>A small interlude in Provincetown last week gave me both peace and perspective. There were abundant whale sightings and cool breezes. The ocean was gorgeous and wild one day, serene the next. There is something primal about being by the sea. I felt small and my stress was diminished by the great expanse. In daily life, it’s easy to be overly focused on minutia—correcting papers, driving in traffic, paying bills. How short a time we have in this beautiful and flawed world. How much conflict is created by misunderstanding. I resolve to do better at detaching from issues over which I have no control. In writing, I strive for emotional truth. In the relationships that carry me, I aspire to honesty and appreciation. My dream is to keep writing and life separate, though life informs writing. Writing is an observation, an interaction with the world that is completely realized on the page. Life is ragged and complicated yet always worth it for the perfect moments— a surprising synchronicity, loving attention, laughter, shared dreams. This week was the fifth anniversary of my father’s death. He loved the ocean, as do I. There’s a lot I will never know about his life but I did learn a love of language from him. Tonight when I teach my poetry class, I will think of the poetry read to me-Hardy and T.S. Eliot, Robert Louis Stevenson and Ogden Nash. I will think of the late April morning when we scattered his ashes in the Atlantic Ocean and how memories float like dreams do–in and out of the conscious mind–never disappearing completely from sight.
>Distraction and Discovery
•April 18, 2010 • Leave a Comment>I’ve always been distractable–known to drive eight miles out of my way to see a waterfall or spend fifteen minutes I don’t have to spare talking to a stranger in a coffeeshop. As a teenager, I would scribble in notebooks in the back of classrooms, looking studious but dreaming about the intersection of branch and trunk or the lip of shore that awaits the tide. If called upon, I would come up with something that sounded vaguely like our assignment because luckily I can take in while I’m distracted. Today it is called multi-tasking and I don’t know how to live any other way. A friend told me that she believes I’ll continue this in retirement, if I ever retire. One can’t retire from writing; it dogs you. And why would I? Ideas find me and I promise to send them out into the world. I’m not good at networking or marketing but writing is like breathing to me. I accept the fact that I may never enter the legendary “mid-career” stage of being a writer. I was a late bloomer. At the recent AWP conference in Denver, I saw writers in all stages of their careers—graduate students, famous writers, new favorites. The writing is everything. I don’t care who is popular or touted by a famous author. I know what speaks to me. I strive to instill this same message in my students. Be true to the emotion. Lie about the details if it serves your writing but stay unfalteringly honest to the feelings. I enjoyed the workshops and most especially a reading from a new anthology edited by Kevin Young called “The Art of Losing: Poems of Grief and Loss,” after the Elizabeth Bishop poem. The panelists who are also in the anthology were Elizabeth Alexander, Natasha Tretheway, Kevin Young, Nick Flynn, and Campbell MacGrath. Powerful poems, necessary topic. What a short time we have in this world and how much of it is wasted on disagreement, commerce, noise. On this cool day, I look at soft hum of green out my window. I can see. I can hear. I can love. I can taste (wonderful Moroccan stew I made last night). I can feel. One need not be a writer to use one’s senses.
>Long days, bright sun
•April 1, 2010 • Leave a Comment>I’m getting this in under the wire since I have no other entries for March. March is the cruelest month, a time of weather extremes–from blustery winds and snow to the monsoon style rains we’ve had in recent days. But that will be over tomorrow as April ushers in bright sunshine and mild temperatures.
Tonight was a writer’s coffeehouse at the school where I teach. The young writers displayed poise, and impressive range in their pieces. I am proud of them for putting their work out there. It takes a lot for a young adult to get up on a stage and read a poem or work of fiction. I see growth in how they encourage each other, even coaching each other to breathe and slow down.
Outside the magnolia and forsythia are budding. I have the beginnings of daffodils in my garden. Nothing can remain the same. My students evolve as writers and the world around them opens up. Suddenly they see what they missed before–a homeless man standing outside the post office, a father teaching his young daughter to swim, changing skies. It’s all there–the dark and the light, the necessary and the ignored. Sometimes I am a guide pointing the way. Other times I’m just looking out the window.
>Signs of Life
•February 22, 2010 • Leave a Comment>
>Beauty
•February 13, 2010 • Leave a Comment>
>Shy Animals
•January 24, 2010 • Leave a Comment>How lucky to see a fox with a lustrous golden coat napping under a tree. When he awakened, he looked at me without fear, only curiousity. It occurs to me that there is always life, seen or unseen. In the winter landscape, life is evasive. Morning walks yield the bare knuckles of brush and tree branches. The occasional pine seems overshadowed by bare and reaching oak and ash. I strayed from the path, finding bridges, stone walls, and sometimes just the sign of an animal who has a kind of comfort with the woods that I will never have. Instead I look for ways to describe the stillness and the hidden pulse of life just ahead of me.
Literary Imaginings by Lisa C. Taylor 