image by Eric

Eric took this picture on a recent hike at Lory State Park. I love how it’s so dreamy and soft, looks like it could be a painting. There’s another picture right after with a deer in it, but it’s really blurry.

Eric’s started hiking at Lory again after a long summer of avoiding it. During the summer, he hikes trails higher up where there aren’t rattlesnakes. This year there seemed to be even more snakes than usual. One of our friend’s dogs was bitten, (he’s okay, after antivenom and lots of drugs and a few days in the hospital and a followup surgery). Riley was Obi’s Mini Me. They met and got to play, but Obi was already sick at the time, (in fact, it was exactly one month before Obi died), so they weren’t friends for long.

Riley on the left, Obi on the right

I’ve been thinking a lot about Obi lately. The six year anniversary of his death is quickly approaching, and with the Facebook “memories” feature and my Timehop app, I’ve been getting lots of reminders of what that time was like. I’ve also been emailing with a woman whose dog was just diagnosed with a nasal tumor, like the one Dexter had, so I’ve been thinking a lot about that loss too. When I think back, it’s like I’m right there again.

I’m realizing that I haven’t fully dealt with losing Obi and Dexter. I look down at my belly, swollen and round, and I know it’s full of unprocessed grief and longing. I lived through that time, was present with it but then immediately rushed past it. It was just too hard. I didn’t want it to touch me, didn’t want to hold it, and yet it did, and I do. There’s no running from it.

Luckily, as a writer I get to live my life twice. I can circle back around and catch it again. I know I need to, that it won’t leave me unless I let it be with me, unless I sit with it, open my heart to it. Even as I write that, I feel the familiar panic, the speediness, the rush to busy myself with something else. I don’t want to touch it, it’s still so tender and raw, but I know if I don’t, I’ll carry it around with me forever, and it’s not a benign thing. Whatever you do to avoid what is hard only makes things harder. Wish me luck. ❤

I wrote something in my Wild Writing class with Laurie Wagner that I really like. As I shared it, it felt like something I could post here, and Laurie reinforced that by emailing me later to say it was “blog-able.” This particular writing process, wild writing, is completely magic. The way it works is Laurie reads a poem, and then suggests a few lines to use as prompts. We write for about 10-15 minutes — as fast as we can without stopping, no editing, no judgment. Instead of spending my time trying to make the writing perfect, precious, this practice takes me right to the messy truth — beautiful and brutal, tender and terrible. Sometimes stuff comes up that I don’t want to write about, that I’d otherwise avoid, but I write it anyway. Sometimes what I write is dumb or boring, nonsense. Other times I get to a place I never would have found without the permission given by the practice to be wild.

Wild writing is similar to what Natalie Goldberg writes about in Writing Down the Bones. She suggests in her chapter “First Thoughts” that “The basic unit of writing practice is the timed exercise.” Her recommendation for how to approach the practice is a set of six rules:

1. Keep your hand moving.
2. Don’t cross out.
3. Don’t worry about spelling, punctuation, grammar.
4. Lose control.
5. Don’t think. Don’t get logical.
6. Go for the jugular.

In her book, she includes a bit more commentary for the rules, but you get the gist. Laurie amped up the magic by adding the poem prompt, and asking that we share what we write, giving no commentary and receiving none. The combination of the three (timed and prompted and shared without commentary) propels my writing in a way that nothing else does. Wild writing lights a fire that burns right through all my crap, my ego, my resistance. And it doesn’t just work in the moment, but spills over into everything else I’m working on. It’s what I was able to recently teach in my Wild Writing, Crazy Wisdom workshop, and it’s why I hope to keep sharing it, keep doing it.

The prompt for this piece was “How to Pray” by Annelyse Gelman. I could have started with “let this be the year of the rough draft” or “it’s not enough that…” but I chose to start with “Bless the…”

Bless the rain, the wet and the mud. Bless the wind that tears through. Bless the sound of the furnace running, working, warming. Bless Ringo happily lying by the vent under the kitchen sink, hogging all the warm air for himself. Bless the last of the tomatoes and the watermelon we bought even though we knew it probably wouldn’t be any good. Bless the butternut squash and the olive oil and the garlic and the oven. Bless the muffins mysteriously so much better this time even though I’ve baked them hundreds of times. Bless the not knowing, the mystery. Bless the longing to know why even when there are never any answers. Bless the confusion tucked right in next to the knowing. Bless my bones. Bless the wind that keeps blowing even after all the leaves are stripped. Bless the plan for lunch. Bless the to-do list. Bless Adele, bless her voice, bless the words, even bless the sadness I feel knowing I can’t do that, can’t make that sound, can’t open up my throat like that. Bless the longing. Bless the disappointment. Bless the recipe we made a special trip to the store for, spent hours on, and that didn’t turn out. Bless its awful taste. Bless the writers who string the words together, make a mess, find a through line, somehow manage to put it all together. Bless the laundry. Bless the bills. Bless the windshield wipers propped by the door week after week waiting for someone to put them on the car. Bless the men who fixed our car. Bless the car. Bless the road. Bless the precious lives speeding along those roads. Bless the ones who don’t make it home. Bless the ones waiting, wondering where they are, whey they are late. Bless the work. Bless the brain and the energy. Bless the machines and the electricity. Bless the bread and the butter. Bless the toaster and the fire. Bless the mystery of the wind, the not knowing why or where it comes from. Bless the remaining two minutes. Bless the sound of a key in the door and the sound of their feet running down the hallway, the sound of a head banging into the door. Bless the wanting to be let in. Bless the closed door.

Bless this day of rest, and bless you, kind and gentle reader.