Writing with Rox WEEKLY—Year End Celebrations

When I first moved here in 2001, I had a handful of bylines to my name, but no idea where I was heading as a writer. I could have never predicted where I am today and if I saw it coming I would have been really confused. At the time, I was hoping to write a bestselling memoir or collection of essays (what we now call Creative Nonfiction and/or Personal Essay) based on my "dysfunctional" (I actually touted "dysfunctional" as though it would be a selling point) upbringing in Los Angeles. All of this, before yoga. 

Of course I can't attribute everything to yoga. First of all, there's the University of Minnesota for accepting me into the MFA program in the first place. Somehow they saw past the "dysfunction" and admitted me into their program in 2001. To this day (and still), I am ever grateful to the Minnesota literary (and illiterary) communities and folks who welcomed me so openly (if not somewhat Minnesotanly) into the books and pages of their lives. 

Today one of my students asked me why I don't do much freelancing anymore. Ooooooh, long story, I may have said. The short answer? Oooooh, I used to be a freelancing whore. Well now, let's not go...

True, once upon a time while I went through the MFA program at the U,  in addition to writing columns for the Minnesota Daily, I was very fortunate to connect with some local publications and eventually began writing for most of them, namely writing monthly columns for Minneapolis St Paul Magazine, with the occasional interview or feature. To those publications I am also very grateful! They put up with me. And I mean that. 

But I was a freelance addict, meaning I took and went after every gig I could get my young big-headed opinion over. Long before I was a legal resident, I learned there are advantages to not being a native Minnesotan when it comes to going after things one wants. For the first and last time, Minnesota Nice worked in my favor. (I suffered aplenty at its cause, you can trust me on that!)

Still, I was cocky, I was young, I was a hoarder, I was afraid of not being important or loved, etc... I look back on some of the things they printed and I go... Oooooh, shit. Really? Really? But then I remember me back then and try to have compassion. 

Try. I said I try.

Although I've veered from freelancing, one of the greatest things about it was I got to share my values, beliefs, and quirky passions with mainstream culture. Despite my cluelessness and want for fame and fortune, I wrote from a place of love. My monthly Top Tens column featured ten, "best" anythings based on any given topic of my choosing: Best places to make out while riding your bike, best pick up games, "inappropriate" public art, unsung heroes, cover bands, candy in bulk, folks who defy Minnesota Nice...  

I'm trying. I'm trying.

I don't miss the deadlines and line checks, the word count, the irony, and all the stuff that goes with regular freelance work, but occasionally I get nostalgic for sharing the things out there I think are really cool. Granted I don't get "out there" nearly as much as I used to, nor am I as savvy to the old hipster ways (thankfully, gratefully), but I don't know if that would change anything anyway. In any case, here are the things and people that make my life wonderful and I cannot live without: (And you have likely heard me talk about all of these things regularly, but now I am going on being cocky again and overtooting my welcome, so just bare with me)... 

First of all, you, students, readers, friends, like-hearted and minded kindred soul mates who come and make The Beach such a sacred place. Thank you. Thank you so much. Happy New Year. What a blessing that my life happens to be happening and weaving at the same exact moment as yours, that we found each other. It's a miracle and I am grateful. Terry Tempest Williams has an awesome line in her piece "Why I Write" about how writing is like "whispering into the ear of someone you love..." As I write this, my wish is for all my writing family, each of you, to hear these words whispered into your ear, as yours and yours alone...  You'll try? 
The "strangers" out there I will come to know and share and write with and love when the time is right
Studio Inside Out is brilliant! Oh to live in the colors! Meet your brilliant on the canvas! Guided by pure love...
BareBones Halloween Show is something you hear me talk about all the time
MayDay Parade ditto
Amy Pate—My one and only yoga teacher, a true light...at One Yoga Studio.
Wild Moon Bhaktas and Kirtan Path if you ever want to chant and be happy.
Yogananda Center
Common Ground
Dharma Field
One Yoga
Invisible Bee Yoga
All places and beings teaching and being peace
Milissa Link
Lovingkindness 
The Sun Magazine
The New Yorker
Viva Mexico who get me there every year
ARC on Penn for having clothes every Sunday for $1 and thereby keeping me and my son warm and overdressed year round.
Latest find on You Tube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLERRYp8Oao
Favorite Parrot Totally random, but god, I love her. You have to watch the whole thing.
Jessica O who is one of my bff's, the original mother earth who teaches me how and why to love the planet and it's children and who is taking her 7 year old son to meet his dad for the first time in Japan this spring
Hot Chocolate at Caribou after x-country skiing at Hyland Park... that there is a two-for-one
Best Drum Circle
The man who taught me to drum and so much more
Omulu Capoeira is where Jude occasionally gets his kicks. One of these days, I'll join him!
Curran's so odd it's not even a dive, but I am in earnest ever grateful to them for providing weekly dinners of pancakes and chocolate chip cookies to my son and his dad
Cary Tenis I still cannot say enough things about this amazing writer, human, and being of peace.
That's not the end. Just where I am having to stop for now. 
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! 

WRITE WITH ME? WHAT CAN YOU ADD TO THIS LIST? PEOPLE? PLACES? EDIBLES? SPIRITUALS? ALL IN ONE?

AND IF YOU'D RATHER:
 "NEW YEAR'S EVE"... ANYTHING ON THAT. ANYTHING.

Writing with Rox WEEKLY—And what I really want...

Permanently clean floors
a winter cabin in Encinitas, California
an aversion to sugar
more time
fewer hormones to deal with
a hugging shop (remember House of Hugs?)
skate skis
contentment with wanting and not having
sweet music piped into my condo every time a baby is born

a functional backpack purse. I really want a functional, simple, good quality, cute, purse.
100 dresses and boots that fit just perfectly so I never have to shop for them again.

daily massage from my amazing massage therapist
a hot tub
soft slippers
better feet
better hair
glitter and stardust to accentuate my hair and cheeks at the just the right moment
a yoga studio to move in downstairs
a vegetable garden
a lemon tree
a cat
a dog
a parrot
a sitar
a big drum
a piano

romance, always more romance

I want to be carried when I'm tired.
I want to be kissed on a perfect summer evening, whirled and twirled on a gentle, snowy night.
I want to dance and sing all night long.

a gargantuan family to go to on the holidays with lots of kids and family and music making and healthy food and cooking and merry making in a gargantuan house with high ceilings and dancing and a skylight and a piano and heck...you might as well throw in some ghosts because this is sounding a lot like the haunted mansion ride at Disneyland where everyone is having a big party

speaking of ghosts, bringing my dad back for a day

for Jude to never grow older
a younger body to make more children
to remember my dreams more often
to fly

a long table down on the the street, right here on 50th and Xerxes that sits about 100 people (and as long as across the world) who never met and never thought they would all gather and write together and realize how much they have in common and love each other

a new bike

lovingkindness
for everyone to know the love in their hearts

more time
more time
more time

to be here now
in wishing
in the gift giving that life breathes
in and out
every moment

WRITE WITH ME?
WHAT DO YOU REALLY REALLY WANT? WHAT'S ON YOUR LIST? 

Writing with Rox WEEKLY—Pop-Up Stories: Keeping it simple

I have a student who has been writing with me since my first class at the Loft back in 2005. The class was called "Creative Workout," where I had students do all sorts of "creative" endeavors in and outside the classroom in order to work the inherent creative muscle and maybe get some writing out of the deal. It's vague, but memories I have include students running around the room as their toddler selves, drumming out their feelings on the table, and trying out something new and a bit risky out in their community and then writing about it. I had a lot of nerve. D likes to tell the story repeatedly about how much she didn't like me back then, how she thought I was out of my mind. Who did I think I was teaching writing, what with my flaky west coast ways, drumming and rhyming games that I often  I used to teach poetry. Where did I think I was, the beach? Was this some sort of commune free-for-all love-in or was it a writing class? 

Well, turns out, I grow on a person, or as D would say, "you wear on a person."  Over the years we have written together privately and in my Friday Women's group, where she has gone from writing one page poems about her porch to epic personal essays in creative nonfiction about everything from running a discotheque with her husband in 1970s Minneapolis by night, teaching kindergarten by day, to "D + G Stories," which account for the daily mishaps that happen in a marriage, like butt-bumping in the kitchen when there isn't enough room for both of you. No matter what she writes about, she always wants more writing time, always returning to the table with a longing to write "because I love to write."

Together we have invented new forms of poetry (candy poems, yoga poems, etc), loving the simple permission we gave one  another to make poetry out of just about anything. Together we have taken a walk to the corner on a hot summer day, hugged a tree, and returned to write about it. There are many memories, many stories. One day out of the blue she started writing erotica. Where did it come from? Who knew? It just showed up. And man, was it ever good. And it just kept on pouring out of her, endlessly.   We later discovered she was on a healing journey, beginning, as she says, "to write the trauma out of my body." 

About this I could go on and on. But not today.

One of the things I love so much about D is her tendency to rebel against my writing prompts. Each and every Friday when we write together, she will either flat out refuse my prompt or she will  twist it into something much better. When I first started my blog, she went on about the lunacy of starting a "bog." When I proposed we all write some "spoken word," well, in classic form, D created a powerful piece of "open word," which I like a lot, lot better. And last week when I suggested we all write our memories of what had happened since we wrote together last, encouraging them to "write whatever pops into your mind and go with it because it will reveal important themes and energy..." she aptly named the exercise "pop-up stories." No beating around the bush there. Spoken like a true kindergarten teacher. 

It is this simple and fresh twist on the everyday seriousness of adult speaking and thinking that I find so refreshing about her and her writing. It is her way of questioning, mindfully looking at the world, the moment. Having a little poetic fun with it. In fact, within this twist, this space of interpretation (misinterpretation, translation, reaction, etc) between what is and what we do and write with it, where your true writer's voice lives, the unique you-ness.

Oh, I could tell your reasons why this woman struggles with this, why she insists she is not a writer, why she cries out in frustration when she can't come up with fancier, more "writerly" words and ideas. But, no, I tell her, please don't! Please stay with you and your unique voice which is so original and fresh. It's what makes you a poet! Please don't go trying to sound like Jenny, whose writerly job is to sound like Jenny, not you! Please try not to  compare! Stay with your unique voice, your truth, and from there you can write about anything. Plus, it's a lot easier that way. 

That's the beauty of having so many writers. We could all be writing about the same moment and it would sound like symphony. 

WRITE WITH ME? How does your unique voice and you-ness interpret the world? The moment? 

What part of your voice and you-ness do you struggle to accept? What part do you love and embrace?