February 14, 2012 – 12:23 pm
The theme of my life this winter can be summed up in a word: practice. Two-thirds of the way through a memoir, with another four chapters to go and a deadline less than two months away, I have made a commitment to writing practice. But I am a slow writer, never certain of the way forward, and so I have no choice but to practice patience. Waiting for words to come, trusting that if I stay here long enough, the next sentence will find its way home to me, requires a certain kind of faith. Faith in mystery and faith…
November 26, 2011 – 2:45 pm
“If your daily life seems of no account, don’t blame it; blame yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its treasures. For the creative artist there is no impoverishment and no worthless place.” — Rilke I’ve been thinking about these words since I first read them a couple of weeks ago. What does it mean to be a poet of daily life? I often wish I were more creative, wish I possessed whatever spark of genius and imagination it takes to write fiction, to paint the landscape outside my window, to transform a garden bed into a…
We were in the throes of change: selling a house, moving in with my parents, buying a house, fixing up a house, moving into that house, giving up on fixing up the house, deciding to tear the whole thing down instead, moving back in with my parents, building a house. In the midst of these prolonged real estate dramas, we suffered the strain of pulling up roots in a place that we loved and trying to sink roots down into another that we barely knew. I lost my job. My husband started a business. Meanwhile, we were also trying to…
January 24, 2011 – 10:42 am
A few things I learned this week while cross-blogging with Margaret at awaytogarden.com: It’s really fun to have a buddy. Skype is almost as good as being there. It’s easy to embed a video into the middle of a blog post (thank you, Margaret, for your continued tutelage!). We are each blessed to have such committed, curious, passionate readers. A book give-away is a pretty wonderful way to get everyone talking — to get you all introduced to each of us, to one another, and to the books that have made a difference in all our lives. (I hope that…
