Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

Our text for this session was an excerpt from the novel “Hamnet” by Maggie O’Farrell, posted below.

Our prompt was: “Write about what you did next.”

More details on this session will be posted, so check back!

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.

Also, we would love to learn more about your experience of these sessions, so if you’re able, please take the time to fill out a follow-up survey of one to two quick questions!

Please join us for our next session Monday March 15th at 6pm EST, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

from “Hamnet” by Maggie O’Farrell

Agnes is circling the skeps, listening for whatever the bees are telling her; she is eyeing the swarm in the orchard, a blackish stain spread throughout the branches that vibrates and quivers with outrage. Something has upset them. The weather, a change in temperature, or has someone disturbed the hive? One of the children, some escaped sheep, her stepmother?

She slides her hand up and under, into the skep, past its lip, through the remaining coating of bees. She is cool in a shift, under the dark, river-coloured shade of the trees, her thick braid of hair pinned to the top of her head, hidden under a white coif. No bee-keeper veil covers her face– she never wears one. If you came close enough, you see that her lips are moving, murmuring small sounds and clicks to the insects that circle her head, alight on her sleeve, blunder into her face.

She brings a honeycomb out of the skep and squats to examine it. Its surface is covered, teeming, with something that appears to be one moving entity; brown, banded with gold, wings shaped like tiny hearts. It is hundreds of bees, crowded together, clinging to their comb, their prize, their work.

She lifts a bundle of smouldering rosemary and waves it gently over the comb, the smoke leaving a trail in the still August air. The bees lift, in unison, to swarm above her head, a cloud with no edges, an airborne net that keeps casting and casting itself.
The pale wax is scraped, carefully, carefully, into a basket; the honey leaves the comb with a cautious, near reluctant drop. Slow as sap, orange-gold, scented with the sharp tang of thyme and the floral sweetness of lavender, it falls into the pot Agnes holds out. A thread of honey stretches from comb to pot, widening, twisting.

There is a sensation of change, an agitation of air, as if a bird has passed silently overhead. Agnes, still crouching, looks up. The movement causes her hand to waver and honey drips to her wrist, trails over her fingers, down the side of the pot. Agnes frowns, puts down the honeycomb, and stands, licking her fingertips.

She takes in the thatched eaves of Hewlands, to her right, the white scree of cloud overhead, the restless branches of the forest, to her left, the swarm of bees in the apple trees. In the distance, her second-youngest brother is driving sheep along the bridle path, a switch in his hand, the dog darting towards and away from the flock. Everything is as it should be. Agnes stares for a moment at the jerky stream of sheep, the skitter of their feet, their draggled, mud-crusted fleeces. A bee lands on her cheek; she fans it away.

Later, and for the rest of her life, she will think that if she had left there and then, if she had gathered her bags, her plants, her honey, and taken the path home, if she had heeded her abrupt, nameless unease, she might have changed what happened next. If she had left her swarming bees to their own devices, their own ends, instead of working to coax them back into their hives, she might have headed off what was coming.

She doesn’t, however. She dabs at the sweat on her brow, her neck, tells herself not to be foolish. She places a lid on the full pot, she wraps up the honeycomb in a leaf, she presses her hands to the next skep, to read it, to understand it. She leans against it, feeling its rumbling, vibrating interior; she senses its power, its potency, like an incoming storm.

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

Our text for this session was “Where I’m From” by George Ella Lyon, posted below.

Our prompt was: “Write about where you’re from.”

More details on this session will be posted, so check back!

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.

Also, we would love to learn more about your experience of these sessions, so if you’re able, please take the time to fill out a follow-up survey of one to two quick questions!

Please join us for our next session Wednesday March 10th at 12pm EST, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

Where I’m From
By George Ella Lyon

I am from clothespins,
from Clorox and carbon-tetrachloride.
I am from the dirt under the back porch.
(Black, glistening
it tasted like beets.)
I am from the forsythia bush,
the Dutch elm
whose long gone limbs I remember
as if they were my own.

I am from fudge and eyeglasses,
         from Imogene and Alafair.
I'm from the know-it-alls
         and the pass-it-ons,
         from perk up and pipe down.
I'm from He restoreth my soul
            with cottonball lamb
            and ten verses I can say myself.

I'm from Artemus and Billie's Branch,
           fried corn and strong coffee.
From the finger my grandfather lost
            to the auger
      the eye my father shut to keep his sight.

Under my bed was a dress box
spilling old pictures.
a sift of lost faces
to drift beneath my dreams.
I am from those moments --
snapped before I budded --
leaf-fall from the family tree.

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

Our text for this session was “The Universe: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack” by Tracy K. Smith, posted below.

Our prompt was: “Write about your soundtrack.”

More details on this session will be posted, so check back!

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.

Also, we would love to learn more about your experience of these sessions, so if you’re able, please take the time to fill out a follow-up survey of one to two quick questions!

Please join us for our next session Monday March 8th at 6pm EST, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

The Universe: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
BY TRACY K. SMITH

The first track still almost swings. High hat and snare, even
A few bars of sax the stratosphere will singe-out soon enough.

Synthesized strings. Then something like cellophane
Breaking in as if snagged to a shoe. Crinkle and drag. White noise,

Black noise. What must be voices bob up, then drop, like metal shavings
In molasses. So much for us. So much for the flags we bored

Into planets dry as chalk, for the tin cans we filled with fire
And rode like cowboys into all we tried to tame. Listen:

The dark we've only ever imagined now audible, thrumming,
Marbled with static like gristly meat. A chorus of engines churns.

Silence taunts: a dare. Everything that disappears
Disappears as if returning somewhere.

Tracy K. Smith, "The Universe: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack" 
from Life on Mars. Copyright © 2011 by Tracy K. Smith.

Thirty-two participants gathered tonight, hailing from Argentina, CA, NJ, NY, ME, OR, PA, Portugal, TX, and WA. We watched a video of “Found/Tonight” (a mash-up from two B-way musicals Hamilton and Dear Evan Hansen), then took a minute to read the text with the lyrics.

One person commented on the dedication of the song being “For the Children.” A new grandfather said that resonated for him, because “much of what we do is for those coming long after us.” There was attention given to the lyrics “look up” and “reach out” and that “those who want to be found” need to believe another will be there.

One participant observed “This is what we do here in Narrative Medicine. We find each other.” Another commented that the music we had just listened to sounds like an anthem and reminds her of Simon and Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Waters” and, perhaps, the fight within the musical Les Miserable.

Another person thought of a Biblical verse, remembered as “He who loses his life will find it.” Two participants said that the listening was not comforting and/or reminded them of those who are alone due to COVID-19. The shields in the singing music booths took on new meanings in the context of the plexiglass we’ve been seeing go up to enforce social distancing in a COVID-19 world. One other participant said “the song transcends time and people.”

Another shared about hugging her grandchild, which she had not done in a long time, and realized how much she has missed doing that. Another person responded, saying that our texts, in this space, are like hugs.

Most people related the medley to COVID-19 and, as one said, “the fight of this last year.” A participant said it made her think of the healthcare workers “whose every shift this past year was a fight” and wanted to thank them. Another chatted in, in response, that she had contracted COVID at her hospital and appreciated the recognition and expression of gratitude.

We wrote for 4 minutes to the prompt: Write about your part in the fight.

The first reader aligned himself with Don Quijote jousting with windmills as he fights the good fight with systems that he “cannot let taint our beautiful profession” as he continues to train young physicians and care for patients. He invites others to “keep telling the stories” as he battles for writing and health justice. 

The second reader began by calling her actions “small” and then told of rescuing a dog, the many ways she keeps her mother connected to the outside world, in these days of Covid-19. She teaches and mentors students, and particularly students in their last year of medical school.  She said her part is “to give something positive to focus on.” Those of us listening reflected to the reader that we did not hear the numerous things she does as “small,” but rather as a celebration of the “many roles we play” in the many worlds we inhabit. To prove this point even further, a participant shared a quote by Mother Teresa: “It is not the magnitude of our actions, but the amount of love that is put into them that matters.”

Our next readers shared questions about whether “fight is even a metaphor I feel my own” or about “what is the fight”. We saw empathy as “incubating in warriors” and hope “shedding” along the way, reimagining the “shedding” of the virus we’ve heard so much about over the past year. One reader’s part in the fight was putting together seemingly fragmented pieces of hope, while another reader’s was to acknowledge the road we’ve traveled so far and celebrate the pioneering women who indeed have “won the fight” of their lifetimes.

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.

Also, we would love to learn more about your experience of these sessions, so if you’re able, please take the time to fill out a follow-up survey of one to two quick questions!

Please join us for our next session Wednesday March 3rd at 12pm EST, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

Found/Tonight - Lin-Manuel Miranda and Ben Platt

We may not yet have reached our glory
But I will gladly join the fight
And when our children tell their story
They'll tell the story of tonight
They'll tell the story of tonight
Tonight

Have you ever felt like nobody was there?
Have you ever felt forgotten in the middle of nowhere?
Have you ever felt like you could disappear?
Like you could fall, and no one would hear?

Well, let that lonely feeling wash away
All we see is light
'Cause maybe there's a reason to believe you'll be okay
For forever
'Cause when you don't feel strong enough to stand
You can reach, reach out your hand

And oh
Raise a glass to freedom
Something they can never take away
Oh
No matter what they tell you
Someone will coming running
To take you home
Raise a glass to all of us
Tomorrow there'll be more of us
Telling the story of tonight
Out of the shadows

The morning is breaking (they'll tell the story of tonight)
And all is new
All is new
All is new
It's only a matter of
Time

Even when the dark comes crashing through
When you need a friend to carry you
When you're broken on the ground
You will be found
So let the sun come streaming in
'Cause you'll reach up and you'll rise again
If you only look around
You will be found

And when our children tell their story
You will be found
They'll tell the story of tonight
Whoa
No matter what they tell you
Tomorrow there'll be more of us
Telling the story of tonight
The story of tonight

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

Our text for this session was the poem Pink Hydrangea by Rainer Maria Rilke translated by Walter Arndt, paired with the painting “Pink Hydrangea” by Ephraim Rubenstein. Both posted below.

Our prompt was: “Write about a color-filled moment.”

More details on this session will be posted, so check back!

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.

Also, we would love to learn more about your experience of these sessions, so if you’re able, please take the time to fill out a follow-up survey of one to two quick questions!

Please join us for our next session Monday March 1st at 6pm EST, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

Pink Hydrangea
by Rainer Maria Rilke
( translation: Walter Arndt )

Who thought such pink could be? Who knew it there
Accumulating in each blushing cluster?
Like gilded things which by and by unluster
They gently grow unred as if from wear.

That one should give such rosiness out free!
Does it stay theirs still, smiling where it went?
Are angels there to take it tenderly like a scent?

Or, it may be, they only let it go
That it might never learn of overblowing.
Beneath this pink there lurked a greenness, though,
Which listened and now fades away, all knowing.

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

Our text for this session was “The Mississippi River Empties Into the Gulf” by Lucille Clifton, posted below.

Our prompt was: “Write about standing on the edge.“

More details on this session will be posted, so check back!

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.

Also, we would love to learn more about your experience of these sessions, so if you’re able, please take the time to fill out a follow-up survey of one to two quick questions!

Please join us for our next session Wednesday February 24th at 12pm EST, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

The Mississippi River Empties Into The Gulf 
and the gulf enters the sea and so forth,
 none of them emptying anything,
 all of them carrying yesterday
 forever on their white tipped backs,
 all of them dragging forward tomorrow.
 it is the great circulation
 of the earth's body, like the blood
 of the gods, this river in which the past
 is always flowing. every water
 is the same water coming round.
 everyday someone is standing on the edge
 of this river, staring into time,
 whispering mistakenly:
 only here. only now. 

-Lucille Clifton