Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we watched a performance of “Over the Rainbow” by Eva Cassidy, posted below.

Our prompt was to begin your writing with the word: “Somewhere…“

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 February 22nd at 6pm EST, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

Our text was an excerpt from The Overstory by Richard Powers, posted below.

Our prompt was: Describe a time you traveled everywhere, just by holding still.

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 February 15th at 6pm EST, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

From The Overstory by Richard Powers

First there was nothing. Then there was everything.

Then, in a park above a western city after dusk, the air is raining messages.

A woman sits on the ground, leaning against a pine. Its bark pressed hard against her back, as hard as life. Its needles scent the air and a force hums in the heart of the wood. Her ears tune down to the lowest frequencies. The tree is saying things, in words before words.

It says: Sun and water are questions endlessly worth answering.

It says: A good answer must be reinvented many times, from scratch.

It says: Every piece of earth needs a new way to grip it. There are more ways to branch than any cedar pencil will ever find. A thing can travel everywhere, just by holding still.

The woman does exactly that. Signals rain down around her like seeds.

Talk runs far afield tonight. The bends in the alders speak of long-ago disasters. Spikes of pale chinquapin flowers shake down their pollen; soon they will turn into spiny fruits. Poplars repeat the wind’s gossip. Persimmons and walnuts set out their bribes and rowans their blood-red clusters. Ancient oaks wave prophecies of future weather. The several hundred kinds of hawthorn laugh at the single name they’re forced to share. Laurels insist that even death is nothing to lose sleep over.

Something in the air’s scent commands the woman: Close your eyes and think of willow. The weeping you see will be wrong. Picture an acacia thorn. Nothing in your thought will be sharp enough. What hovers right above you? What floats over your head right now – now?

Trees even farther away join in: All the ways you imagine us – bewitched mangroves up on stilts, a nutmeg’s inverted space, gnarled baja elephant trunks, the straight-up missile of a sal – are always amputations. Your kind never sees us whole. You miss the half of it, and more. There’s always as much belowground as above.

That’s the trouble with people, their root problem. Life runs alongside them, unseen. Right here, right next. Creating the soil. Cycling water. Trading in nutrients. Making weather. Building atmosphere. Feeding and curing and sheltering more kinds of creatures than people know how to count.

A chorus of living wood sings to the woman: If your mind were only a slightly greener thing, we’d drown you in meaning.

The pine she leans against says: Listen. There’s something you need to hear.

27 participants, at least 3 new, Zoomed in from snow country: IL, ME, MI, NJ, NY, PA, and Canada. We are not sure how it was in Ireland and the UK but know it was warmer in TX.

All gathered around the poem “Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden, a poem of waking on cold Sunday mornings. Many people in the group related to the “weather” of fathers who were silent or serious or absent. Much of our discussion centered around what the poetic speaker referred to as “What I did not know” (with its Shakespearean resonance) and the changed perspective/understanding of parents when children become adults, perhaps become parents themselves, and know “love’s austere ‘offices”: work, responsibility, and silent preoccupations. And perhaps know, too, the young’s lack of gratitude or misunderstanding of these sometimes lonely offices.

By reading the poem aloud we were able to hear the assonance as part of the narrative: the harshness of hard “c” and “k” and “ch” in cold, cracked, chronic and the softness of “s” in Sunday, dress, and shoes.

Attention was paid to the possessive pronoun “my” modifying “father” signaling that the poem’s speaker was writing of personal experiences in a house that not only creaked in the cold but also was heated with “chronic angers.” 

In the poem we heard the swerve from fear in childhood to sorrow and regret for the speaker’s own silence or indifferent tone as he did not hear the love expressed, if not in words, in actions.

The suggested prompt was “Begin writing with the words: What I did not know…” 

Three people read their 4-minute writing. One told of meeting his father’s friend, at the funeral home, and how the man remembered the father as funny and fun–playing jokes on fellow workers–a father far different than the man’s son remembered. Two people wrote of changes in body and health, interests and attitude, which allowed then to see and act differently in middle age. All three readings incorporated the writers’ changed viewpoints from past to present.    

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 10th at 12pm EST, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

 Those Winter Sundays 
 By Robert Hayden
 
 Sundays too my father got up early
 and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
 then with cracked hands that ached
 from labor in the weekday weather made
 banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
 
 I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
 When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
 and slowly I would rise and dress,
 fearing the chronic angers of that house,
 
 Speaking indifferently to him,
 who had driven out the cold
 and polished my good shoes as well.
 What did I know, what did I know
 of love’s austere and lonely offices? 

Robert Hayden, “Those Winter Sundays” 
from Collected Poems of Robert Hayden, 
edited by Frederick Glaysher. 
Copyright ©1966 by Robert Hayden.

Today we celebrated our 100th English-language session, and we were thrilled to welcome at least seven first-time participants among the 33 people who joined us from around the country and around the world. Some veterans shared why they have come back, including unlocking creativity, being inspired to write again, and being part of an international community with a shared interest in discovery.

Our session centered on a genre new to these virtual sessions: a quilt. To try to experience this material object online, we looked at slides of the front and back, as well as detail of the stitching. Only at the end did we reveal that the quilt is called Lines of Communication, created in 2020 by Susan Sadilek.

We began with three questions about this text: What do you see? What do you feel? Where does it take you?

We thought about the actual objects depicted – many of us saw telephone or telegraph poles and wires, minus the birds that often perch atop them – and the division implied by the strong vertical line that defines the quilt. Its dramatic style made us question whether it was ever intended to be used traditionally, as a bed covering, or it was strictly an art piece — challenging our notion of what a “quilt” is.

We explored the graphic nature in the contrast of the black and white, and how, even looking at it online, the piece changed depending on how close we were. One person who was attending via her phone noted that she wouldn’t have known the text was a quilt had she not been told.

The angles of the lines on the front suggested an eerie, forbidding quality to some of us, while the checkered back reminded us of static. The hand-stitching was not perfectly straight and reminded us that the text had a creator, and we wondered whether the paths of the stitches were spontaneous or planned in advance. One participant wrote, “There is beauty in imperfection with the uneven stitches and frayed edges.” The visible work reminded us of the time that was spent in creating the work. We also noticed how the lines ran all the way to the edges, and presumably beyond, making us think about where they were going. The word “connection” came up again and again.

When asked to title the quilt, participants noted, “Stream of Bridges,” “Drive at Dawn,” “Life Disjointed but Joined,” and “Beyond Borders.”

The group wrote to the prompt, “Write about a connection…or disconnection” in a variety of forms, voices, cadences and tones, including verbal simplicity with stark contrast (“White to black and no looking back”), the wireless expansiveness of the internet deconstructed to the point of a tense “Sorry, our systems are down” moment in a drug store (“Can’t you just write this down?”), and a prayerful reflection (“I am  lost in this world…who gets to live, who gets to die?/Who receives justice/who is downtrodden?). The last writer described an “in between day” that was a celebratory marker of time present, recognition of time past, and time “lost in the explosion of my life.”

The group expressed gratitude for the writings reminding us that we move in and out of relationships — all important in some way — in some space in time. Some threads hold and others may break — “In these times it feels like polarization (black/white) but instead quilt is about connection.”

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 February 8th at 6pm EST, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

We welcomed 31 participants into our Zoom room, including at least 4 newcomers. We entered the chat sharing some of our occupations as doctors, teachers, writers, and preoccupations such as teaching online effectively or figuring out a commute in the snow.  

After watching the film short “What do we have in our pockets?” by Doran Dukic (2013) and then took a few minutes to read the text of the original short story (text below) by Israeli author Edgar Keret, before sharing our impressions, thoughts, and observations. Our first commenter reported “smiling throughout the entire video” and then reading the written text in which “things got more serious” without the colors, the background music, and the upbeat narrator. Another echoed these thoughts, adding that the two versions were “two different works of art.”  

One person thought that the text was about a man saying people only ask surface questions and that the man wished there was more depth to asking and wanting to get to know another. More than one participant resonated with the narrator who wanted to fill his pockets in order to be prepared. Another participant remembered feeling like a pack mule, when her children were young, and also the lovely exchanges she had with people who needed a band-aid or Kleenex or something she carried. 

Another commented on the gender difference of having pockets and having a purse/bag, which feels like a burden for women to carry. Still another was disappointed that the story was an encounter between people of the opposite sex. “Why couldn’t there have been another kind of story told?” she wondered. A contrasting response expressed relief at the wish to find a girl who is ‘charming’ rather than beautiful.  There was a suspicion that the title leaned on Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, a very serious account of what soldiers carried in Vietnam. Someone wondered if the narrator takes the Boy Scout Motto to extremes.

Despite what she called “perked-up music”, one participant said feeling sorry for the narrator, who “sounds like he is preplanning so as not to find himself unprepared.” We wondered if  “you miss out on a lot if everything has to be staged.” We talked about the many objects as possible bridges to connect with others and that “all the objects together create comfort.” Another person heard that the narrator’s list of things in his pocket could lead to a tender exchange between people. 

The majority of participants expressed enjoyment while watching the short about what one man called “practical optimism” and a “tiny chance not to be embarrassed” while admitting it was only a tiny chance. “I’m not stupid,” the narrator says. We thought that “Pockets” might suggest “being open to happiness – whether it happens or not.”

Comparing the visual and the written text one person mentioned the former as a collage art. Another said, perhaps, the short story is about wish and the animation is wish fulfillment. Another said they responded to the elements of magical realism–the narrator’s pockets magical enough to hold so many things and the way the girl drops out of the sky. “The animation wasn’t quite real but wasn’t entirely out of this world.” We considered the “magic” of being young, with resources, and a willingness to freely offer those resources.

We wrote to the prompt “Write about what is in your pockets”. We read out loud the many directions in which this prompted writing led us:

• after eleven months of family being together almost constantly, how reaching for Airpods offers the chance to tune out squabbling tweens and be able to listen to an author read a book. The case of the earbuds like a pocket.
• still hearing a mother’s words on “how to be a lady.” The reader told us that being taught it was “bad form, a bad habit” for a woman to carry more than a Metro card in her pocket. She still carries only that slim card until using it in the subway, and then slipping even the card back in her purse with the rest of her things. “So there!” the author throws out in her final sentence.  
• Memories of girls having to wear skirts to school, how then the rules changed in highschool and even blue jeans were allowed. How liberating – blue jeans have pockets! 
• what is needed in the pockets to ski in Quebec in 2021: a face mask, Kleenex, a phone for COVID alerts, a granola bar, a health card “in case I break my neck,” and $30 “even though all the shops and restaurants are shuttered.”
• the varied nature of elements in one’s pockets: a mask, hand sanitizer, scraps of paper, three pens, a penknife, a miraculous medal, a walnut palm cross (a gift from the family of a former patient), a rosary–the touch of which calms and quiets the man who carries these items.

Listening to these readings, we realized how what is in our pockets reveals identity.

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 3rd at 12pm EST, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

What Do We Have in Our Pockets?

A cigarette lighter, a cough drop, a postage stamp, a slightly bent cigarette, a toothpick, a handkerchief, a pen, two five-shekel coins. That’s only a fraction of what I have in my pockets. So is it any wonder they bulge? Lots of people mention it. They say, “What the fuck do you have in your pockets?” But most of the time I don’t answer, I just smile, sometimes I even give a short, polite laugh. As if someone told a joke. If they were to persist and ask me again, I’d probably show them everything I have. I might even explain why I need all that stuff on me, always. But they don’t. What the fuck, a smile, a short laugh, an awkward silence, and we’re on to the next subject.

The fact is that everything I have in my pockets is carefully chosen so I’ll always be prepared. Everything is there so I can be at an advantage at the moment of truth. Actually, that’s not accurate. Everything’s there so I won’t be at a disadvantage at the moment of truth. Because what kind of advantage can a wooden toothpick or a postage stamp really give you? But if, for example, a beautiful girl—you know what, not even beautiful, just charming, an ordinary-looking girl with an entrancing smile that takes your breath away—asks you for a stamp, or doesn’t even ask, just stands there on the street next to a red mailbox on a rainy night with a stampless envelope in her hand and wonders if you happen to know where there’s an open post office at that hour, and then gives a little cough because she’s cold, but also desperate, since deep in her heart she knows that there’s no post office in the area, definitely not at that hour, and at that moment, that moment of truth, she won’t say, “What the fuck do you have in your pockets,” but she’ll be so grateful for the stamp, maybe not even grateful, she’ll just smile that entrancing smile of hers, an entrancing smile for a postage stamp—I’d go for a deal like that anytime, even if the price of stamps soars and the price of smiles plummets.

After the smile, she’ll thank you and cough again, because of the cold, but also because she’s a little embarrassed. And I’ll offer her a cough drop. “What else do you have in your pockets?” she’ll ask, but gently, without the fuck and without the negativity, and I’ll answer without hesitation: Everything you’ll ever need, my love. Everything you’ll ever need.

So now you know. That’s what I have in my pockets. A chance not to screw up. A slight chance. Not big, not even probable. I know that, I’m not stupid. A tiny chance, let’s say, that when happiness comes along, I can say yes to it, and not “Sorry, I don’t have a cigarette/toothpick/coin for the soda machine.” That’s what I have there, full and bulging, a tiny chance of saying yes and not being sorry.

Keret, Etgar (Israel, 1967-) Translated from the Hebrew by Sondra Silverston   Short. Ziegler, Alan, Ed. Persea Books: New York. 2014. Pp. 238-39.

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

Thirty participants gathered today from across the U.S., Canada, Greece, Lebanon, France, the U.K. and India to hear two readings of an excerpt from The Shipping News by Annie Proulx. What started with the question “What do you picture?” evolved into a layered discussion of how the environment (rural, fishing, islandic, cold, volcanic, new found land = Newfoundland) and its people (a narrator, a father, citizens and the sender of a mysterious box) created an overall vibe (cinematic, communal, isolated but not alone, reflecting both loss and connection). One participant likened the “cruel heavy” box to a coffin (the father’s?), and another interpreted the box of books as “food for the mind.” 

Beyond the details apparent in the excerpt, the group gradually filled in the gaps of the 1933 scene: women seemed to be missing here; who is telling the story, and to whom? No morsel was left unexamined; even the “useless cookbook” reminded one participant of trying to follow a recipe without all the ingredients. 

Our prompt was: Write about an unexpected gift.

One reader flipped the prompt to consider an expected gift – and what happened when they didn’t receive it, at least not until they explain their hurt and get a gift the next day. Does that still count? For them in the end, it does, because they have now received the gift of being heard and seen. This conclusion resonated with others in our group today, and they affirmed the importance of asking for what you want and of recognizing whether the true gift is the physical object or the devotion that the giving represents.

Another response took a poetic form of only about seven lines, which concentrated the importance of each of the words that we actually heard. The response opened with a time machine received in 1960, and we puzzled over whether the time machine was metaphorical, and if so, what it might represent. One listener imagined the time machine as a telescope, and another recalled an Inuit saying about stars as ancestors peeking down at us. In the Proulx text, knowing the year was 1933 brought forward the Great Depression; here we wondered what role might that specific year of 1960 play?

Another reading took us on a journey, following an arc that perhaps echoed the layering that we noticed in the Proulx text. It started with the pronoun “it” – “it came to me later in life” – setting us up to wonder what that was. This tension drove the piece. Finally in the last line we learn of a second chance at exploration, but we must guess why the narrator seeks this second chance, why their first chance might have gone astray, leaving us room to imagine our own second chances.

Tension – and more specifically, the release of tension – also figured in a different response, which described relief of learning that someone close has been declared cancer free. The narrator tells how they had protected themselves in case this unexpected gift never came; when it does, they can exhale.

We noticed that all of our readers told of intangible gifts, though one did began with a physical one. The unexpected gift of the Proulx text was the collection of books, though of course the value of the book is not the paper and ink but rather the intangible places that they can take us.

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 February 1st at 6pm EST, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

Annie Proulx. The Shipping News. Scribner, 1994.

“My father taught all his children to read and write. In the winter when the fishing was over and the storms wrapped Gaze Island, my father would hold school right down there in the kitchen of the old house. Yes, every child on this island learned to read very well and write a fine hand. And if he got a bit of money he’d order books for us. I’ll never forget one time, I was twelve years old and it was November, 1933. Couple of years before he died of TB. Hard, hard times. You can’t imagine. The fall mail boat brought a big wooden box for my father. Nailed shut. Cruel heavy. He would not open it, saved it for Christmas. We could hardly sleep nights for thinking of that box and what it might hold. We named everything in the world except what was there. On Christmas Day we dragged that box over to the church and everybody craned their necks and gawked to see what was in it. Dad pried it open with a screech of nails and there it was, just packed with books. There must have been a hundred books there, picture books for children, a big red book on volcanoes that gripped everybody’s mind the whole winter– it was a geological study, you see, and there was plenty of meat in it. The last chapter in the book was about ancient volcanic activity in Newfoundland. That was the first time anybody had ever seen the word Newfoundland in a book. It just about set us on fire– an intellectual revolution. That this place was in a book. See, we thought we was all alone in the world. The only dud was a cookbook. There was not one single recipe in that book that could be made with what we had in our cupboards.

  “I never knew how he paid for those books or if they were a present, or what. One of the three boys he wrote to on the farms moved to Toronto when he grew up and became an elevator operator. He was the one who picked the books out and sent them. Perhaps he paid for them, too. I’ll never know.”