"I’m going to take some time and write down all the good I’ve seen in people and the universe"

Tonight one of my students sent me an email sharing that she gave herself this prompt and I think it's just about the greatest prompt I ever heard. An invitation to stop the running around, the self defeating habits and thoughts, the gift wrapping and the guilt, the apologies and the regrets, the things you will always grieve and the life you could have lived, the person you could have been, the not enough's and the I'm too muches... All that on and on come and go of being human.

So tonight, or as soon as possible, take some time to write down about the good you've seen.

Like the cat's white paws on your heart and
all the pretty holiday lights
and your son saying Mama, can I have a hug?
and Ma sending a text saying how sorry she is about Ram Dass and do you want to talk? Because I'm around, she says
And all the love that went around today all over the world because of Ram Dass dying yesterday
And everyone saying Merry Christmas whether they mean it or not because
It's a start and a start counts for a whole lot of good I've seen
And I could go on and on about all the good I've seen.... every day, every hour, every moment...

So write and spread the good! It goes especially well with all the perty lights.

So much love to you all! ✨💙🌊✨🎆🙏💙💙💙

Writing with Rox WEEKLY—Close encounters with kindnesses

This morning the Friday Writer's enjoyed our annual Pontoon Day along one of the lakes out west on Highway 7, don't ask me which. There were many delights of the day, naturally, and never enough time to write them all down.

It had been a while since we'd all been together (nothing rallies writers like a pontoon!) and so much to write about, given the pace of summer. What struck me most during check-ins was the mention of kindness: directly, indirectly, subsequently, in hindsight, humbling, life changing, and most importantly, the essential detail to every story.

On and off the page, we thirst for kindness; the offering and receiving, knowing and recognizing of said human elixir changes protagonists and antagonists alike. And subsequently, though rarely intentionally, changes the world.

So we wrote out our memories of recent encounters with kindness. I wrote about water, the way my Zumba teacher smiled at one of her students as they boogied in tandem, a fellow hiker patiently waiting for us slow walkers to take our time, offering words of encouragement to us all, small hands at summer camp offering high fives to bigger hands and vice versa. Someone offering an arm to steady a fellow walker on an incline. A peaceful walk with new friends. Loud hoots of encouragement to everyone on stage. The raw writing written and shared with others. A student offering her pontoon and lake for the day for all to enjoy. And on and on. It's endless. It's infectious!


Try it. Write out your recent kindnesses. You'll like it. My dad used to say, quoting someone, that petting a cat lowered your blood pressure. And of course!  A reciprocity of kindness, a self generating energy of the heart, poetry in motion. So try it. It's good for you!

Writing with Rox WEEKLY—Dear Amber...better late than never...

Oh... I love you Amber. To show up raw and open for us to love you and support you. 

I feel like awards and trophies and accolades should be given out these days to those who show up raw and messy and real because that can be the hardest of the hardest. Anyone can get good at sports or music or throwing shit around the field or writing for that matter, but so few of the few show up for real, 100% spirit, where we can go and just be who we are raw alive vulnerable. They just don't hand out trophies for that kind of thing, but if I ran the world I'd make it a thing. 

Anyway... anyone can get good at the shiny stuff that looks good to be good at, but so few of us can get good at vulnerability. So awards and trophies and confetti and candy and hugs and candles to you Amber. 

If I had Amber's courage, I'd show up more often in tears or raw or open out there in the world with so many rules and edges and old ways of being that no longer need be; no wonder so many of us often feel so alone and pointless: we often look inward towards self-blame, whereas there is still a huge dysfunctional world out there that has forgotten intimacy. And this takes atoll. This takes a huge toll that no amount of protesting can disarm unless we are talking a heart Revolution, a revolution of the highest hearts of ourselves, to show up as love with love. Not with anger or Wars or this is mine that is yours, but with our hearts. 

But what does this really mean? How do we begin to show up hurting in this Modern Age where battle of wits, battle over he knows the most and scares the most is in charge? Of course I don't have the answers, but I know writing helps a whole lot. And of course smiling at babies; that is what Jude and I do... we smile at babies... let them know that that the world is also very much a loving place. I think that's what it comes down to. We show up with our hearts where it's safe. "Satellites," as Deb says. And we leave the light on when we go.                  

                                 Love, 

                                                Rox

Writing with Rox WEEKLY—Another reason why I love writing

I love writing. And I especially love writing with others. Whether I'm writing about the swimming pools of my childhood—those little blue dots of paradise—or the more silly or difficult things, when I write with others, all is well.

I think writing together teaches us to love one another. To love each other until it's effortless. We just do. We can't help ourselves. And the love bubbles over like an Irish Spring or an infinity pool... or whatever memory that's surfaced on the page this morning.   

And sometimes it occurs to us one morning in the middle of writing group, the same writing group we've been showing up for year-after-year, how healed we are. How that thing we thought we could never do, or say, or that seemed so insurmountable, is really no big deal.  That here we are, free. Relaxed. Feeling welcomed, knowing how much we really belong. Not just here, but in all of life. And we wonder why it took so long to get here, yet we know it was all part of it, the same way we know this is also part of something to come, that we're not done.

And I want to say if anyone finds this notebook or any of them and feels as though they are prying: Don't! Read on! Read on until you find yourself in these pages, until you see yourself in every page, in every vibrating letter that carries infinite life. Read on until you see yourself in love, as love.

               

                ...

Write with me!  /......

www.writingwithrox.blogspot.com

Writing with Rox WEEKLY—The paper doesn't fall far from the tree

Writing with Rox WEEKLY—We are all rooting for you Landen

right now, trillions upon millions of candles are being lit in prayer, fountains of tears are raining down love and healing upon Landen and his family, writers are wracking their hearts and souls to express what even thousands of lifetimes cannot express because there are no words, no song or poem, to touch the depth of grief and dystopic horror and compassion and helplessness and hope and faith and love that every mother—no, every one—must be feeling at this moment... And so, we write what we can. And we listen. And we let the words carry all the love and light that they were made to do... So, write the love, writers... write the love...

https://www.gofundme.com/Landonprayers

Help For Landen - Mall Of America Attack Victim

This is Landen, he is the sweetest kindest 5 year old you will ever meet. His soul is soft and gentle and instantly brings a smile to everybody he meets. He is full of energy and life and enjoys soccer, playing with friends and family and playing hockey with his brother and sister. He was enjoying a day at the Mall of America with his mom and friend on Friday morning when a stranger maliciously grabbed him and threw him over the 3rd floor balcony for no apparent reason. The family doesn’t know him and are completely clueless as to why this monster would target their family with this heinous act of violence. My wife and His mother have been best friends since they were 3 years old. They have grown up together, started their families together and truly have a lifelong friendship for the ages. Their family is always so generous to others, they give without expecting anything in return and are the type of family you always hope to live next door. Landen has a very long road to recovery ahead of him. He suffered life threatening injuries, many people who fall from that distance aren’t as lucky to make it. He has many surgeries ahead in his life to try to get back to a normal life for a young, vibrant boy. We started this GoFundMe for their family to help cover the immense medical costs and rehabilitation costs for the long ahead. Thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedules to hear about their story.

Writing with Rox WEEKLY—Why chanting is good for writers

Now now... don't worry. I'm not going to proselytize.  

Last weekend me and TCF drove to Madison to see our favorite HindJew Krishna Das (KD) who we've been following all over the place for years because, like yoga, like writing, it works, which for me means it brings the love, opens the heart. And open the heart it did.

But it also opened up something unexpected, something I'm not used to opening much because "I'm a writer" and I let the page do the talking: my mouth.

As a writer for so many years, I tend to tell myself "Oh I'll write about that" whenever something happens or when I know I need to release something; in other words, I tend to save it for the page, which is a well intended, often fruitful practice. However, years and years of writing and editing and shaping words in my head—while deeply beneficial to the page—has gotten me into the habit of withholding my speech, rushing the details, or minimizing its place in the oral tradition. As a quick wit vulnerable to intoxication by repartee, often accused of relying to heavily on "yeah, yeah, yeah," I struggle to embrace the longwinded fanfare of storytelling, especially my own. I've been writing for so long, in fact, I've nearly forgotten the curative power of talking. Don't get me wrong; one of my all time favorite endangered species is long, deep conversation, which is a prompt for another day. I'm just saying when it comes to telling my stories, writing is my telling of choice.

No wonder my chanting went hog wild, renegade. This was not my comfortable key of C.  I  embraced my uglier tones, pushing through vocal ranges ordinarily way out of range, ones I'd rather not tread. I sang it out. I sang off key. I sang out a voice I kept hidden. I sang out a voice that came out sounding like my mother's. I sang out creaky cranky corners of my body that hadn't ever been offered melody. And while it wasn't easy, (an ugly voice brings up some gnarly darkness, shapeshifting memories, rejected and neglected parts of self), I felt like I had no choice: I had to sing through it.

After 3 hours of chanting with KD, we headed back to the hotel and before I knew it, I was talking nonstop, telling TCF all these stories about childhood and college, some rather difficult things. I forget how it came up, but out came the story about my brother's friend Jason, that irresistible combination of gorgeous and bad seed who stayed over night too frequently, or my boss Steve at Venice Beach who I still try and purge with each word I write or the guy who threw glass bottles at my bike as I rode home in the night or my mom's boyfriend or the "slow" girl and blonde boy on the block I took it out on and all  the wrong things I had done and been done to. And as I talked, I could feel these things happening again as though it was happening now, moving through, the same way I feel when I write, in perfect flow.

And I wished I could call all those people up that I'd hurt, intentionally or not, and apologize for what I'd done. And I also realized that there were also people out there, perhaps ones I'd forgotten who were also sitting in hotel rooms at this very moment wishing they could call me up and apologize too. And I realized that it felt so good to talk it out. And that if I hadn't talked it out, it might not have ever surfaced at all, page or otherwise. In fact, once I was done talking I realized I had some great stuff to write about, which I may have never found if I kept saving it for the page. And then it was done and we ate some yogurt and strawberries. Where had those stories been my whole life? What had they been? Unnamed blockages of driftwood? That dissonant wordless song?

So don't be so writerly all the time, writers. Talk a little. Don't save it all (for better or worse) for the page. It's good to talk.

Writing with Rox WEEKLY—Texting Ma last December at 12:44 am

And then there are those moments, usually late afternoon, or late at night, like now, when I get up from the recliner or from the floor and realize suddenly on the way to the kitchen, hey, I can walk. My legs are back.

And so I pace the upstairs...kitchen to christmas tree...across the cork floors, over the ugly rugs and uneven patches of flooring, past the cat condo, past the couch, the table, the cat toys, the litter box, the backdoor , the recliner,  back and forth, back and forth I pace happily on my easy legs, relax into the fluid motion of walking, trust my legs will hold me up, will walk me and take me effortlessly where I need to go. It feels so good, dreamily good, and I start thinking maybe this is it

Maybe I got my legs back

Maybe it was just a silly fluke

Or virus and now it's done

But then I feel the first pull in my left leg,  then another, and before I know it, it's the same old dance

But I keep going because maybe it will work itself out, go back to the way it was, so I pace backwards, back and forth backwards 

and my entire upright leggy life plays backward before me, in film snippets

Look: there I am walking my dollies up and down the driveway in a stroller

And look at that: Can you see me walking Batiste down to the corner, to Balsam, and back? See how happy I look? And there... that's me, you, and dad walking along the beach in Oregon on the way to Evergreen. See? Eventually I have to stop pacing, forward or backward, 

I have pushed my luck, faced facts,  but I'll do it again tomorrow

               

Writing with Rox WEEKLY—What I Overheard a twenty-something LumberMetroSexual say to a much older woman in line at the Whole Foods in Edina this afternoon...

...after he allowed her to go ahead of him:


"Yes, I'm sure. No, I'm not in a hurry. Nope. I've learned that it works better to not rush. To take my time with everything. It's just better over all to not rush anything. Life's just too short for that."

Writing with Rox WEEKLY—Come weather

Come rain or snow or sun or sleet or 

                winter or summer or fall or ice or spring or fog or snain or wind or rainshine or 

sunstorm or hail or slippery roads or detours or delayed flights or mudslides or broken shovels or wingless snow angels, or trips to Trader Joes, or running out of salt, or wet socks, or bad boots, or Raynaud's, or plantar fasciitis, or power outages, or soggy carpets, or frozen pipes or cracking skin or fear of a falling roof, or fear of falling, or ice damns (damn them!) or lousy take-out or weather related bad hair days or dry ink or empty wells or deep hunger or or  or …..

we’ll write through it.

Writing with Rox WEEKLY—Have you seen me anywhere?

When traveling, I'll inevitably run into lookalikes of people I know or have known. Everything about them is the exact same: energy, facial expressions, height, rhythm, voice, cadence... except they are total strangers. But whomever they remind me of—friends, old teachers, students, relatives, doctors, coworkers, neighbors, people I grew up with, and all those who have passed through my life and are now strangers again—along with those I know well and hardly at all... it's as though they've returned, like a duende,  as though they are really here again, right down to the gestures, the way they hold their cups of coffee or fiddle with their hair or manage their towel in the wind...its uncanny... And so I turn to TCF and predictably say, "doesn't our waiter remind you exactly of so-and so?" or "Oh wow... see that woman over there? She's like a carbon copy of my first yoga teacher." Or my great aunt. Or my dad.

...and then there are some people I see everywhere over and over again, like archetypes, so much so that they become family—stranger family—so familiar to me that I can foretell their gestures, what they'll say, and in rare moments, their entire life story...it's that known....and I have noticed this for years. 

Oddly, I've never run into myself out there... why is that? Am I avoiding me?

           

           Occasionally, some people I know will say they met someone while traveling, or they have a friend who reminds them so much of me and that we have to meet, that we'd love each other, but somehow that never happens; that other me that is out there somewhere remains elusive. And sometimes I wonder how I'd be with this other me, this mealike....would I be nice? Would I judge or be cold or find myself penetratingly boring? Or perhaps we would hug, tell each other I'm so happy to finally meet you...And then I realize how many strangers out there are reminded of someone in their lives when they see me, that I am over and over again someone else's mother, widow, bank teller, yoga teacher, sister, lawyer, memory... 

Writing with Rox WEEKLY—Hand in the Ocean

                                    Hand in the ocean

                                           oh my night, why not

                                    accidentally locked  a 

                                                                    

                                   little light in the closet

I just love when the voice correct on my phone writes poetry for me! What a gem!

Writing with Rox WEEKLY—Empathy : What I really want to tell you

Happy New Year Writers!!!! How did we get here again so fast?

So... I want to reach out and reassure anyone and everyone who reads this that I'm okay. In the MidWestern Minnesota Nice tradition, "I'm fine." And on some days, I'm not so fine.  Can that be okay? That said, my posts are not meant to worry you or incite pity or concern, but if they do, that's okay too. We get what we need or want out of any piece of writing and I'm not going to stand in the way of any feelings or process therein that need doing. So feel what you must feel; worry if you must!

That said, I am okay. I'm me,  just as always.  I'm me going through a hard time, just like you do from time to time, just like the characters in your novels do. And then, there are balanced moments of bliss and flow, like when writing with you. Or petting my cat, Or laughing. Or.... endless ors...

And I so so so appreciate your care and love. As you know, as I encourage you, I have to write my truth, and sometimes that truth is happening now and it comes out as ratty old rage; some days I feel absolutely driven to document that raw truth because I want to talk to others in my same situation and/or provide a safe (albeit gritty) island harbor for those who may come floating my way, also lost at sea, perhaps a little further or less lost than I. I want to be able to remember this, for all its glory and grit, and to receive it. I want to write it out for me, for you, for others, also, because the duty of the writer, I believe in part, is offering another companion on the page for some of life's mysterious ups and downs.

I can't tell you how much I've been gifted by (lately and always, but particularly lately) the many countless posts I've found online, the anecdotes, the complete narratives, others write about their personal struggles with chronic pain: the joys, challenges, tips to heal, how to deal, words of encouragement, etc. From people I do not know, but have grown to know and invest in just by reading their posts, their joys and struggles. A simple line or two posted on a forum, even from 2008, is a thread of hope, a lifeline, morse code abloom in the dark, my cell phone a portal to possibility, a searchlight for hope, while knowing also that hope is futile because the present moment is the only hope there is, so I come back to that too. Because what else is there ever, but here, now? If I cannot be happy in this moment, in this body, how am I am practicing unconditional love, radical acceptance, for life? For myself? So in acceptance, practicing acceptance, I change.

And that is the moment of change you will find in any memoir or novel or good movie worth partaking. And the hardest conflict to overcome:change. Changing something in ourselves: your mind, your habits, your addictions, your machinations, your destructions, your not so good relationships, etc. Let go, and let in. Not over night; not like in the movies where it's boom boom bam. But perhaps between the inhale and exhale, perhaps a glimpse by the end of the book or story. Even if it's just a small crack, that's mountains. Moving mountains.

But what I really want to tell you is that your empathy for me makes a wonderful point in the case of engaging writing: you feel for me. And now that there is also a conflict (I'm struggling with idiopathic (really great for conflict since it adds mystery) chronic pain), which has heightened your empathy and investment in my story, in my getting better. Why? Because you know me, you read me, you know me on and off the page, you see me in yourself or someone else you know, and most of all, because you're human.

You namaste.

And I you.

See you at writing!