Reflections of a Tumbleweed

The magic notebook...

4/30/2018

Writing is an important part of my life, and has been since I first learned to read and write. I remember holding those fat pencils and laboring over my letters on the yellow paper of first grade. Due to my propensity for mistakes, and the lack of an eraser on the fat pencil, there were often wet holes rubbed in the paper in a misguided effort to hide my errors.

Last week, Barbara O'Neal talked about notebooks in her Writer Unboxed post on the importance of having a private writing practice. It brought up memories of the various journals I've had, and what's worked for me and what hasn't. On the right is a journal I bought from the old Abbey Press when I was in law school. I bought one for every member of the family, but I think I'm the only one who filled mine completely. At that time, I included quotes from things I was reading, as well as my thoughts about my life, the world, and a lot of things.

My first genuine journal

My very first journal, however, was a spiral-bound steno pad that I used as a journal the summer I was an exchange student in Costa Rica. A returned exchange student urged me to keep a journal, as she said it's so easy to forget things once you get home. She was right. When I read through it years later I was stunned by my 16-year-old perceptions, and the experiences that had completely escaped my memory.

The eight years between my Costa Rican adventures and the law school journal were filled with my senior year in high school, college, and my first year or so of law school. I don't think it ever occurred to me to keep a journal in those years - I was far too busy living them to keep that kind of record. It was in law school that the scream inside of me began to demand an outlet. And I started a journal.

The notebook on the left was given to me by a friend when I was lay-ordained. I met her at a Natalie Goldberg writing practice workshop. The notebook on the right I discovered in the gift shop at the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco.

One journal was written in the form of letters to a friend, who suggested it as a way to deal with a devastating loss. Like Barbara O'Neal, I love the Moleskine notebooks, though I use many different kinds. For notes and writing practices on my novel, I use the sugarcane-based notebooks made for Staples, even though they no longer have the cute covers. My favorite was the one with the owls.

I've lost count of the number of notebooks I've filled with poetry. For years I kept telling myself I wasn't a poet. And I'm not, if you are looking for a Mary Oliver or David Whyte. On the other hand, I've written hundreds of poems in various notebooks. One of the workshops I attended with Natalie Goldberg was the haiku workshop she did with Clark Strand. I still write haiku when inspiration strikes. No matter the notebook, I find something magical in taking my pen in hand to fill the empty page with things that only I can write.

With the workshop coming up at the end of May, I'm already wondering what notebooks to take with me...

Safe travels...

4/24/2018

I'm a day late with this post. The past few days my dad and I spent hanging out with my nephew Quinn (Dad's grandson) before he deploys to the Middle East. His twin brother, Lane, started Ranger school on Sunday. I wanted to share (with his permission) the letter I wrote to him this morning, before he left.

24 April 2018

Dear Quinn,

I’m glad we had a chance to spend some time together before you deploy. While I will be concerned for your safety, I’m also excited for you, because I know you are excited to have this opportunity. During our conversations there was one thing you mentioned that I thought was important to both acknowledge and also address.

You mentioned in passing that there are some things you only discuss with others in the military, because they are the only ones who really understand it. That’s true. Each world of work has its own lingo, its own culture, its own rules and experience, and no one who isn’t in it truly knows what it means. Anna can never fully convey to you what it is to design a dress and see a model take it down a runway, Your mother can never fully convey what it is like to face the empty page and bring characters and a story to life on it. Your dad, Hattie, even Lane, who will have and already has had different experiences of becoming an officer than you have – all of them, all of us who were there last night, on Sunday, each have our own worlds in addition to the one we share and interact in with family.

At the same time, each person in your military world, even the people you work with every day, has a different experience of that world than you do. Even when we are most connected we are also most separate. That’s the human condition. We all feel a range of emotions, have a range of experiences, yet no other individual will experience them in exactly the same way you do. So things like a good musical, a good book, a good movie will tap into a universal experience of love or grief in a very specific way, like Rick in Casablanca, and though we are not Rick and experience love and grief in our own ways, we understand his and feel for him.

Whatever experiences you have, we can’t ever know exactly what that will be like for you. What we can know is what it is to feel completely alone and isolated, and that no one in the world can really understand what we are going through. That we all know at one time or another. As close as you and Lane are as twins, he can never fully share your years at West Point, you can never fully share the Ranger training he is going through right now. What you do share is the experience of being tested and pushed to the limits, and the comradeship you have with those who are with you in it.

Dainin Katagiri-roshi, a Buddhist teacher who taught several of my teachers, wrote that when you go deeply into practice, or any experience, you feel more connected to people and the world. At the same time, the deeper you go, the more alone you are. I suspect your faith will help to carry you through your life, and I also acknowledge that for some people, their faith is not able to sustain them. I don’t know why it is different for different people, but it is. What I do know is that if you are aware of the universality of the sense that no one can understand exactly what I’ve experienced, that awareness is already connection. At the times of greatest distress and despair in my own life, that awareness has kept me going, sometimes one day at a time, but always still going.

Safe travels and lots of love,

Carol

Everyone should have a Nushka in their life...

4/16/2018

Gail Provost Stockwell, aka Nushka Resnikoff

Nushka spoke to me through the pictures and words of the very first ad I saw for Writers Retreat Workshop. There was a silhouette of an old Victorian house and an invitation to join a small group of writers to work on my novel. When I spoke with her on the phone for the first time, I knew I'd found my home as a writer. Later, I realized I'd found a friend.

It took me years to be able to call her Nushka, rather than Gail. Yet from that first workshop, Nushka believed in me as a writer, encouraged me, listened to me, and yes, she taught me. She didn't formally teach a class, but she teaches with her presence and her life, as well as her words. Her whole being radiates love and generosity, and I feel lucky that our paths crossed all those years ago.

This was originally going to be a Facebook post letting folks know that Nushka is going to be at the May workshop. And she is. However, she is so much more important to me than a marketing tool, and I wanted to share a little bit about why.

I remember standing in a steady drizzle out in the backyard of her house in May 1995, hours after Gary's funeral. In the midst of her grief and anguish, she was trying to decide if the workshop should go on in less than a month, to give Gary's students a chance to come together. Some folks had weighed in and wanted to go, some didn't, leaving Nushka torn and dazed with confusion. Her only concern was what would be best for the students and for Gary and his memory. She had to be reminded to think about what she needed.

Gail and Gary aka Nushka and Garonovitch, founders of Writers Retreat Workshop

Nushka

It was Nushka who gave me the opportunity to teach the workshop for the first time in 1998, who trusted me with Gary's material, and the curriculum he developed with so much love and sweat.

It was Nushka who kept in touch with me all those years I disappeared into the monastery, who never forgot my birthday, who sent me notes and messages.

And it was Nushka who encouraged Jason to offer me a scholarship to come back as a student to the workshop, which eventually led to me becoming director.

There have been many gifts in my life, and one of them goes by the name of Nushka. Now she will come to the workshop with a project of her own, and it will be my chance to nourish her work. All I have to do is follow her example.

Thank you Nushka,

Love,

Doc

Wash and fold: a lifetime of laundry...

4/9/2018

Did you ever think of your life in terms of laundry? Today it is Monday as I write this, and today is laundry day for me. Monday is a traditional laundry day for many families, maybe so everyone could start the week with clean clothes?

Monday became my laundry day when I came back to Pittsburgh to be with my dad. Saturday is his laundry day, and since I don't have a Monday-Friday job, I didn't really want to do my laundry on Sunday, as I used to do. So Monday became the day, somewhat by default.

When I was a kid, Mom always did the laundry. I wasn't allowed to touch the washer or dryer, but when I was in fourth grade I had my introduction to ironing. Yes, I was born in the 50's so we grew up with ironing as part of daily life.

What did I learn on? Pillowcases. Pillowcases, and my dad's handkerchiefs. They were flat, small, and relatively easy for a fourth-grader to navigate. Over the years I learned to iron sheets (yep, we did those too!), blouses, jeans, and skirts. Eventually, as I learned how to operate the washer and dryer, the ironing became less and less frequent.

It was college that provided the impetus for me to learn the mysteries of sorting laundry before washing. Things weren't always colorfast in those days, so putting your whites in with your jeans was a quick trip to disaster.

I quickly learned the best way to get my laundry done was to reward myself for doing it - a can of Pepsi and a pack of peanut butter and cheese crackers usually did the trick.

I have to return to ironing for a moment, because I forgot to mention that ironing provided my introduction to the world of soap operas, in the form of The Guiding Light. I didn't really start to follow it until I was in college, and worked with one of the actresses in summer theatre. I also watched All My Children while I watched and fed a young toddler whose mom was having her consciousness raised (it was the mid to late 70's). But I digress...

At this point I'll fast forward through years of conventional laundry, occasional flirtations with laundromats and even when pressed for time, drop-off laundry to what it was like to do laundry at Tassajara.

I've written of Tassajara Zen Mountain Center before, the Buddhist monastery where I lived for three or four years over time. We were off the grid there, and though there was limited electricity, laundry was done by hand.
Yep, we washed our clothes in laundry tubs, used buckets to soak and pre-wash and move them around, dried them as best we could with a genuine wringer (also known as a mangle, which eventually had a special meaning), and then hung them on the line to dry in the sun (and dust).

I gained a healthy respect for our forbears, who did their laundry without electricity or washing machines for a heck of a lot of years. It is hard work!

On the other hand, there is something rather magical about standing over the sink in the early morning mist, listening to the creek bubble over the rocks, and the stellar jays give their raucous calls as you try to wash the dust of Tassajara out of your clothes.

Yes, whites turn gray, and everything dries hard as a board in the fresh air, but it does smell sweet from the fresh air, and it dries incredibly fast in the 105 degree heat in summer.

I wouldn't want to do it forever, yet it was an unforgettable experience.

Now I find myself back in Pittsburgh, back in the house in which my family has lived since 1967, doing laundry in a place that has a wealth of memories and stairs.

Now I fold the towels in the TV room where all five of us used to scrunch in together to watch movies like How to Steal a Million and McClintock.

Our personal histories are rich with things we take for granted. Dig deep, look at the simplest routines, and find out a little more about your world

Love,

Doc

Dreaming the dream on...

4/2/2018

WRW in Bristol, CT - Oct 1991 or 92

Seven weeks from tomorrow I’ll be getting ready to start my first Writers Retreat Workshop as director. I’ve been director of the Wake Up and Write WRW for the past two years, and now that has merged with Writers Retreat Workshop, so I’m the director of both. Some years ago, I taught the WRW curriculum at Marydale Retreat Center in Florence, KY – on the other side of the backstretch of Turfway Park. Gail (Nushka to many of you) was the director at that time, Lorin Oberweger (who I met at my second WRW in Bristol, CT) was the editor-in-residence, and Jason Sitzes (who became director of WRW eventually) was a student in those years.

For me, Writers Retreat Workshop is a bit like a river. The students, the staff, the guests all flow through the years in an ever-changing flood of talent, teaching, and generosity. Yet certain landmarks stand fast in the current: the course developed by the late Gary Provost, the warm and loving spirit of his co-founder Gail Provost Stockwell, the hunger of writers who want to express something through their work and share it with the world.

The emotional currents of that river lie in my memories of Gary’s teaching, his humor, the sense of fun and play that he and Nushka brought to each workshop. They also lie in the nourishing atmosphere in which writers “diagnosed” other writer’s manuscripts instead of “critiquing.” And in the games of pool with Lorin on the top floor at Bristol, played as we discussed our writing and the classes; campfires at Marydale enlivened by stories and songs; and listening to Frank Strunk play his guitar and sing (at Marydale with Alice Orr doing the singing).

In some ways it is a daunting task to take on the responsibility of the director of Writers Retreat Workshop. Can I bring to it my best efforts, and will that be enough? I remember having a dream about Gary right before I taught the classes for the first time. I wanted some sign of approval or confirmation that he thought I could do it. And even in my dream he was generous and gave it to me.

Every single workshop I’ve attended has been different, and each has been wonderful in its own way. I’ve been a student in Bristol, CT, staff/student/teacher at Marydale, student again at Frontenac in Minnesota, staff in San Antonio, TX, director in Haverford, PA, and now in Boise, ID. This workshop in May will be my fifteenth workshop under the Writers Retreat Workshop/Wake Up and Write WRW banner. I’m looking forward to whatever experiences we will share there, and it will be good to be with writers, dreaming our dreams on…
Love,
Doc

Frank Strunk, playing his guitar at Bristol, CT WRW

Gary, reading over my pages in the midst of people partying for the umpteenth time