Weekly Wide-Awake #4

[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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Re-invention. Tenderness. Words.

“Maybe if we re-invent whatever our lives give us we find poems.”

― Naomi Shihab Nye

I spend my days between re-invention and poetry. At this time when we think about spring, resurrection, and resistance, considering re-invention and poetry makes perfect sense. Let me explain. I believe in imagination and re-invention. I believe in soft underbellies and soft hearts. I believe in open minds and hands. I believe in cracks that let the light in. I believe in the re-frame, the re-calibration, the re-imagining. I believe in the slog, the soar, the stench, the sweetness, the stretch. Re-invention is life’s gold mending our broken parts. Re-invention is life’s whip stitch piecing together our torn seams. Re-invention is life’s coral thriving within a sea-buried shipwreck.

Moving between re-invention and poetry feels like breath. To stop re-inventing would mean death. Finding poetry, creating poetry — with the clarity of a fine diamond and the passion of an aria — might be the point of it all. Poetry is the everyday action of waking up and putting on my shoes. It is involuntary, like inhaling and exhaling. It is brushing my teeth and doing the dishes. It is stroking a cat and scrubbing a toilet. It is heating leftovers and filling prescriptions. Each action becomes a small re-invention, a profound choice, an everyday resurrection, a miraculous reinvention. Poetry.

MONDAYS ARE FREE #026 — #030

Spill. Forgive. Love. Praise. Rest.

EXERCISE 026: DIVINE

Spill the tea

Make yourself a cup of tea. Tip the cup so the tea spills (wherever: table, sink, floor, sidewalk). Describe what the tea looks like as it’s spilling. Reveal a secret about yourself

I am going to spill some tea. My best friend since we were 14 — the woman who I stood beside and who stood beside me at our weddings, my ride-or-die through travels and years — broke up with me two years ago. I don’t remember the exact facts, exactly. Today, they don’t feel all that important. They have faded into a blur and haze and fog of who cares about right or wrong, guilt or innocence, good or bad. The only thing I know for sure is that we probably understand the situation differently. I have kept this loss a secret, mostly. I have such shame about losing her. I am deeply sad she is not in my life. I am profoundly embarrassed that my best friend burned our friendship to the ground. “Only awful people piss their best friend off so much that they would rather live life without them than repair the situation and heal.” (Says the voice in my head that I have heard for years.) Ironically, she teaches communication at an Ivy League school and broke off communication with me. That’s pretty bad when even an expert communicator kicks you to the curb.

The tea spilling must talk about missed birthdays and milestones. The tea spilling must talk about not being able to look at my wedding album without a twinge of pain. When tea spills directly from a pot it burns the spot on which it pools. This tea still burns. This tea still burns. This tea still burns. I recently reached out to her and expressed my condolences after my husband saw a note she posted on social media about her father’s passing. Her birthday was a few days later and I wished her well. Forgiveness is hard. Trust is hard. Seasons are all about leaves forming, falling, and turning into soil. New life can emerge from soil.

Tenderness is in the hands

I wrote with both hands in a writing class a few years ago. We wrote using our right (dominant, for me) and our left (non-dominant) hands. I started the exercise with pen and paper and journal and then moved to the computer as the conversation between my brain’s right and left side took off. Tenderness moves between our heads, our hearts, and our hands. Imagination breathes in and out, in and out, in and out. When we use our hands, we channel magic.

Taking A Walk #7

April is National Poetry Month, and my literary walks through the Museum of Literature Ireland continue. One of the exhibits in the museum is a wall of quotes from Irish writers. I stood forever reading their artful words during our visit. Syllable by syllable, tears flowed and I knew more about Ireland, literature, and life itself. Starting last week, I shared quotes from the wall. Indeed, standing there I understood writing is not a plaything. Words have history and consequence. Words are gifts and love. Words, and the stories they tell, are breath and weight.

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