Gathering

Four years ago this month, in a darkened hall of a religious center in Encino, I nervously tiptoed into a gathering of writers who met once a week to write together for a few hours.  It was not a workshop; there were no expectations or obligations, you didn't have to lug home someone else's shit to read and make notes on, you didn't need to critique anything, and you didn't have to sit through other people's "constructive" feedback (which, in some workshops, has proven to simply halt my work, progress and general spirit).


Instead, this was a gathering of people who were busy and just wanted a safe place to write freely and try ideas and sometimes find a new thread for a character or plot, and sometimes just make a list of whatever showed up in their heads that night.  And then go home.  


It seemed too easy to work, really.  We all brought writing prompts to share and then, after one was presented to the group, we'd all scratch out ideas for 10 - 15 minutes, then go around in a circle and read our stuff, then move on to the next prompt.  Two or three cycles later, we'd end with a 5-minute list-making exercise, read it, then chat a bit and go home.  And it went on like this, for nearly 2 years, until we all got busier and less able to commit to a weekly gathering, though every single one of us found ourselves waxing poetic about those cold winter evenings in the belly of the Ba'hai center, thoroughly engrossed in our writing, codependent for each other's progress on the page.


On Tuesday I received an urgent email: WRITE WITH US THIS THURSDAY!  I had a billion excuses: too far, too late, school night, blah, meh... But a tingle of excitement shuddered over me as I typed back: Okay, I'm in. And then the reality of the evening settled in last night, the beautiful relief of gathering together around a table, sharing our words, laughing, letting time slip away... It was like magic, like no time had passed.


As on that very first night four years ago, I had to suppress a deep down feeling of awe at the writers gathered around me.  When I hear the words that they've written -- for the very same prompt, in the same paltry amount of time as me -- I fear that I am an impostor, a hanger-on, that there's no way I should be sitting in the same room as these thinkers.  You call yourself a writer? the inner voice pesters as, one after the other, these writers immerse me in the fully realized worlds that they've created right there, sitting next to me.


And yet... I'm grateful for the gathering, for the opportunity to sit surrounded by greatness, to muster my own courage and use my own voice and to be heard and received, to hear about the lonely struggles of other observers and add to the overheard conversations of daily life.

Dawn Patrol

This morning, I woke up at 5:15 and gathered myself together, took a tall gulp of coffee, and headed to a morning yoga class. It was a level 1-2, so it blended vinyasa flow with stronger poses like crescent and (my favorite) half moon, culminating in inversions and (another fave) handstand.  


As I lay in savasana just after 7 a.m., two things came to mind.  The first was a poem by Rumi:

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.

Don't go back to sleep.

You must ask for what you really want. 

Don't go back to sleep.

People are going back and forth across the doorsill

where the two worlds touch.

The door is round and open.

Don't go back to sleep.

The second thought I had, laying there in the Tiffany blue of the room, bathed in the soft tapestry of skylight and candlelight, was I'm not an early morning yoga person.

Well, I Never... (But Yeah, I Probably Have)

photo by Teena Vallerine via Flickr via Pinterest

I went to a bridal shower recently and they played an icebreaker game that I'd played before called "I've Never..."  You're supposed to say something that you've never done and then all the people who have done said thing will put money or buttons in a jar for the honored guest.  It's a "getting to know you" sort of game.  I'm sure I've made people play it at showers I've hosted.


Anyway, this shower was for a very good friend of mine and I was with two other good friends and it was all very lovely and pink.  The room was filled with pale pink balloons, champagne and finger sandwiches for our tea.  Cookies.  Lip gloss.


The games hostess passed around a jar of buttons and asked each of us to take 10 buttons - any that we liked.  Since many of the ladies are crafters, I may have been expecting some sort of crafty fun and so I excitedly scooped up a handful of bright buttons.  And then the game began.


At first, it was benign.  "I've never had a child." Plunk. "I've never been to Paris." Plunk.  "I've never been drunk." 


"Excuse me," I asked, smirking, "do I need to put in a button per time I've been drunk?" Gales of laughter.  Plunk.


Here's the thing: I was shoving buttons into the jar at every turn, like I didn't even have an "I've never..."  I think the only thing that spared a button for me was "I've never been skydiving."


Then, as we ran out of things to "I never," someone said, "I've never smoked pot."  We all looked around the room sheepishly and I stood up and plunked my second to last button into the jar.  


I won't even tell you the one that I lost my last button to - but suffice it to say that I had a very well-rounded collegiate experience.  And I was the very first to lose all my buttons, by a bit of a long-shot.


"Yikes," I said to my bride-to-be friend, "you didn't know I was so skeezy, did you?"


"Aw, it's okay," she said.  "I'm sure I woulda been all skeezy with you."  Which made me feel a little better. 


When I got home, I told Raf about the game and how embarrassed I was that I hadn't lied to keep my buttons.  Secretly, I thought he'd regret having married me, a skeezy girl with a checkered past whose oats were obviously well-sown.


Instead, he shrugged in that way that he does and said, "Geez, I feel bad for all those people.  Who'd want to get to the end of their life and still have all their buttons?"

Happiness is a Freshly Made Bed

photo from decorpad.com via Pinterest

I once read a list of things that all "happy" people have in common - it might have been one of those annoying "Top 10 Things Happy People Do" or "How to Be Happy" articles in Cosmo or Better Homes and Gardens - and one of the items has stayed with me every day since.  It was so easy, it was comical. I think I even snorted in derision as I read it:

Make your bed.

"Make your bed," I imagine myself saying at the time.  I probably even put the magazine down and took a good gander at my bedroom, strewn with with children's toys and dirty clothes and likely a few spit-up stains on the comforter and pillow cases.  I might have even kicked the magazine aside and thought, "Right.  Like that will change my life."


But you know what?  I took a leap of faith - maybe not that day or the next or even the next week - and when I thought of that idea again, I simply pulled the top comforter up the the headboard and fluffed the pillows a little.  "Done," I said to myself.  Satisfied, I walked out of the room. 


And then I did it again, the next day.  Then the next. And so on.  Only, it made me start clearing a path from the bed to the closet, from the closet to the bathroom, to the staircase, down the stairs, through the living room, and into my life. 


I cleared shit out.  We moved.  I didn't take that old baggage with us.


And every day, I begin again, with a freshly made bed.

Yoga Girl

Kids Say the Darndest Things

One of the best parts of being a parent is overhearing your child recite or sing something they've heard but they get the words all wrong.  Like this one, which Marlowe was shouting out the car window yesterday...

U-G-L-Y

You ain't got my ice cream pie

You're ugly

Ooh - ooh

You're ugly

Make a Wish

www.casadycreations.net

The group of people that I see on my yoga retreats is very dear to me. It's a lot like summer camp - I actually do refer to it as "yoga camp" to my other friends, because it makes it sound more accessible - except that each of us comes with the gift of an open heart and mind, as well as a willingness to let the other people on retreat see us as we really are... and a promise that we will also try to reserve judgment and see each of them as they really are. 

www.casadycreations.net

As you can imagine, this is a tricky thing.  On the first night, I tend to size up the group, seeing who I want to spend my time with, who seems worried or anxious about the weekend ahead, who feels more closed-off than the others. By the end of the weekend, when we are sitting in a closing circle and talking about the experiences we each had, we are old friends, having gone through a lifetime of memories and old wounds and loves and losses together in the yoga studio, letting go, opening up.  


In this vein, one of the men who has become a part of this "love tribe" by marrying one of my favorite retreaters, shared that -- although he works in the computer industry for a career -- he has always loved working with wood.  "In fact," he said (at the springtime retreat last April), "I make boxes."  As he described his process for selecting the woods - such exotic species as fiddleback maple, bocote, black walnut, cuban mahogany, beech, rosewood - and for crafting them into these perfect little vessels, it was difficult not to swoon over his vision.  I craved a glimpse of his woodworking and was thrilled when his wife announced that he'd put up a website. 


What Brian makes are wish boxes.  Ever hear of them?  You make a wish - not unlike a secret prayer or the soft longing that you release as you blow out a birthday candle - and write it on a small piece of paper, roll it up nice and tight, and put it in the box.  There is no "exit" hole, just a single tiny hole on the top where you can stick your wishes, capped by a cork so that they stay in.  As Brian says, "Once it's in the box, it takes root."


I fell over myself when Brian brought the wish boxes to our retreat.  He had been shy about showing them to us, somehow worried that we - of all people! - might judge them harshly or reject them, thereby confirming his tough inner critic's voice (you shouldn't bring them, no one's gonna love them like you do, it's a silly hobby). And, like other artists, Brian's affection for his creations borders on fatherly, because they are, in essence, his babies.  But the response was magical.  Each wish box was unique in shape, wood, size, feeling.  They are each smooth and soft and have the feeling of an heirloom.  I bought two - one for myself, and another for a dear friend who is getting married.  


"Just imagine," I told my husband, "what if your father or your brother had had one of these?  Would you have opened it up?"


"In a heartbeat," he said, and in the quiet space of that moment, we each envisioned him sawing open a wish box overstuffed with dreams for the future, smiling at the wishes that had come true, laughing at the petty wishes of small boys, heart breaking at the wishes that couldn't come true.  A whole lifetime of memories captured in a lovingly crafted home.


My wish box is still empty, but it will hold a place on my Thanksgiving table.  And I will bring it to retreat in springtime again, so that Brian can hold it up and shake it and smile and I hope he'll say, "Yeah, there are some good wishes in this one."