as a kid, why would I believe people would suddenly request a truthful dose of who I am today?

So I hide and smother. I root myself as a couch potato and grow back into the same soft indention of the couch's nurturing place day after day. I sleep continuously as if sleeping will keep me from remembering what twenty-four hours fully realized might look like.

I make plans to change while I'm couch inclined. I make plans to read the books I've collected on rituals and then write an article on friendship and ritual and submit it to a magazine.

I'm going to peruse the books I have on folklore and personal narrative, on gypsy stories. I'm going to research labyrinths online and insert that information in the journal about my labyrinth walks.

I'm going to revise my novel, work on my new business of the week, grade an essay or two, and on and on the list goes of things I don't do, of things I only couch-think of doing.

I argue with myself--surely there's only so much sleep a person can need. Not me. I need that much and more. One more nap might reveal the Power Dream that answers all my questions, heals all my sassy-ass behaviors I acquired as a kid, the behaviors that prompted the tone-it-down commentary in the first place.

After the Power Dream, I might wait around for Power Dream II and Power Dream III before I take action. No need to get in a hurry.

It's pitiful. Dismal really. I don't know if I can blame it on this pattern of past voices twist-tied into my memory telling me to get over myself already and that I'm not the reason the sun rises every morning.

And in truth, I don't want to blame anyone as much as I want to rip my couch-potato-rooted self off her cushioned behind and send her on some real adventures--adventures that don't involve closed eyes and a wishful heart.

There must be a way to push through this malaise. Even as I try to type here, my eyelids flutter in an attempt to stay open, but prefer sleep.

Maybe answers come in time. Isn't fifty years enough time? How many years do I have and are the couch and sleep truly that appealing to me?

Right now they are.

The more I fight it, the more I curse it, the more I rebel against the heaviness of it, the more consuming it is.

I must believe that a pattern is the worst just before it clears. I must believe that even in my fatigue and ennui I am loved. I must believe that the way out is by loving myself fully for how I got in this space to begin with.

I must believe that when truth is offered as prayer, even when the words are formed from a self unsure and imperfect, not on her knees but on her couch, progress is somehow being made, patterns are somehow being broken.

Saturday, June 02, 2007

On Truth, Tacky Gypsy Bracelets, and Magic Gardens

"Truth must be realized individually. It must be realized by you; otherwise, it is not your Truth. Only your Truth . . . is expressed in your life, not anyone else's. How do you find your Truth? By seeking and finding the Teacher within. You see the Teacher and the Truth within are one."
--John Randolph Price, With Wings of Eagles

What is my Truth? What does my Teacher within say? Each time I grow closer to my Truth, others taunt me as the oddball kid on the playground--the kid who dresses different, who looks different, who picks odd things to like.

No wonder we don't want to honor our own Truth. Often choirs gather around ready to sabotage even the earliest seedlings of our findings.

What if I purchase a funky bracelet that speaks to my Truth, show it to those closest to me, and say to them all excited, "Look at my new bracelet"?

"It's cute," they reply, no attempt to mask their sarcasm.

"It's my gypsy bracelet!" I try to share how the gypsy in my spirit is part of who I am, and how the bracelet makes my soul happy because it engages that part of me.

"I like how you excuse the tacky things you buy simply by calling them 'gypsy.'" That's what they say about my gypsy bracelet--tacky.

So if I have the Truth of the gypsy spirit in my soul, and I begin to express it in clothes, shawls, fringe, bracelets, it makes other people nervous.

The closer we get to our inner Truth, the more frightened some people become. Why? We represent the possibilities waiting dormant inside them. We represent their truest core trying to find its way out.

As long as I'm the gypsy, I'm terrifying the unawakened parts of people and a knowledge that inside them there is a golden latch on a garden gate that leads each of us out of being less and into being more--no, not being more, but being everything and then even more.

First we have to open the latch.

The gold of it shimmers, glints in the the sun. Our fear of being different, of wanting to be like everyone else tugs on our shirtsleeves and holds us back from entry into the magic garden beyond the golden-latched gate into our true selves.

This magic garden allows--it allows fairies, angels, explorers, scavengers, seafarers, and of course it allows gypsies. The magic garden allows whatever trueness our spirit holds.

We are gods and goddesses of our own gardens if we will only enter.

No one else but us knows what we are inside--what our wildness contains, but I've discovered in my magic garden that gypsy bracelets aren't the least bit tacky but are welcomed, lauded, desired.

So what do I want? I want my Truth to be respected. I want to live my Truth, but I'm not sure what that means, or maybe I'm sure, but I don't want to tend the magic garden.

Why? What if people don't want me or like me once I've discovered my Truth. What if I'm supposed to be a certain something to them? And why can't the garden I have be one of those that never has problems with weeds.

I want someone to say, "You are a gypsy. How marvelous!"--not how tacky.

How does one live where one is not honored fully? I wish the Truth and the Teacher within would answer that one.

I hear them answer in my heart even as I ask. Their response is kind. They giggle,yet are serious at the same time. "Find more tacky people to hang out with you in your garden."

I believe I will. And I'll wear my gypsy bracelet to my garden party.

Would you like to come?
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