My Song is a Noble Farewell (guest post)

I'm taking a little summer beak through mid-July. During this time I'll be hosting some great guest bloggers and sharing some of my favorite posts from The Word Cellar archives.

Today's guest writer is Jennifer Horsman, who's blog is called "Lovely and Imperfect." In this post she shares a lovely recollection. I loved reading this beautiful, intimate peek into her family.

** ** **

Les and Mae, 1946

If these walls could talk
they would speak of vivid moments
of drowned worries and over-leveraged resilience.

They met in England during World War II.
He, a dashing American soldier,
She, a vivacious redhead British bombshell.
She left her fiance, her family, her country and 
her wartime job in munitions earning more than her father,
to begin a life in California with the American equestrian.
She was afraid of horses.

The turning of the key would unlock
prescription-strength hopefulness
and unnameable overturned cathedrals
where childhood warriors came out to play.

They married in England in 1945
after an argument the night before:
She was certain the groomsman with the glass eye
would ruin their wedding pictures.
Her long white gown had been worn by four wartime brides before her
and was booked for its next gig mere hours later. 

She packed the white silk blouses
lovingly sewn by her mother out of tattered parachutes.
Along with a few favorite piano songbooks
she boarded the basement of a ship 
for over a week of seasick anticipation.
Arriving first in New York
then traveling by bus to meet her new husband on the west coast.

Fresh polished photographs advertise adventure.
Pale fire born with sunlight.
In the kitchen lemon meringue slices of pure joy outlast time.

Though they had little money
He gifted her with a piano and
She bought him a Quarterhorse.
Soon with newlywed excitement they built the house they would live in forever. 

Home movies show a long wished for baby,
adopted three days after his birth.
There were horses, dogs, cats, ducks and chickens.
A barn to build and fences to post.
A roaring fire in the winter mornings and at dusk, 
so blustering that at times the flames had to be stomped out of the carpet.
Piano music and her singsong voice.
Tea at four and rack of lamb for dinner.

True homes are a kaleidoscope of emotions,
loss reverberates through time
and the parameters of grief are wide and careless.

A car accident took their only child as a teenager.
She bravely felt that pain as it surfaced and resurfaced,
long after people expected her to move on.
She refused to pretend.
I think I loved this about her most of all. 

Their marriage endured.
They traveled and laughed again and drank vodka tonics with dinner.
They experienced the difficulties that harshly accompany growing old.
They were a comfort to one another,
and I would imagine a pain in one another's ass sometimes too.
But I was there at the end,
I saw how they fell asleep, hands entwined, sixty four years later.
I noticed how they left this world only days apart.

Whistling echoes of the dented aluminum tea kettle
now belong to the archive of crowded remembrance.
The barn recounts its own story of
long passed youth and inexperience.
My eyes close to the fragrance of fading honeysuckle
and the threaded texture of decades past.
My song is a noble farewell.

** ** **

Jennifer Horsman lives in a little cottage on the California coast with her surfer husband, her kindhearted greyhound, and the friendly ghost of a dalmatian who is nestled inside her heart forever. Find her online at Lovely and Imperfect.

The Kindness of Unwitting Strangers (archive re-post)

I'm taking a little summer beak through mid-July. During this time I'll be hosting some great guest bloggers and sharing some of my favorite posts from The Word Cellar archives. The post below originally appeared on 17 June 2008. (Those of you who follow me on Twitter or Facebook may know that I recently had a similar experience at home.)

** ** **

click photo for image sourceI try to pull the dress up over my head, and just as I feared, I'm stuck. It's about 115 degrees in this damn dressing room, I'm sweating, and now I'm stuck in an Isaac Mizrahi dress at Target.

I knew I shouldn't have put it on. It's a shift dress, like an oversized A-line tee shirt, with no zips or buttons or clasps. It was a bit tight on my shoulders on the way down. And I thought to myself: Maybe you shouldn't do this. What if you can't get it off?

If you don't ignore your own advice, whose can you ignore?

I get the skirt of the dress up above the top of my head, but the bodice isn't budging. I feel the fear rise in my chest. I wish there was a more poetic and original way to say that, but at this moment, I am a half-naked cliché . I look toward the ceiling and gulp a breath, trying to force down the anxiety. No good. I'm suddenly sure I will die.

I yank the dress back down and the stiff cotton makes a flapping noise. I stand there for a minute and consider my options.

Cut the dress off. But I don't have scissors.

Call my husband and tell him I'm stuck in a dress and need help. But he's at work about an hour away.

I check my watch, hoping it's close enough to 6:00 to call my mom and have her come rescue me after work. It's only a bit after five. I consider sitting in the dressing room for the next hour, but decide that's not efficient.

It doesn't occur to me to just pay for the dress and wear it home. (My mom's suggestion on the phone later on.)

What does occur to me is that I need to get out of this dress now. Right now. Because the panic? Still ebbing and flowing. Mostly flowing every time I even imagine pulling the dress above my head.

I realize there is only one option left: I choose utter humiliation over sheer terror.

I take as deep a breath as the situation allows and stroll out to the front of the dressing room area. A middle-aged woman is fussing with hangers and cheap summer clothes. I'm glad to see her instead of the younger, perky girl who was there when I went in. This woman is just right: slightly hardened with a cynical edge; looks like a smoker. Clearly a woman who has seen a lot of things and isn't easily fazed.

I walk straight to the counter. There's no backing out now. "Hi," I say, giving her my most sincere I-swear-I'm-not-crazy smile. "I need your help. I'm claustrophobic, and can't get this dress off over my head. I'm about to have a full blown panic attack. Would you be able to help me pull it off? I know it's awkward, but I figure it's better than me freaking out."

I remain disturbingly chipper throughout this little monologue. The woman doesn't seem to have much reaction. It's almost like I just asked her to get me something in a different size. See? I knew she'd be unfazed.

We walk back toward the dressing room and she asks, "Where do you want to do this?"

"Um, I'm in this room, but I don't think we'll both fit. Maybe we could use the handicapped room there. It looks bigger."

She nixes that idea and suggests that I stand in the open doorway of my dressing room while she stands in the hallway. I briefly wonder if she thinks that I'm running some kind of scam whereby I lure unsuspecting discount chain store employees into dressing rooms to beat them and steal their little vests or nametags. But she has a good unspoken point: I don't want to be in such close quarters while a stranger undresses me. So although I'm not too keen on flashing any other passers-by, I've reached the point of no return.

I'm standing eye to eye with her, and she says, "Do you want to turn around?"

I give her another sincere look and say, "I'm really sorry to put you in this situation."

I turn around and pull the bottom of the dress up to my shoulders. She grabs it and pulls it the rest of the way over my head. I have just a split millisecond of panic as it gets hung up on my ears, but suddenly the dress is off. I'm standing there in my bra and gutchies, and I'm free!

As she walks away with the dress, she calls back, "Oh, did you want this?"

Um, no.

I took a break (guest post)

I'm taking a little summer beak through mid-July. During this time I'll be hosting some great guest bloggers and sharing some of my favorite posts from The Word Cellar archives.

Today's guest writer is Liz Lamoreux. In this post, Liz shares her deep love of poetry and shows how a few words can change your whole outlook if you let them in.

** ** **

Tonight, as my "to do" list fights with my "people I seem to be letting down lately" list for the top spot in my inbox and the television speaks only sadness, I took a break. From all of it. I took a break holding a Spire cider in one hand and Billy Collins or rather the poetry of Billy Collins in the other. I took a break sitting on my front step as day turned into dusk pulling on the hem of evening's skirt. I took a break from all of it. I took a break with a cider and Billy Collins. I took a break from grief as I skipped over poems that called to me with titles like "The Dead" and "The Afterlife."

I allowed laughter in.

I took a break from it all and spent time with laughter as I read "The Hunt" four times to paint the described landscape in my mind. I let this landscape where Noah Webster and his assistants hunt a new word become, for a moment, my landscape. I took a break with laughter. I took a break. From all of it. I took a break from fixing when I turned to "Going Out for Cigarettes" and nestled inside these words:

Let us say this is the place where the man who goes out 
for cigarettes finally comes to rest: on a riverbank
above the long, inquisitive wriggling of that line,
sitting content in the quiet picnic of consciousness

I took a break and let Billy Collins remind me.

I took a break sitting on the front step as dusk settled over the stretching northwest skyline. I took a break. From all of it. I took a break to breathe in nature and words. I began to breathe in every word and then found myself suddenly chewing. As I reread "Metamorphosis," I was suddenly chewing as though if eating "If Kafka could turn a man into an insect in one sentence perhaps he could turn me into something new" and "Not that I am miserable, but I could use a change" would cause the page to turn and I would find myself away. From all of it. From the fighting, stretching lists. I even contemplated consuming the ant that crawled across the words as though his ability to walk on the actual letters would make the words grow inside me and root.

I took a break. From all of it. I took a break and watched the ant crawl across page 70 then 71 and toward the back cover. I took a drink then gave the ant freedom with the understanding of safety from me and Kafka and Collins.

I took a break. From all of it. I took a break with cider and Collins and dusk turning into a summery breezy nightfall. I took a break to remind myself. I took a break to let poetry remind me of myself.

I took a break. From all of it. I took a break until I could no longer read the words in the dimming light.

I took a break to remember.
I took a break to remember me.

~~~
Poems mentioned are from Questions About Angels by Billy Collins. (This post originally appeared on Liz's blog Be Present, Be Here.)

** ** **

Liz Lamoreux is the author of the recently published book Inner Excavation: Explore Your Self Through Photography, Poetry, and Mixed Media. She believes that unearthing our stories and sharing them through creating, writing, and community are vital to connecting with the journey that is this life. These days you can often find her learning important life lessons from her one-year-old daughter, but many days she can also be found in her studio surrounded by strips of fabric, vintage buttons and lockets and beads, several idea and poetry journals, and a mug of tea. As a yoga teacher, artist, and writer, she sees creating as a meditative exercise for the spirit and is currently focusing on sharing tools for this inward journey with others. To learn more about Liz, visit her website.

p.s. I'm so excited to be teaching online with Liz this August! We'll be joined by Vivienne McMaster for Emerge, the premier Live it to the Full class. I invite you to join us as we share stories and tips on navigating life's transitions using creativity (including photography, writing, and mindfulness practices). The course is designed to give you bite-sized pieces of inspiration that you can fit into your busy schedule. And it's just $49! (Sweet!)

Emerge: a new online course

viv, liz, & me; cannon beach, oregon; february 2011 (photo by kate inglis)

It's time to start working my way through the list of stories I mentioned in the last post, and I thought I'd start with the most timely.

I'm excited to tell you about Emerge, the premier online course from Live it to the Full (LTTF). Do you know LTTF? Here's the scoop on this great new project:

Live it to the Full is a place of refuge for people seeking a new way of processing through a transitional period in their life. Our mission is to foster new ways of looking at age old dilemmas through art, photography and storytelling. We seek to provide quality material and qualified instructors at an affordable price and an accessible portal.

This August I'll be teaching alongside the lovely Liz Lamoreux and the vivacious Vivienne McMaster. I'm so happy about this, because not only are they two of my closest friends, they're also women whom I admire tremendously both for who they are and for the work they do.

For four weeks this summer, we'll play with words, photography, mindfulness practices, and other creative goodies to explore how we weather and emerge from transitions.

Here's the full course description:

How do we emerge from life's transitions and become more fully ourselves? Is it possible to be cracked open and made whole at the same time? Some transitions are big and bold life events, while others happen in the quiet moments of daily life. But each has the power to shape us and how we live in the world.

Come along 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 writing, 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. See what happens when you allow your true self to emerge through creativity.

Registration for Emerge is now open, and get this: It's only $49! Pretty sweet, right?

This experience will be full of juicy, bite-sized pieces to help you through whatever kind of transition (huge or tiny) that you're facing.

Viv, Liz, and I would love to see you there.

Getting back on track

"closed today;" cinema self-portrait; culver, indiana (may 2011)

Well, I have finally emerged from Creative Thesis Land on the road to MFA-ville, and I'm mostly in one piece. I still have a few more signposts to pass on this road; they're called Giving a Lecture and Giving a Reading. And then there will be something called Getting a Degree. And then something called Celebration and Rest.

And I have so many little stories to share with you...

...about how I spent a whole evening (four hours!) caramelizing onions;

...about how I had to report a "hit & run" in my backyard;

...about how terrified I was when someone pounded on my front door and then ran at 1:00 a.m.;

...about how I announced the return of the In The Word Cellar writing tips series and then missed the day I was supposed to post it (the second Wednesday of the month) (oops & sorry on that one!);

...about how I'm teaching an online course with Liz Lamoreux and Vivienne McMaster this August;

...about how I'm learning deep truths about beauty;

...about how I'm seeking to live from a place of joy, not fear; and

...about how I have to acknowledge that I can spread my creative energy only so far before it weakens.

My goodness, it looks like I've just generated a list of blog post ideas, doesn't it? Well then, more to come soon, I suppose!

(p.s. How YOU doin'? Tell me in the comments. What stories do you have to share?)