a beana and mama adventure

eleven months old 

today brings our first plane ride just the two of us
an excited grandpa will be waiting where we land
so much laughter and good things to come
but oh my goodness let the getting there
be easier
than the sleepless nights it has caused 

a bit from here

pausing in my favorite coffee shop near the market

a list of here:

hearing the keys tap and letters click poem notes onto vintage ledger paper.

gathering so much goodness to take with me across the miles to a favorite little town where i will sit surrounded by women ready to dive in and unearth their stories. yes.

smiling as i think about a couple of conversations this week that were lanterns on my path.  

filling my little list of etsy orders before i head to the midwest monday. i have now had more sales this year than all previous years of the shop combined. wow. thank you big for supporting my shop and for deeply getting the stories i am telling with these talismans. (i will be gone for two weeks so any new orders will ship the week of may 24.)

laughing as i watch ellie find something she wants across the room and then move herself so very quickly as she crawls to get it. she sleeps in child's pose now and i think it is because she wants to be ready to be on the move as soon as her eyes open.

remembering that the only way to teach what i know is to live what i know. 

print it baby

a stack of self-portraits, many from my "what is real" series

printing photos used to be the only way to for me to know what my camera captured. now, of course, most of my photos just hang out on my laptop and external harddrives. just waiting around. many don't even get glanced at again, let alone held in my hand or viewed by someone else.

but i am pushing myself to change that. 

i used kodak gallery to upload my photos and then had them sent over to a nearby target to be printed. and the quality was all kinds of oh my goodness pretty fantastic. i am looking at my photography in a new way today because i have held my photos and looked at them without distraction. (distraction = oh another email! or wait, why did i have that window open? or what will someone think if i put this photo of me crying on my blog.)

last night, i put several of these self-portaits alongside poetry into a journal that is housing a project i will be sharing at workshops this year. a simple way to remind myself: this is me.

(when is the last time you printed out a few of your photos? do it. i dare you.)

a wish

in this moment, how i wish i could sit down right next to you on that step on the front walk of the house on garland circle. i wish i could sit right next to you and ask you so many questions. what is your favorite color? i think blue, but perhaps it is pink on this day as you comb strawberry shortcake's hair. how do you feel about being a big sister? what does your baby brother's laugh sound like? do you ever notice your parents holding hands? what is your favorite thing in the whole world? when is the last time you told your mother that you love her? why are you afraid to learn to ride your bike? 

i would take notes just like a reporter as you paint pictures with your words. would you tell me a joke? would you laugh out loud? would you make up a story? would you sit there quietly inside shyness? would you really seem as old as you felt? would you seem more like a five year old? would you see the light that shines inside you?

i want to hear you sigh with contentment. i want to see you toss your head back as you giggle. i want to see you twirl. i want to listen as you play pretend. i want to soak up a minute or two or ten of just seeing you ready for all that awaits.

yes.

i wish i could sit right down next to you and learn all that you know before you begin to forget. 

and as i look at this moment captured almost thirty years ago, i sit inside this truth: together, we remember.

a poem note necklace

a new necklace in the shop

I love the idea of carrying a poem in your pocket. Don't you smile just thinking about it? Even saying it causes my lips to turn upward. A poem in your pocket. There is even a day all about that very thing that occurs in April each year (this year it was the 14th). I have carried a few poems with me at different times in the last few years. Poems become like friends i think. Lights along our paths. Mirrors. Nods of "me too." 

I have been using the phrase "poem notes" for a few years now. They appear in blog posts now and then and are part of my personal writing practice. In my interview at "la salonniere earlier this year, i shared the following: "I came up with the phrase 'poem notes' to give myself permission to just write. A poem note might be writing that looks like a poem or it might be the beginnings of a poem or perhaps it is simply a few words linked together that one doesn’t quite yet recognize as a poem." I share more about poem notes and prompts to begin the practice of writing them in Inner Excavation.

So when I discovered these little envelopes, I knew what had to go inside them. Of course. A poem note. 

Using my vintage typewrite and vintage ledger paper, I typed a few of my favorite lines from a few of my poem notes and tucked them inside these little brass envelopes to create a few "poem note" necklaces. A few of the phrases that have been used include:

i am pirouetting in midair
i am stillness within the light
i am the harbor of spirit
i am the tucked inside your pocket talisman
i am the ease of laughter through an open window

These little poem note necklaces are now in the shop. When you order one, I will choose a poem note to tuck inside your necklace. You can of course also tuck your own poem or love note inside the envelope when it arrives.

a woman and her prompts

even a photo can be a writing prompt . gearhart, oregon . august 2010

If you have been visiting this space since the beginning or you have read Inner Excavation, you know I love prompts. Like big time. I even used to co-lead a site that was about weekly poetry prompts. I love to use prompts in my creative work, and I really, really love to come up with prompts. Yep. Love them.

And I especially love writing prompts. They give my mind, my crazy "can't slow down for one minute because then the ideas would not be swirling about and oh i should probably try to keep figuring myself out and think about why others do things and wait! what is for breakfast today oh we are out of eggs" mind, a focus.

Prompts give my mind a rest so my heart (where my most waiting to be told stories reside) can write. 

So you can imagine my, well, shock when I discovered that my good friend and fellow writer and editor Jenna McGuiggan did not like prompts.

When we first talked about them a couple years ago, I can hardly remember what was said because I spent most of the time with my face scrunched in this weird look that was saying, "How can you not like prompts? I can't even hear what you are saying because I am stuck where you said, 'Oh, I hate prompts.'" (As I type this, my face is doing it again.) When I snapped out of that scrunched-up disbelief, I began a crusade of sorts to explain why I love prompts. But more importantly, why I believe prompts are something we should all keep in our creative toolbox.

Jenna wrote about her relationship with prompts on her blog last week, and when I read her post, I wanted to share her every word here in this space. Because, well, because she is really good at creating prompts, and I want my readers (and the creative souls working through Inner Excavation) to know about her next session of Alchemy Daily (which I loved taking in February). But, I also really wanted you to read about why Jenna has (mostly) changed her mind and now believes prompts are a good thing. Her perspective makes me smile big time.

Jenna's post, "Writing Prompts: My love-hate relationship," follows:

*****

"I don't give prompts. The world is your prompt!"

So said the writer leading my workshop.

And I thought, "Yes, yes! Real writers don't need to be told what to write. I am an artiste! The world is my prompt!"

And then I realized that I've routinely found myself wondering what to write about, worrying that I'm not a real writer after all. Phooey.

Whatever shall I do if the world is not enough?

** ** **

I have a friend who loves prompts. For months she kept nudging me toward them, gently but firmly, trying to convince me that a good prompt is better than the whole wide world, because a good prompt gives you a focus and a way in.

** ** **

You know what I hate? The blank page. The blank, ever-so-white, mocking-me-with-its-clean-emptiness, no-words page.

When I was a teenager I wrote a poem called "A Bright White Room is Hell." I didn't intend it as a metaphor for the blank page, but I think I'd like to intend that now.

But give me a page with my own messy thoughts and I can breathe a little more easily. I have something to hang on to, something to swing around my head. Most days, words -- any words -- are better than a blank page.

** ** **

That same teacher who insisted that the world is our prompt conceded and gave us just one little bit of direction. She told us we could choose a color and write about whatever came to mind when we thought of that color.

I chose brown.

This is not what I wrote, but this is what I wrote about: how on the first day of first grade, the tip of my big, fat Crayola snapped off and left with me a pointless tree stump of a crayon. The teacher was a nice lady, but she wouldn't give me a new one. I cried during the whole walk home with my mother, who later recorded this event in the spiral-bound notebook she kept as a journal when my brother and I were little. Years later, that teacher, still a youngish woman, died of cancer. I began to think (while writing about "brown") how little things and big things can go wrong unexpectedly, and how there's not always a do-over or replacement waiting in the wings, even if your teacher is kind, even if God is loving.

All of that from brown. Brown was my way in.

** ** **

So here's the thing. The world is enough. But the world is overwhelming. And sometimes we're tired. Sometimes our creative mojonators slow down and we need help to crank things back up. I think of prompts this way: I know how to cook without a recipe. But sometimes I run out of ideas or get bored, and then I like to read cookbooks and websites for yummy ideas which I can follow verbatim or tweak to my liking.

There is no shame in wanting, needing, using creative prompts. I still resist them, but that's because I'm stubborn and silly. Even so, I am now a prompt convert. I believe in them. If nothing else, they can get us unstuck, get us writing, get some messy words on that blank page so we can swing them around later. If nothing else, prompts can be practice. And when I say practice, I mean as a musician practices scales and as a Buddhist practices meditation.

** ** **

Some days the world is enough. Other days, I need a little help finding the right piece of the world to write about.

I've discovered that I like a certain kind of prompt. I like ones that are open-ended enough to let me jump from the color brown to first grade to death (so to speak). I don't love the ones that are overly prescriptive and tell me to write a sci-fi story about toasters that come to life (for example). That's a bit too much of a way in, and I don't really want to go there anyway.

So I've created a batch of writing prompts that I'd actually want to do, and packaged them up for you, in case you'd like to do them too.

The next session of Alchemy Daily starts May 1. You'll get 30 days of writing prompts, inspiration, and magic delivered to your email inbox for just $35. It'll be fun.  And no toasters, I promise. (Unless that's your thing, and then you can write about them.)

current collection (new in the shop)

new soul mantra necklaces in the shop

a new collection in the shop inspired by:

listening to what you most need
vintage jars full of blooming tulips
the space that surrounds our hearts
friendships between kindred spirits
seaglass found along puget sound
pink (because pink is always a very good thing) 
the invitation to begin 

making these necklaces in my newly painted and almost finished studio makes me so so happy. yes. ellie crawls and plays on the now clear of all clutter floor while i create talismans that will find there way into the world. life is full of so many good things...

PS free shipping this week with the code SPRINGFREE.

from here

a little note from here to say thank you for holding the space for me as i share pieces of where i am as i take a breath, then a step, then the next and the next. i wish the beana and i could meet you and you and you for waffles and strawberries tomorrow. yes. that would be perfect. we could share the truths and dreams that rest (that dance) inside us. some day. some day.

sending light and love to your corner of the world,

liz