Writing with Rox WEEKLY—Eating my (written) words...AND/OR Is Writing Enough?

EVERY YEAR around this time when I sit down to do the Writing with Rox calendar two months into the year,  I find myself wondering why in the world I can't just sit down and decide which workshops to offer. If you're like me, every idea creates another one.

If you're like me, and also happen to be a bit handicapped by your creativity or "go with the flow" ways of life, you aren't great at marketing yourself. If you're like me, thank God you have amazing students who word-of (spoken word)-mouth you up and down their communities, which is one of the main ways you get people to show up for your classes and workshops.

If you're anything like me, you let your creativity sabotage practical matters; you compromise a complete coherent sentence in order to indulge a bit of wordplay, you spend hours contemplating the most creative workshop or retreat possible, only to find yourself two, maybe three or four months late getting the info out there for the people.

"What really strikes me about what you're saying is that 'writing is enough,'" my very wise, cool, dear, dear, ninja colleague, student, soul-sister and me-in-other (better)-form friend told me last week when I was lamenting my stuckness.

And, if your'e like me, sometimes it's hard to have faith in your truth.

I looked up from my fruit salad, for tropical fruit salad is a must when you spend the morning tobogganing your car to Cub, given the mile-high drifts. Oh no, I thought, is she going to jump on this "you are enough" campaign? Not that I don't go for that, but I was needing a little something beyond my own advice coming back to haunt me, which in that moment resembled contemporary psychobabble gone feral via the cliche highway, lost with words like "mindfulness" and "the present," and other sacred teachings that lose their meaning in the drone of the masses.

(Okay. You want an example? One time I was teaching a yoga and writing retreat and this woman goes  "before I started doing yoga I might have missed the early morning frost on the trees," referring to one of the teachings in Matt Sanford's Waking, which emphasizes that we experience a lot of "you just missed it," moments when we are too busy looking for "perfect" moments. She may have caught the frost on the trees, but she missed everything else, point being that it's all here now: not the beautiful sunset, but also the "ugly" one; not the deep conversations, but also the "shallow" ones; not that big moment, but also this little one: it's all the same moment, folks. Our judgments over what makes a moment missable or not are what keep us separated from the riches and intimacy of the present moment. Contemporary, Junk English, by no fault of its own, can erode the essence of communication by touting certain  things in extremes, is my point. The well intended spiritually seeking yoga woman was only half getting the point about "missing it" that the author intended.).

That said, I fear that "I am enough" is beginning to lose its essence and giving folks the sense that they don't need to work on themselves anymore, myself included. So what good is a workshop called Writing is Enough? Sure, writing is enough, I am enough, you are enough, but how does that translate into a workshop? As it was,  I was feeling pretty defeated that it was coming on March and I still have 2013 fliers all over the Twin Cities. "Sure," I said, "I can think about that."

But she continued. "I mean, you're basically saying it doesn't need to be anything more than that for people to come together and write because that in itself is more than enough." She was referring back to what I'd said earlier in the conversation about always feeling like I have to sell the writing process by offering certain guarantees, objectives, insight, outcome, etc, all of which occur  naturally within the powerful experience of writing together in community. "Why do I spend so much time doing the sales pitch when the act of writing together is more than enough?" I'd complained. I'd known this to be true for years, but somehow always came back to the need to add more more more, contributing, I fear—or at the very least supporting—the destructive forces of our dysfunctional "go! go!" world.

I ran the whole thing over in my head. All the way up until the part where she said, "...what you're saying is that writing in itself is enough."

"Oh.... that kind of  'enough'," I said, suddenly clicking into alignment. How could I have missed it? Well, I was looking for something else. Something bigger and better instead of what was so clearly just here.

"Yeah," she said, smiling that patient knowing smile, "that kind."


Is writing enough? How so? 

And/or what sort of workshops would you like to see here at The Beach? 

As always, thanks so much for sharing and I hope to write with you soon! xoxoxo

Writing with Rox WEEKLY—Good Folks, Good Times

Ever since I was seven, when Ma hauled me and my brother off to Northern Californian for four weeks to go to the coolest summer camp ever (it was a win-win situation!), I've loved sing-alongs. There was something about sitting beneath all those shady apple trees in the heat of the summer and singing about love in my bell bottoms and tie-dyed sunshine t-shirts that has stayed with me and likely, had always been a part of me, even long before summer camp. Somewhere deep within the timelessness of the human body, mine recognized and rejoiced in the rise, fall, and resolution of a good solid folk song. My heart hung on the story lines, memorizing the words and melodies, singing and living through them each time as though the first.

  Let me tell you the story about a man named Charlie on this tragic and fateful day...

Though some of my counselors were hippie strange and even though I had no idea what most of the songs meant and I  likely botched the lyrics (as I do so today), the magic of the singing together ran way deeper than anything I could ever have put into words back home without making it sound, as my LA friends back home would say, "lame" or "gay," as this was the mentality I was dealing with back then, back home,  before either of these words meant what they really mean.  I think because  it was such a contrast to life in LA— to the hustle and bustle of disco, fast red cars, movie making, fast talking, deal making, etc—song singing was a welcome slower pace, a sort of peace that I never knew, but must have longed for... When we sang together I felt a belonging to the entire world, unlike at home where my latchkey years were devoid of any consistent source of community.

but he couldn't get off of that train...

Well, fast forward 30 years and I've come home once again to the sing-along. Many fortunate and coincidental and surprising things have granted me the good life where I am able to spend much of my free time playing music with others and singing. Don't ask me how, but I've even been lucky enough to go along with Two Cute Face, a real musician, on a few singalong gigs for 55+ communities.  What I've discovered in singing (or writing, for that matter) with others is how much I hear consistently how much "we need this."  Last week after singing, one of the elders approached us afterwards and said, "There are so many bad things going on in the world, but singing is good. We need to sing." This of course opens up similar feedback, as well as stories about growing up and singing Blue Moon when the sheet music was hot off the press and delivered to your classroom and nothing could be better.

Lately I've heard a few people make a similar declaration: the world is in big doody trouble, but (fill in the blank) is good. As long as there is (fill in the blank) life's not so bad after all. In fact, my son's circus teacher (is that what they are called?) announced this to a roomful of nervous parents about to see their child dangle and clown and climb and swing for a paying crowd; at the beginning of the show he said something to the tune of: Everyone says life is so bad these days, but here at the circus, life is pretty darn great. We have a great time. 

I find these finally carved and well lived declarations of insight so moving. And so crucial, especially given these quick-paced times where genuine community is endangered. These declarations hit me like hope, like powerful cinema, and I can hear the natural swelling of music in the earth as I take in the wisdom of said optimism.

As writers, especially memoir, we need to balance the dark and drama with the light and celebratory.


What do you see that's "good"?  How do you complete the sentence "The world is in big doody trouble, but                           is good! Better yet, or                                                                                                            

                                                                                                                                                                                                                        

                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

                                                                                                             

                                                                                                             ... is good!"

  

And you know what? If you don't know, maybe that is good, too.



And speaking of not knowing, please join me for my upcoming March Workshop at the Beach WRITING INTO THE UNKNOWN  SATURDAY March 22, 2014 9:30am-1pm. What's gonna happen? Who knows, but we'll start with six words and go from there. Where?  We'll go where no one has gone before on the page... linger in the unknown and witness how the unknown lends suspense and depth to the page, and our  lives. Email or call to register. Limited to 6! 

Writing with Rox WEEKLY—Guilty Unpleasures

Is anyone able to sit in the womblike white sand beneath healthy swaying palm trees, coconut- mango liquado in hand, while staring blissfully into the many shades of rolling blue ocean lapping at your feet and NOT feel guilty while most everyone you know is back home under snow and 20 below?

Some other things I feel guilty about:
throwing away pennies while vacuuming because the trash is closer than the coin bowl
eating sugar
drinking coffee
making Jude go to school on his seventh birthday
not having a "normal" day job while some people I know work 9-5 either in cubes or standing up without enough potty breaks
being a non-traditional parent
being a parent when I have a hard time parenting myself on some days
texting instead of calling
making ice lanterns in my spare time
not sending birthday cards
taking my time with things
not going to bed on time because I want a few more minutes with my own thoughts or to read
sleeping in when others have to get up at 5 am
cross country skiing on my lunch break
the hurt I've caused others when I didn't have to
being a free spirit when others take life much more seriously
liking candy as much as I did when I was a kid
not wearing a helmet


While it would be nice to be enlightened enough to view guilt through the lens of clear perception as the sack of rocks that it is, I'm just not there yet. Oh, and that's another thing—the "lens of clear perception"— I'm working on letting go of my guilt about my lack thereof, too. 

And yes, I realize that guilt can be a great teacher, a reminder that I need to get my ass in gear and learn how to change my own oil, fix my own sink, tune my own ukulele, etc. I  am also un-blissfully aware that a certain amount of guilt keeps me cozy in a state of stuck: well, as long as I feel guilty about not going to bed on time I may as well not go to bed on time!

Ah, if only we lived in a less guilt-inducing world! Where road signs read "Take Your Time," instead of SPEED LIMIT 55 or WRONG WAY; where we are greeted at any given place of business with "welcome to my place of business, so nice to see you," instead of "may I help you?" If walking into any given place of business is seen as a cry for help, we may as well get real about it. "Why yes, you can help me. Can we sit down and talk for a while? Or maybe we can write together...?" I swear, but every time I go into a store for a little shopping therapy (yes, guilty!) and someone beelines me with "CAN I HELP YOU?" I feel guilty for saying "no thanks, just looking." Sometimes I dare to follow up with, "is that okay with you?" Last week I told the hounds at Office Depot that they were making me nervous... that believe it or not, it takes me a lot of concentration to pick out the right pen. At least I didn't go into the ADD defense, which I've done in the past. I'm getting better.

Of course I'm wise enough to discern when the guilt is really mine or when it belongs to a dysfunctional society based in the "tyranny of the urgent," as my son's principal wrote about last week in the Barton Bugle regarding the recent cold weather school closures and consequent pressure to catch up with all that was lost that week in the classroom. He wrote that he refused to give into that pressure. What a hero. I feel guilty for not congratulating him on that post and surely, I will do so after I do this and the fifteen other things I think I'm supposed to get done before lights out.


Guilt is just another  real thing that makes us human and another detail that adds great depth to our writing! What it is, what we do with it, and how it manifests is what makes us uniquely human.  So commiserate with me on the page! Meet your guilt on the page! What are you feeling guilty about today? And... don't let guilt get in the way of posting... you can always be anonymous!