[The Stage is on Fire] is a page-turner in which, much like life, there are no easy answers and yet each step of the journey yields insight and hope. This work of heart must not be missed!
Melanie Faith
Creative Writing Teacher, Essayist & Poet.
Katie Steedly’s first-person piece [The Unspeakable Gift] is a riveting retelling of her participation in a National Institutes of Health study that aided her quest to come to grips with her life of living with a rare genetic disorder. Her writing is superb.
The Society of Professional Journalists
In recognition of receiving the Dateline Award for the Washingtonian Magazine essay, The Unspeakable Gift.
I thank you … It is the authenticity of your “class notes”; and it is the delicacy and skill with which you present the nuances of classroom life and the actuality of your students’ and fellow teachers’ lives.
Maxine Greene
Philosopher and Education Scholar
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Weekly Wide-Awake #12
Joy. Song. Equanimity. Walking. Memory.
“Joy is an act of defiance,’ said the Khan. ‘With joy, we win, even if we lose. To have lived well is a victory all its own, for we all die. Death is unimportant to the laughing warrior. A poet makes tragedy glorious. That is why.” ― Guy Haley
With joy, we win. With joy, we win. With joy, we win. Let that sink in. Amidst the questionable binaries of victory and defeat, life and death, light and darkness, happy and sad, begin and end, with joy we win. Right now we are called to be poets in the pursuit of making tragedy glorious. Perhaps in making tragedy glorious we pay attention. Perhaps in making tragedy glorious we live well. Perhaps in making tragedy glorious we build a world that shouts and breathes, echos and amplifies, cherishes and celebrates connection and love.
Think of a flower’s blossom. A blossom is absolute joy. A blossom happens at the perfect time, in the exact perfect way, as a perfect product of bees and flowers and sunshine. Think of a symphony. A symphony is absolute joy. A symphony happens in perfect harmony and dissonance, with the exact perfect instruments and musicians, as a string of perfect notes and melody. Think of a poem. A poem is absolute joy. A poem happens in perfect precision and grace, with the perfect task of describing the indescribable or naming the unnamable or capturing the uncapturable in a collection of the exact perfect words.
Joy’s win relies on creation and imagination and desire. Joy’s win relies on vision and care and time. Joy’s win requires all things soft and malleable and effervescent. All that is defiance — a strict refusal to succumb to the hard edges that diminish hope, the clenched fists that prevent reaching out, and the cruelty that makes waking up painful. Joy wins when we become laughing warriors on love’s path.
The Song Out Here
If I could sing/ you would hear me and I would tell you/ it’s gonna be alright/ it’s gonna be alright/ it’s gonna be alright it would be something like that — Juan Felipe Herrera
As storms rain down and flowers grow. It’s gonna be alright. As things fall apart and back together. It’s gonna be alright. As things bend and break and mend. It’s gonna be alright. As morning becomes night until morning comes again. It’s gonna be alright. As joy becomes sorrow and tears become laughter. It’s gonna be alright. As praise becomes lamentation and glory returns. It’s gonna be alright. As we are wounded and those wounds heal. It’s gonna be alright. As stars shine and their light lives for millenia. It’s gonna be alright. As we tell the truth. It’s gonna be alright. As we stay soft and courageous. It’s gonna be alright.
I need to hear this 800 hundred times.
Understanding Equanimity
Your hand opens and closes, opens and closes. If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralyzed. Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as birds’ wings. — Rumi
One of my favorite yoga teachers uses the word equanimity to describe warrior pose.
In yoga, warrior pose is a standing posture rooted in presence. I love warrior. I feel powerful in warrior. In warrior, my soft stare fixes my focus between steel and horizon. I ease into a powerful bend that allows my legs and core energy to hold my body and my toes to grasp the earth. I know what it means to be sure-footed in warrior. When I fall, I get back up. My arms flex with strength and grace. The overwhelming power of the gaze, the breath, the calm, the beauty, and the silence overtakes the space. There is a fierce softness in warrior that is part dance and part conversation. It is the physical manifestation of true balance.
Taking A Walk #14
Still walking with Ross Gay
Early this year, I took writing class with Jeannine Ouellette. We wrote a weekly short essays inspired by Ross Gay’s Book of Delights. We were encouraged to find and write about a delight every day, as Gay had done in writing his book.
I have learned a few things while finding and writing about delight. I am reminded of the time in my past when I have kept gratitude lists. I am grounded in the importance of breath and presence. My paying attention muscles, my hope bones, my vision horizon, my imagination machination all work together to make finding delight happen like breath, when I let it.
The month of June I am walking through a few delights I have noticed and remembered this year.
MONDAYS ARE FREE 061 — 065
Memory, Annie, Turner syndrome, and Public Art
EXERCISE 061: THE MAGIC OF MEMORY, PART 1
early friendship and sensory detail
Set a timer for ten minutes and jot down three resonant scenes that involve friendship(s) in your youth. Now look at them and circle the one you’re most drawn to return to. Write about that scene until your timer goes off, providing as many sensory details—of as many different kinds—as you can. (How many senses can you get in there?)
Annie
I was 12 or 13, a seventh grader cast as Tessie in a production of Annie at an Equity dinner theatre near Louisville, Kentucky. “Oh My Goodness” the hydraulic stage — part space ship, part cloud, part magic jeanie bottle — floated every night in a theatre in the round. When we weren’t on stage, my orphan crew watched from above (when the stage had descended) and quietly whispered the words to the songs while our magical cast of friends from all over the world danced and sang. When we were on stage, the lights and music were intoxicating. It was hot like sizzle and shine. I already knew what that meant. It smelled like joy. My toes remembered the choreography like I was born knowing all the moves. My eyes looked out into the crowd like I was 1000 feet tall. My breath quickened just enough and I sang my song. It all made sense then. The elation of being good at something. The value of rehearsal and discipline and showing up. The sun coming out tomorrow.
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About Katie
From Louisville. Live in Atlanta. Curious by nature. Researcher by education. Writer by practice. Grateful heart by desire.
Buy the Book!
The Stage Is On Fire, a memoir about hope and change, reasons for voyaging, and dreams burning down can be purchased on Amazon.
