Our text today took us to a 1970s jitney station in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where a husband and wife (Darnell and Rena) discuss a recent surprise home purchase. The excerpt from Act 2, Scene 1 of the play Jitney by August Wilson, was read by two different pairs of readers without stage directions, so they “performed” solely through dialogue. We began our exploration of the exchange by asking who is present in this conversation beyond Darnell and Rena, the two characters who actually speak. There are quite a few, including a child named Jesse, Darnell’s friends Ba Bra and Earl, someone named Peaches, and Rena’s mother. One participant noted that each of them influence the dynamics between the two speakers. Others commented that Darnell also refers to his old self, so the past Darnell also becomes a factor in the present day. Beyond those other characters, we thought about whether gender roles are at play. One person saw a male aspect to the way Darnell seemed to be seeking affirmation with his grand gesture, trying to win Rena’s approval but coming up short – again. Some of us found the conversation uncomfortable to hear and wondered if Rena was being too hard on Darnell, while others thought Darnell’s gift of the home was actually for himself rather than for Rena. We commented on how the two have different desires: Rena focused on practical concerns like whether the yard has a fence, while Darnell imagined how nice it would be to have a den in the basement. We picked up on the subtext in the conversation, which was about more than just the house but about their entire relationship; we had the feeling these two people have had this same discussion many times before.

Participants wrote for 5 minutes to the prompt, “Write about slipping” (inspired by Rena’s last line: “I know people change…but I know they can slip back too”). Five readers shared their work, and everyone had a chance to respond. The one reader reflected on “Unpacking this year and all the disturbing things…what has happened to the world? What has happened to my world?” As the narrator situates herself in space and time, she does so with a sense of exploration (and a tropical beverage). Another reader also explored memory, but in extreme conditions of another sort: “Montreal is cold…Not once, twice, but thrice — slipped on ice. Canada is free, but frozen.” The group appreciated the humor, and drew connections between the good intentions of the husband in the writing and Youngblood in Jitney. We were intrigued by a reader describing how a slip tests both friction and gravity, where metaphorical back stairs “permit myriad sins, not all even pleasurable but rather necessary, filling in holes from the past that you’re supposed to pretend don’t even exist but – if you do that – they chew out your entrails like a fox.” One reader crafted her inquisitive position with alliteration (“Curable inmates: what do they wake up to? Slipping into wakefulness has poisoned their minds…constantly conscious careful”). This reminded one participant of patients in an ICU. Lastly, one writer’s piece clipped along with conversational energy and conflict with much like what plays out in Jitney: “It’s so damn easy to judge, isn’t it?…Don’t throw a stone, unless you’ve never broken a promise.” An overarching theme to the discussion of the scene and subsequent writing was bias — how it shows up, plays out, and is mitigated (or not) by reflection and communication.  

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!

We will be breaking with our usual schedule next week in honor of Labor Day on Monday September 7th. Please join us for our next session Wednesday, September 9th at 12pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

---

From “Jitney” by August Wilson New York: The Overlook Press, 2001.

YOUNGBLOOD: You want to know what I was hiding from you? I’ll tell you. I been hustling … working day and night … while you accuse me of running the streets … and all I’m trying to do is save enough money so I can buy a house so you and Jesse have someplace decent to live. I asked Peaches if she would go with me to look at houses, cause I wanted to surprise you. I wanted to pull a truck up to the house and say, “Come on, baby, we moving.” And drive on out to Penn Hills and pull that truck up in front of one of them houses and say, “This is yours. This is your house baby.” That’s what she was trying to hide from you. That’s why Turnbo seen her riding in my car all the time. I found a house and I come up a hundred and fifty dollars short from closing the deal, and I come and took the eighty dollars out the drawer.

RENA: A house? A house, Darnell? You bought a house without me!

YOUNGBLOOD: I wanted to surprise you.

RENA: You gonna surprise me with a house? Don’t do that. A new TV maybe. A stereo … a couch … a refrigerator … okay. But don’t surprise me with a house that I didn’t even have a chance to pick out! That’s what you been doing? That’s the debt you had to pay?

YOUNGBLOOD: You always saying you don’t want to live your whole life in the projects.

RENA: Darnell, you ain’t bought no house without me. How many times in your life do you get to pick out a house?

YOUNGBLOOD: Wait till you see it. It’s real nice. It’s all on one floor … it’s got a basement … like a little den. We can put the TV down there. I told myself Rena’s gonna like this. Wait till she see I bought her a house.

RENA: Naw, you bought a den for Darnell … that’s what you did. So you can sit down there and watch your football games. But what about the kitchen? The bathroom? How many windows does it have in the bedroom? Is there some place for Jesse to play? How much closet space does it have? You can’t just surprise me with a house and I’m supposed to say, “Oh, Darnell, that’s nice.” At one time I would have. But I’m not seventeen no more. I have responsibilities. I want to know if it has a hookup for a washer and dryer cause I got to wash Jesse’s clothes. I want to know if it has a yard and do it have a fence and how far Jesse has to go to school. I ain’t thinking about where to put the TV. That’s not what’s important to me. And you supposed to know, Darnell. You supposed to know what’s important to me like I’m supposed to know what’s important to you. I’m not asking you to do it by yourself. I’m here with you. We in this together. See … house or no house we still ain’t got the food money. But if you had come and told me … if you had shared that with me … we could have went to my mother and we could have got eighty dollars for the house and still had money for food. You just did it all wrong, Darnell. I mean, you did the right thing but you did it wrong.

YOUNGBLOOD: No matter what I do it’s gonna come out wrong with you. That’s why you jump to conclusions. That’s why you accused me of running around with Peaches. You can’t look and see that I quit going to parties all the time … that I quit running with Ba Bra and Earl … that I quit chasing women. You just look at me and see the old Darnell. If you can’t change the way you look at me … then I may as well surrender now. I can’t beat your memory of who I was if you can’t see I’ve changed. I go out here and work like a dog to try and do something nice for you and no matter what I do, I can’t never do it right cause all you see is the way I used to be. You don’t see the new Darnell. You don’t see I’ve changed.

RENA: I know people change … but I know they can slip back too.

Twenty people from Canada, England, Greece, ME, PA, MI, NY, WA, and RI chatted in their geography and, with their presence, showed an interest in puzzling together possible meanings in Lucille Clifton’s ”blessing the boats.” This poem, written entirely in small cap and sans punctuation, furnished a gentle feeling for many participants, who heard “a prayer for these times,” “an Irish prayer with ‘the wind at your back,”’ a blessing, a sendoff to another place, perhaps even to a time and place beyond death. We selected this poem mindful of the transition of going into September, into the fall, and – for many – into the school year. In the shadow of the poem, each of us identified a transition in our own lives, envisioning ourselves collectively “in our boats”. As someone observed: “we are now beyond our initial understanding of what COVID is all about”, getting “glimpses or brightness” and yet still navigating the unknown. The word “may” (appearing four times in the body of poem) suggests uncertainty, possibility, permission and, in that way, allows readers a freedom to sail the poem at their own pace and understand as they will. For some, the poem exuded “gentle simplicity”. One person offered that water in literature suggests baptism and beginnings.

Many highlighted the physicality embedded in the text. The word “lip” (the lip of our understanding), was a stumbling block, a “halting” for some and, for others, an evocation of an edge, a cusp, a beginning. The “back” makes us think of a “concrete body”. One person mentioned that she had expected to read the reciprocal “love you back” but remembered to read closely (narrative’s MO) and read that the “you” (addressed in the poem) could turn from the wind and expect the wind to “love your back.” Oh, the many discoveries we make when we close read! Another participant expressed their experience of physical sensuousness that included feeling hands laid on the back of passenger(s) embarking from a place as nebulous as “this” to an unnamed “that.”  The word “innocence” called to many, who paired the word with ideas of trust, energy, and the protection of not knowing.  

One participant remembered spending time, as an aspirant to medical practice, at St. Mary’s, the geography pointed to by the poet Lucille Clifton, steering a craft on the “lip” of waves in Chesapeake Bay. Like others he brought into the discussion the trust needed to turn one’s back on the wind and allow/expect the wind to love your back.

The prompt “Write about turning from the face of fear” brought creative writing that described snorkeling in the Pacific Ocean; feeling fear (“cold, pressing “) by night and day and respite from this fear that prayer brings; choice/options depicted by Door 1 and Door 2; and references to current events and the promulgation of a fear-based culture. Together, we reflected on how fear takes on different forms, including based on the stories we tell ourselves and others.   As we adjourned (knowing we will have a holiday hiatus on September 7 and be together again on September 14), participants chatted words and phrases expressing what they were taking with them this evening: beauty, bravery, gentle transition, hope, letting my back be loved, stillness, surfing gently, and trust. Thank you for sailing with us, and see you soon!

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, September 2nd at 12pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

---

blessing the boats
BY LUCILLE CLIFTON

                                    (at St. Mary's)

may the tide
that is entering even now
the lip of our understanding
carry you out
beyond the face of fear
may you kiss
the wind then turn from it
certain that it will
love your back     may you
open your eyes to water
water waving forever
and may you in your innocence
sail through this to that


Lucille Clifton, "blessing the boats" 
from Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems 1988-2000. 
Copyright © 2000 by Lucille Clifton.

21 people attended today’s session, from Turkey, London, Pennsylvania, New York, California and other locales. After reading “Plum,” the excerpt from the novel “How Much of These Hills is Gold” by C Pam Zhang, we considered these opening questions, “Who do we see, who do we hear operating in this piece?” The discussion initially centered around beings and relationships: the narrator (age unknown), the mother and child (“Five, full of destruction”), another relative, some important pork, and a dead snake that captured everyone’s attention.

Participants noted how the child’s (Lucy) spirit and enthusiasm fills a home space already brimming with humidity, odors, textures and other sensations that made us wonder not only where home is, but what home is — the text seemed to reframe our very notion of home as we entered the characters’ kitchen to learn about how maternal rules govern the snake’s final home.

The title of the excerpt, “Plum,” inspired dialogue around the juicy fruit with edible skin, desirable and possibly symbolic of other biblical connections to a garden of temptation, a snake, and flooding. As the author referenced unfurling as a revelation, our layered discussion too led us to a paradoxical place, where one participant asserted that “Ma’s rules haven’t bound this child; they encourage liberty.” And as one participant described the snake as an ouroboros circling back onto itself eternally, our conversation returned to the snake and its meaning/associations:  a symbol of healing? Caduceus? A mysterious death? What is its future purpose?

The prompt “Write about the one who makes the rules” elicited a range of rule-making subjects from oneself, to family members, to the spirit. One respondent felt that making choices along their  life path requires  a conversation between a gentler kinder inner being and a “voice in the heavens.”  Each human being  is multidimensional in listening to and following rules. Another wrote “rules are meant to be broken” yet confessed to being reluctant to break rules, to cause trouble, to get caught. The same writer proposed, “I admire those who break the rules for a ‘greater right.’” A listener responded, “I am a rule breaker, and I encourage you to be one.”  Sometimes, wrote another participant, the spirit sets the rules and takes us on a wild ride.  Still another wrote in a rebellious spirit about a brother’s rule for his teenaged sister: girls don’t call boys.  Another writer observed what happens when a child is allowed to make the rules.  First there is hesitancy, then unbridled freedom, then some reactionary rule setting, “worlds within worlds,” and finally a “shrieking as they are visible and naked.” 

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, August 31st at 6pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

---

Plum

          It was Ma who laid down rules for burying the dead.

            Lucy’s first dead thing was a snake. Five and full of destruction, she stomped puddles just to see the world flood. She leapt, landed. When the waves quit their crashing she stood in a ditch emptied of water. Coiled at its bottom, a drowned black snake.

            The ground steamed pungent wet. The buds on the trees were splitting, showing their paler insides. Lucy ran home with scales between her palms, aware that the world unfurled its hidden side.

            Ma smiled to see her. Kept smiling as Lucy opened her hands.

            Later, too late, Lucy would think on how another mother might have screamed, scolded, lied. How Ba, if Ba were there, might have said the snake was sleeping, and spun a tale to chase the hush of death right out the window.

            Ma only hefted her pan of pork and tied her apron tighter. Said, Lucy girl, burial zhi shi another recipe.

            Lucy prepared the snake alongside the meat.

            First rule, silver. To weigh down the spirit, Ma said as she peeled a caul of fat from the pork. She sent Lucy to her trunk. Beneath the heavy lid and its peculiar smell, between layers of fabric and dried herbs, Lucy found a silver thimble just large enough to fit over the snake’s head.

            Second, running water. To purify the spirit, Ma said as she washed the meat in a bucket. Her long fingers picked maggots free. Beside her, Lucy submerged the snake’s body.

            Third, a home. The most important rule of all, Ma said as her knife hacked through gristle. Silver and water could seal a spirit for a time, keep it from tarnish. But it was home that kept the spirit safe-settled. Home that kept it from wandering back, restless, returning time and again like some migrant bird. Lucy? Ma asked, knife paused. You know where?

            Lucy’s faced warmed, as if Ma quizzed her on sums she hadn’t studied. Home, Ma said again, and Lucy said it back, chewing her lip. Finally Ma cupped Lucy’s face with a hand warm and slick and redolent of flesh.

            Fang xin, Ma Said. Told Lucy to loosen her heart. It’s not hard. A snake belongs in its burrow. You see? Ma told Lucy to leave the burying. Told her to run off and play.

From  How Much of These Hills is Gold by C Pam Zhang

On Monday August 24, 2020 twenty-eight people participated in slow-looking and then discussing two black and white photographs taken by Tina Modotti, who traveled with Edward Weston to Mexico in the 1920s and became involved with the cause of workers.

Participants from England, India, Mexico, and the Philippines joined those from CA, CT, ME, NY, NJ, NM, and PA in responding to the photos titled “Hands Resting on a Tool” and “Hands Washing”: noticing the contrasts of dark and light, motion and stillness, the upright posture of one subject and the stooped or kneeling posture of another. People said they wanted to see the workers’ faces, guessed age and gender, wondered if those who were pictured worked for themselves or others, and drew our attention to the hands of the photographer, which do not appear in the prints. Looking closely at the photographs and creating possible meanings, participants imagined strength and purpose in the workers’ hand, and sympathy with the cause of workers on the part of the one documenting their labor. One person said the photos suggested sculpture, that these portraits of hands might be extended to include torsos and faces and formed into sculptures. Another person observed that the “pinky” of the hands that were washing was missing a joint. Looking at those hands, one person recalled the axiom “A woman’s work is never done” and also said that there was no real rest because the “resting” of hands on a tool was posed. One person remembered that the name Antwerp comes from a story involving hands and that colonial rulers sometimes punished those they colonized in Africa by severing their hands. This lead to discussing the many functions of hands and segued to the prompt: “Write about what hands can do.”

A handful of people read their 5-minutes of writing. These included narratives connecting hands to the mind or the heart, to the capacity to heal and hurt, and to prayerful intentions to “do only good.” As participants responded to what was read they mentioned images evoked (such as tree branches); comparing and contrasting the capacities that hands hold; the language of hands; gracefulness and movement; a series of questions that narrowed and deepened thought; playfulness in a piece of fiction and the possibilities afforded by prosthetic limbs. One account detailed the procedure of home dialysis—the procedure beginning with the sounds and rhythm of “snap and tap” that felt like a dance and included the seriousness of purpose to “remove deadly bubbles” from the lines connecting person and machine.

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, August 26th at 12pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

---

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

Our text was “Last Writes” by Sandra Becker, posted below.

After two participants read the poem aloud individually, we read it a third time silently as a group. Participants noted how the poem’s metaphorical language, wry tone and confident humor help make a serious subject not only bearable but darkly funny and surprising as an inroad to consider revising one’s narrative: “The poet refers to the darkness but excuses it if it’s well written.” One participant associated the poem’s word play and profanity with a comedy club or spoken word performance; someone else saw/heard it as a meditation, a “railing on limitations of free will.” The group made a meta-level connection between the philosophy of not being a perfectionist with living/writing/singing off-key.

The conversation continued, exploring the work the poem does: bringing light to a dark subject, providing an opportunity to look at “hard stuff” and effect personal change, linking subjectivity with sensitivity. Aligned with the narrative medicine principle of representation, the group paused to explore the end of the poem (“hope via indecision,” “an intellectual exploration with no resolution”), a place where the narrator gives up the idea of perfectionism, and “takes the pressure off in a beautiful way.”

Our reflective writing was to the prompt: “Write about something off-key.”

We had five individuals who shared their reflective writings. There was a broad range of interpretation starting with a take on the dark humor of the text with an imaginative narrative about the organs of a body having a discussion. The next share set an immediate tone of expectation exploring the child’s ideal with a narrative revealing the differences between adult and child perspectives. Another reflection went right to the subject of suicide directly addressing, through poetic description, patient differences both in being and circumstance. This was followed by a reflection about meeting a man diagnosed with schizophrenia. Our participants’ comments observed that through the eyes of this patient we see something new and that if we look closer we may see something we hadn’t seen before. The final shared writing was about a runner struggling to complete a marathon. A man appears off to the side some distance away – he calls to her by name saying “you can make it, you can make it.” No one else had seen this young man cheering the racers on. The last line “I believe in the unexpected” was commented on as a magical ending, which caused a bit of goosebumps; a wholly different take on something off key.

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, August 24th at 6pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

---

Last Writes by Sandra Becker

Swallow bleach — too painful,
go up in flames — lifelong fear.
Ah, a gun with a two-hour safety lesson
(I must get it right this time).
I’m pro-gun for euthanasia.
This really isn’t meant to be morbid.
When discussing poems, films, and books,
I’ve always told people I don’t care how dark
the subject as long as it’s well-written.
I’ve not chosen a day or time yet, so this may be my   last poem.
I’m giving it a shot (unintended pun).
I’m aiming (shit!) for truth, yes,
but, more importantly, it’s a poem, for God’s sake, so
veracity to poetic elements is most important.
So far, strong opening with a good hook, an unexpected turn.
Puns ease tension if used sparingly.
Revision essential to get it right.
Tense — present, of course.
Pacing — that of a waterfall bound to its given course.
Stanza breaks — none. One life, all connected, eternal.
Music — well, it’s life, silly — imperfect, can’t have everything.
Unfathomable, unpredictable, impermanent life.
Is that how God wrote it, and, Lord knows,
I’ve always been quite the perfectionist.
Why not loosen up, break some rules, have a little fun?
Sing off-key, but sing.

Last Writes by Sandra Becker.
The Sun, Last Writes, C. Bursk Copyright © 2020

Thirty people joined our narrative “sanctuary” — hailing from Canada, England, India, California, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Pennsylvania, and Washington.  A number of brave first-time participants contributed observations and associations alongside those who have been consistently joining these Monday evening discussions.

Our text was “Sanctuary” by Carolyn Forché, posted below.

Carolyn Forche’s poem elicited multiple, possible spaces during our reading: dream, film, memory, a Costa Rican cloud forest, Kentucky mountains, and West Virginia. As one particpant said, despite sentences written in past and conditional tenses, the text radiates a sense of timelessness. Another spoke of memory as a refuge or a sanctuary, like the eponymous title, where one is able to return.  Several people commented on the poem’s suggestion of a confluence of the senses beginning with “[l]ight pealed, bell-like” in the first line.  

One reader puzzled over the paradoxical notion of the horses’ freedom and the unfreedom of bridles.  Group participants discovered care in the poem, in the mention of a poultice applied to “suck the poison” applied by an unnamed “she.” They were reminded of being  givers or receivers of care, when treated with a poultice made by one’s mother and, conversely, applying a poultice to keep a mother’s wounded horse alive while mother was in the hospital.

More than one person found themselves captivated, midway through the poem, by the mention of a mahogany coffin. Two people wondered if the coffin is where the woman who made the poultice kept her herbs.  Someone else wondered if the coffin signifies death and suggests that death can be a sanctuary from suffering.  

Our prompt was a choice between:

Write about a journey you would make again.

OR

Write about a sanctuary.

Ten people shared their four minutes of writing by reading aloud narratives of travel (alone and with others), care, the well-known topography of a loved one’s face, and the restoring aspects of being in nature.  In listening, we were told of a trip by donkey to the Valley of the Kings and a new friendship formed.  One person’s writing took her to a place that imaginatively combines many places she has traveled in the past.  Another person described a journey without regard to place as the traveler focused on the face of the traveling companion.   Also, In the shadow of the epigram to Forché’s poem:

Ce voyage, je voulais le refaire–––

This journey, I would like to make again–––

one narrative alternated between French and English in a rich evocation of places known or imagined. This prompted, for the second time, the idea that one language may not be enough to contain the complexity of deep experience.

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, August 19th at 12pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

Sanctuary
 
                                         Ce voyage, je voulais le refaire–––
                                         This journey, I would like to make again–––
 
 
Light pealed, bell-like through the canopy. Long ago or seems so.
Then the ghost of a deer and crows flapping through smoke.
She made a poultice for me of herbs and mud to suck the poison from the boil.
And then she went into a mahogany coffin. As there were then.
Mornings, horses cantered through ground fog having broken loose.
So I would go out for them, bridles in hand, with no one awake.
The closer I came to them, the further they moved away.
Following them through the clouds is a journey I would make again. 
 
 
Forché, Carolyn. In the Lateness of the World. 2020. New York: Penguin Press.