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.

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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.

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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.

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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.”

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we watched a scene (posted below) from the movie Beasts of the Southern Wild, directed by Benh Zeitlin and adapted by Benh Zeitlin and Lucy Alibar from Alibar’s play “Juicy and Delicious.”

Our prompt was “Write about a revelation you felt was magical.”

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 January 27th at 12pm EST, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

26 people, five of whom were new to our Monday eve VGS, participated in a text discussion of “Praise Song for the Day” by Elizabeth Alexander (text is below). On a day dedicated to Martin Luther King Jr. Day, we made connections between the text and Dr. King’s words and actions, celebrating and remembering his ability to inspire others with his resolve. We began our session acknowledging that “there is lots going on” – both in the text and in our worlds. 

A participant pointed us to see the many previous “conversations” necessary to bring together a community of people to see and appreciate the contributions of ordinary people’s work, have trust in each other, and build together. Another was struck by the word “walking”, present both at the beginning and at the end of the poem, collapsing time and space into “a whole world that we share”, even amidst the separations imposed by COVID-19 and the many solo walk we’ve been forced to initiate. 

Many others were drawn tot the only question appearing in the poem: “What if the mightiest word is love?”. “It’s a question you can’t shy away from,” one participant observed, confessing an attempt to avoid formulating their own answer, only to find themselves trapped by it by the time of our second reading out loud. Others saw it as a call to action, evoking wishes to remember foundational lessons about loving others, and wishes that these words be extended to “policy and practice”. Others heard the poem as a sermon, an anthem, and an image of a patchwork quilt made of locations and (pre)occupations, with appreciation of the diversity and inclusion of multitudes. One participant saw associations to Marxist murals, morphing not as a specific ode to workers but an ode to love and deep community.

Before writing to the prompt, facilitators revealed that the poem was read at Obama’s inauguration.

Several participants read what they wrote as a “praise song to struggle.”

One reader described a rocky road strewn with obstacles but the speaker’s sights set on “the heavens with sunlight…sunset…and the Creator.” 

Another began, “Who am I to denounce” and went on to reflect on a mother’s guidance–not always welcomed or even understood until adulthood. 

In the spirit of Woody Guthrie, one reading praised quotidian actions such as writing, rising, having coffee, driving a car. This praise song goes on to include “those who work and those who don’t, those who pay taxes and those who cannot” extending respect to others.

And lastly, another reading (we hope others will be posted on the blog) called forth “cold air” as Alexander had on the January midday presidential inauguration in 2009 and depicting people donning coats, capes, and masks as they battle indifferent and unforgiving threats to health as they carried on their essential work.

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 January 25th, 2021 at 6pm EST, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

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Praise Song for the Day
BY ELIZABETH ALEXANDER

A Poem for Barack Obama’s Presidential Inauguration

Each day we go about our business,
walking past each other, catching each other’s
eyes or not, about to speak or speaking.

All about us is noise. All about us is
noise and bramble, thorn and din, each
one of our ancestors on our tongues.

Someone is stitching up a hem, darning
a hole in a uniform, patching a tire,
repairing the things in need of repair.

Someone is trying to make music somewhere,
with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum,
with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.
A farmer considers the changing sky.
A teacher says, Take out your pencils. Begin.

We encounter each other in words, words
spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed,
words to consider, reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark
the will of some one and then others, who said
I need to see what’s on the other side.

I know there’s something better down the road.
We need to find a place where we are safe.
We walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Say it plain: that many have died for this day.
Sing the names of the dead who brought us here,
who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges,

picked the cotton and the lettuce, built
brick by brick the glittering edifices
they would then keep clean and work inside of.

Praise song for struggle, praise song for the day.
Praise song for every hand-lettered sign,
the figuring-it-out at kitchen tables.

Some live by love thy neighbor as thyself,
others by first do no harm or take no more
than you need. What if the mightiest word is love?

Love beyond marital, filial, national,
love that casts a widening pool of light,
love with no need to pre-empt grievance.

In today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air,
any thing can be made, any sentence begun.
On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp,

praise song for walking forward in that light.

Copyright © 2009 by Elizabeth Alexander. All rights reserved.

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

We had 24 participants of which 4 were first time attendees. The text was the painting “The Gate” by David Hockney, but the title was not revealed until the end of our close reading session.

All participants were asked to spend 2 minutes to slowly explore the artwork; then we asked them to describe their experience of engaging with the painting. Initial impressions focused on the colors (so much vibrancy and contrast) followed by a sense of closeness that made it difficult to breathe, like in mid-summer when everything is so humid and overgrown and in need of thinning out — an overwhelming aliveness. Others just felt the joyousness of wanting to play or being on vacation. One likened the feeling to being in a fairytale or taken to another land – transported. As the observations deepened (and the narrative thickened), the branches seemed to appear warped and contributed to a feeling of insecurity. The descent of the path led to both open and unopened options (Can you open the gate? Where does the path to the left lead?) and visually contributed to a warped state of mind. One person interpreted addiction/depression versus the greenery of nature. The bottom half of the painting, which is the foreground, felt constrained with a green fence on the right and a wall that insists on descent. The potted plant seemed to represent a restriction to growth. The top half of the painting showed nature yearning to reach up to the light with a tangle of branches seeking freedom. But the trunks of those same trees, in the bottom foreground, were “in your face”.  One person related this place to her time in Kenya where a gate was a symbol often of exclusion provoking the question about what is on the other side, and is it as lovely as what is on this side?

Asked to title the painting, our participants had many different ideas: Branches, Escape, Hope, Serene Chaos, Escape to Paradise, Tenuous Harmony, Go Where It Is Alive, Beyond the Gate and many more. Our final discussion question asked what this painting would leave you contemplating: We don’t control what’s around us, The Light, Confusion versus Structure and Freedom of Nature.

The group wrote to the prompt “Write about a descent,” and five writers shared their responses: “The Impostor” described an ascent/descent of someone having a near-death experience and returning to the body; we were aware of space, motion, and a feeling of being “pressed against the ceiling.” Next we heard of “so much anger, so much dissent/I yearn for a place of solitude. The third writer recognized a gate that separates us from them: “I descend towards structure but perhaps there lies madness.” The bright colors in the Hockney painting contrasted with the fourth writer/reader’s description of seven adjacent homes that generate “numerous arguments over various shades of gray/rotten cedar siding/trimmed in white holds us together.” The group discussed the literal and metaphorical of this vivid description. Closing out the session was a haiku invitation: “Garden of Eden/Perfection’s a bit boring/Go beyond the gate.”

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 January 18th 2021 at 6pm EST, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

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