Seven into '12 (#1)

guinea fowl (iphone, instagram)

May your days be merry and bright.

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"Seven into '12" is my impromptu little countdown to the new year. I'll post a photo every day between December 26, 2011 through January 1, 2012 to celebrate, ponder, and chuckle at the world around me.

**Updated: Several people have expressed an interest in playing along. Want to join in?
Join me over in the Seven into '12 Flickr group or share links to your world in the comments below.
And feel free to use one of the handy-dandy images below if you'd like.

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Emerge with us in 2012 (and a special offer for you)

I know I just posted about some of my upcoming workshops, but I have a new update on Emerge (a Live it to the Full class), which starts January 2. I'm co-teaching it with my good friends and creative cohorts, Liz Lamoreux and Vivienne McMaster. We first offered it last August, and we're excited to offer it again this January, just in time for the emergence of a new year.

We hope you'll be inspired during Emerge and want to continue exploring your creative side after January. So to help you do that, we're offering everyone who registers for Emerge a little bonus: three 15% discounts: one for a course from each of us in 2012.

This means you get one 15% discount for any of Viv's photography courses (such as You Are Your Own Muse), one 15% discount for any of Liz's upcoming courses (such as Create Space), and one 15% discount for any of my writing courses (such as Alchemy: The Art & Craft of Writing).

(Since the price for Emerge is just $49, these bonus discounts mean that you have the potential to save more than the actual price of Emerge! Sweet, right?)

Emerge is all about honoring your authentic self and tapping into your creativity to help you make it through life's many (big and small) ups and downs. We invite you to join us as we share our own personal stories of transition and play with words, photography, and mindfulness practices. We'll explore the ebb and flow of happiness, the unique power of telling your story, and the beautiful, yet precarious, process of learning to trust yourself.

We designed this course to be full of beauty, truth, and inspiration – all wrapped up in bite-sized stories and prompts that won't feel overwhelming. Emerge is a gentle way to kick off your creative year, and it's also a nice to get to know Viv, Liz, and me. If you've been curious about any of us or have considered taking one of our individual courses, Emerge is an affordable way to "meet" all three of us at once. 

Emerge starts January 2, and registration is now open. We'll send you details on redeeming your bonus discounts once class starts. For now, all you need to do is sign-up and you'll be all set.

We loved creating this course together and sharing it with so many amazing women last summer. We're looking forward to sharing it (and much more) in 2012!

Emerge, wishBIG & Be Present (2012 Workshops)

{Here's the quick scoop: I'll be teaching three workshops in the next six months (two online and one in-person). And I'd love it if you joined me! Scroll down to the photos for details.}

Does it seem like cruel and unusual punishment to anyone else that "The Holidays" coincide with the end of the year? It's a lot to pack into a few weeks, isn't it? I'm starting to feel a bit of "the crunch," so to speak, and it's not from munching on candy canes. I'm realizing that 2012 is just two weeks (two weeks!) away, and I haven't even told many of you about the workshops I'll be teaching over the next six months!

{Psst: I'm also working on the 2012 schedule for the Alchemy writing workshops, and I have a few new goodies up my sleeve. More on those to come soon.}

Please email me with any questions about the workshops below. I'd love it if you joined me at any (or all) of them!

Emerge: January 2 - 29, 2012 (online)
What's that saying? New year, new you? Well, it might be cliché, but this is definitely the time of year when many of us take stock of our lives and begin anew. If you're looking for some creative tools and companionship to help you along that journey, I invite you to join me, Liz Lamoreux, and Vivienne McMaster for Emerge (presented by Live it to the Full).

Join us as we share our personal stories of transition and provide you with creative tools to use as you face your own seasons of change. Through easy, accessible practices of writing, photography, and mindfulness, we'll explore the ebb and flow of happiness, the unique power of telling your story, and the beautiful yet precarious process of learning to trust yourself. Let's see what happens when we allow our true selves to emerge through creativity.

This 4-week online class starts soon (January 2)! It's a lovely way to dabble with words and images and a gentle way to ease into your creative new year. Register today for just $49 (a pretty sweet deal!). 

wishBIG ecamp: February 19 - 26, 2012 (online)
Come along for a wish-filled week this February! I'm excited to be presenting a *brand new* workshop called "One-moment Memoirs" for wishBIG ecamp (presented by wishstudio).

What are one-moment memoirs? Some experiences beg us to write about them, but we often feel overwhelmed when trying to capture the whole story at once. This workshop will help you take a relaxed, yet focused, approach to telling life's big and small stories in bite-sized pieces.

I'm excited to be joining 7 fabulous creative souls for a week of online workshops and virtual campfires for ecamp. Who else will be there? How about Rachel Awes, Stacy De La Rosa, Miranda Hersey, Connie Hozvicka, Vivienne McMaster, Amy Palko, and Chrisy Zydel. Nice lineup, eh? You can check out all of the wishBIG workshops here. And stay tuned for registration. (It's coming soon!)  Updated 1/3/11: Registration is now open! (Note: By registering for ecamp through the links from my site you help to  support my work. Thank you!)

The Midwest Be Present Retreat: May 2-6, 2012 (Culver, Indiana)
The Be Present Retreats are an invitation to pause in your life and gather in an intimate, creative community to explore, create, discover, and soak up the world around you. Each retreat includes creative workshops combined with stories and "be present" exercises to encourage awareness of this moment. At each retreat, you will also be invited to practice self-care to rest and nurture yourself as needed

Doesn't it all sound delightful? I'm honored to be part of The Midwest Retreat in Culver, Indiana, next May. I'll be teaching a full-day writing workshop focused on paying attention and putting words to our experiences. (The full, juicy description is over here.)

The retreat's theme is centered on "This Moment," and it's going to be lovely. There will be words and paints and photographs, oh my! I've been to two Be Present Retreats (once as a teacher and once as a participant), and I can tell you firsthand that our time together will be beautiful. I truly hope you'll come to Culver (a sweet little town on a lake) this spring. Registration is open.

Landscpaes: Of longing and belonging

{not Lisbon, but Boston}

When I'm walking [Lisbon's] stone-cobbled streets, catching glimpses here and there of the bordering Tejo River, or taking in, from a vista on one of the city's hills, the glorious staggered topography of the white buildings and their salmon colored tile roofs, I feel that I'm also traveling some interior landscape, that those streets are leading to a place inside myself that I haven't yet located." ~Philip Graham, "I Don't Know Why I Love Lisbon," The Moon, Come to Earth

I've been away for a few days in Boston for a mini-writing retreat with a dear friend. We spent a bit of time writing, a bit of time wandering around the city, a bit more time reading, a good bit more submitting our work to lit journals -- and many bits more talking. I count all of these bits as the necessary ingredients of my writing life.

While I was away I began reading Philip Graham's The Moon, Come to Earth, a collection of essays about the year he and his family lived in Portugal. I love the above quote for the last line, for this idea that a place -- a physical landscape -- can intertwine with our inner geography and lead us to a place of discovery, to a place that is truly and deeply home.

I'm a bit obsessed with this interplay of inner and outer landscapes.

What is this sense of belonging that is also a sense of longing?

It's this question that fuels the collection of essay I'm currently writing. I call them my "sea stories," but they're so much more than that. They explore my personal spiritual journey through the lens of seascapes. And to my keen frustration, I've been at a standstill with them for too many months now. I think it's because I've been trying to come at them straight-on for too long. So I've been letting things simmer, looking for other pieces of landscape (beyond the surf line) that can reveal myself to me, to show me the way home and the way forward. A lot places -- including the place where I live -- don't often inspire this feeling of connection within me, but I'm learning to look for the snippets that do. Big cities aren't my natural home, but I love spending time in them and looking for the pieces that feel true to me. The photo above, taken at dusk on the bridge in Boston's Public Garden, is a new piece of my internal landscape, a snapshot of what feels like a tiny piece of true home to me, an icon of how I might find my way in the world.

In The Moon, Come to Earth, Philip contemplates the Portuguese concept of saudade, which he describes as "a complicated feeling that combines sorrow, longing, and regret, laced perhaps with a little mournful pleasure." I'm not sure I understand the term in all of its fullness as the Portuguese use it, but I'm well acquainted with the braided strands of melancholy, the way I don't mind feeling happy-sad, and the way that feeling is often closest to the surface in some of my favorite places. This longing-belonging fills me up when I walk along a seashore -- almost any shore, but particularly those in New England and the Pacific Northwest. I've felt it among the interplay of wild ocean, proud mountain, and the ever-so-tall evergreens in Oregon and Washington. I've felt it in the rolling hills and postcard towns of Ireland, England, Scotland, and Wales. I once felt it while standing under a gigantic outdoor Christmas tree in London's Covent Garden, and once while sitting in an old orange recliner in my senior-year college dorm room.

The longing-belonging can seep in almost anywhere, but it's the coastline that most feels like home to me. Last winter, during a lecture at Vermont College of Fine Arts, Robert Vivian quoted his friend (whom he identified simply as a Scottish poet) who said this about place:

In this life we're only given one or two true landscapes, and we can't get rid of them, even if we want to.

I keep coming back to this. It's one of those sentences that haunts me, simultaneously beckoning me to wax poetic about it and begging me to leave it as is. What else can I say about a truth so perfectly spoken?

I suspect that you read that quote and had one of these two reactions: Either you sighed with recognition and thought "Yes," or you furrowed your brow and wondered, "What?".

If you furrowed and wondered, I'm not sure how to unpack it directly. I suppose that's why I'm writing a whole book of essays about the connections among soul, spirit, and place. I guess those essays are my way of coming at the concept head-on and sideways at the same time.

Of course, I'm not sure I understand the poet's idea exactly as he intended it. Perhaps I've romanticized it, interlaced it with my own thoughts about the lands that claim us. In his lecture, Robert talked about how the landscape of his home state of Nebraska has laid claim to him in a way he can never escape, despite his fervent desire to do so. He lives in Michigan now, but Nebraska won't leave him alone. It shows up in his writing, in the way he sees the world, even in certain patches of sunlight. He can't get rid of Nebraska, no matter what he does.

Is it the same with me, I wonder? Will this southwestern corner of Pennsylvania where I live always be with me, even if I manage to move away from the dull grey of it skies? I claim the ocean as my true landscape, but what if the sad, rounded contours of my homeland have claimed me? I may breathe easier near the water, but what if that's only because I've spent my life surrounded by land? I try to discount the ways in which I've been shaped by where I grew up (and still live), but that's just naïveté and wishful thinking. Of course this landscape has shaped me, of course I can never fully get rid of it. But does that make it one of my two true landscapes? I don't think so, but I'll make room to consider it. After all, I suppose one can never have too many signposts to lead the way home.

What about you? What are your true landscapes?

Weekend Comfort

Gatwick the Catwick wishes you a warm and cozy weekend snuggled up with your favorite people (or animals).