In 1975 I was twenty-three years old and had never traveled beyond the borders of North America. Yet one day, I got it into my head that I wanted to tour Morocco. Long story short, a few months later my new husband and I were singing “Marrakesh Express” at the top of our lungs in a shiny blue Renault. We were traversing the mountains and deserts of Morocco on a journey that would take us through Casablanca, Rabat, Meknes, and Fes along the undulating ribbon of freshly paved highway that connected them all to the oasis of Marrakesh.
Fast forward. 2017. Intrepid Travel’s Walking With Berber Nomads trip appeared in my Facebook feed. Whoosh! Suddenly I could hear the muezzin’s call to prayer, smell the spices in the medina, and feel the breeze lifting my hair off the back of my neck on the Barbary Coast. I signed up the very next day.
Why Morocco? Why now?
Well, you never forget your first time, right? I had thought of Morocco periodically over the years, and now I wanted to see if Morocco in the digital age had managed to remain the kind, eager-to-please country I remembered so vividly.
“You are Welcome in Our City”
This sign of hospitality on the outskirts of Fes remains my most enduring memory of 1975 Morocco.
See the young man on the motor scooter in the distance? He offered—undoubtedly in the employ of the hotel—to lead us to a reasonably priced guesthouse, petite dejuener included. We followed, and it was lovely. Tiled floors and a balcony overlooking the city, upstairs from a French bakery. Merci beaucoup. At the time, Arabic and French were the prevalent languages.
In those days before Trip Advisor, we traveled unencumbered by reviews. It may have been naive, but times were different.
We never met another traveler on that trip, and once we were outside the cities, we never saw another car. No wonder Jimi Hendrix was hiding out there! We did chat with some Peace Corps volunteers in Rabat whom we recognized as Americans by the Clarks Wallabies on their feet.
Early each day, with an Orangina in one hand and an open box of fresh croissants between us on the seat, I spread the road map on my lap as a napkin and off we went.
In contrast to the few lodgings in 1975, today there are now over a thousand hotels of all sizes—mostly in the cities—in a country the size of California. Frankly, other than these small differences, the countryside we experienced during our Walking With Berber Nomads trip remains very much the same beautiful, undeveloped landscape that I recall.
Between Ouarzazate and the mountains
The twelve of us arrived from the US, Canada, UK, Germany and Australia to join Abdellah, our nomad guide, in Marrakesh. Most of the group were millennials, along with three 40ish, one 50ish, and me, the baby boomer senior citizen at 67.
Abdellah briefed us on our trip details before dinner. We were the very first participants—the guinea pigs as it were—so flexibility was going to be our motto. The next morning we set out on the same switchback roads I recalled. During the 7-hour drive from Marrakesh, we chatted, laughed, enjoyed the scenery, and bonded rather quickly with our shared love of traveling, hiking, and worldwide cultural experiences.
Soon we crossed the mineral-rich mountains of the Low Atlas and rolled off-road to the desolate location where we would join our Berber nomad family. It was springtime in Morocco. The nomads were ready to move their winter camp from the lowland desert to higher elevations for summer, and we would be hiking alongside, 9 to 15 km (6 to 10 miles) a day, an average of 4 to 5 hours a day on foot.
For three weeks prior, I had laid out my duffle contents on a coffee table back at home, adding and subtracting the vital and frivolous contents. Most valuable items: broken-in hiking boots with wool socks, wet wipes, hand sanitizer, trekking poles, solar charger, journal. We each were allowed a duffle bag (40 lb/ 18 kg max) and had purchased drinking water along the way. There would be no water available for bathing or showers.
Meeting our Berber family
As we approached the Berber camp, our van drove ahead to drop off our gear, and we walked the final couple of miles to stretch our legs.
Our Berber nomad family was waiting for us across the plain at a location with smoke darkened caves that had been hand-carved into the banks by nomads hundreds of years ago.
A cook, as well as a contracted team of three men to transport our tents and gear on mules, rounded out our group.
Tucking in the Baby Goats
The animals consisted of 3 adult camels (1 of them very pregnant, and no—darn it—she didn’t give birth that week), 3 mules, 4 donkeys, 53 goats, 8 baby goats, 120 sheep, and 2 chickens. The baby goats tolerated being tucked into blanket pockets on the back of a donkey every morning with the two chickens decorating the top of the blanket pile like the bride and groom on a wedding cake.
Day temperatures averaged low 80s F./ 26 C., and dropped to 40s F./4.5 C. at night. Not too hot, not too cold. “Just right,” said the baby bear.
After dinner in the cave, we retired to our tents and fell asleep listening to the murmur of animals around us. I slept deeply in my silky long underwear with a change of clothes stuffed in the pillow shell of my sleeping bag.
Sunrise Slowly Coming over the HIlls
At dawn, we were awakened by a symphony of cellphones with a back-up chorus of goats and sheep. I hustled into my clothes, laced up my boots and sprang from my tent to greet the day. Watching the low rays of the sun swim over each hill until we were all bathed in its rosy warmth never got old.
Tents Pitched on the hill over the Caves
Breakfast: Mint tea, English breakfast tea, sweet Moroccan oranges, cheese, flatbread and jam.
While we ate breakfast, the crew took down the cook tent, packed up, and set out ahead of us. As Karen Blixen’s houseman Farah had longed to do in Out of Africa, the mule team went ahead of us and prepared for our arrival.
Each day had a similar routine, except for the days when they didn’t. Yes, pleasant surprises were frequent, but the common denominator was the same relaxed pattern.
Privy
- Rise and shine. Use privy, a hole dug in the ground with a canvas privacy stall around it.
- Pack up, take down tent, refill our water bottles.
- Eat breakfast.
- Hike for a couple of hours, enjoy a 15-minute break with a snack of tangerines, nuts and some bite-size cookies/biscuits like American animal crackers. Maybe some chocolate.
Break for Tea in a Dry Riverbed
- Continue hiking to the night’s campsite.
- Enjoy the lunch that awaited us in a cave lined with rugs and our sleeping mats.
- Rest for the afternoon in our
Solar Charging my iPhone
tents or communally in a cave, write in our journals, or explore.
- Meet for dinner in a cave around an oil lantern. Share stories and comradery.
- Before or after dinner join the nomads in their singing, dancing and drumming.
Mule Team Transporting our Gear
Day Two. The High Atlas before us. Seven hours. Crossing two valleys, countless ridges and a dry riverbed.
Abdellah and Linda Summersea pause at the first 1000′ climb in elevation. Low Atlas behind us, High Atlas ahead of us.
Our guide Abdellah with a member of the nomad team.
What did We Talk About on the Trail?
Everything except politics. Exclamation Point.
When you’re traveling with strangers, you don’t have the same reservations about being judged, so you tend be more frank. In the group, we rarely, I think, spoke about ourselves. This was about cultural immersion and we wanted to learn as much as we could about the nomadic lifestyle. For myself, I found that the conversations I had were about comparing travel destinations, discussing religious philosophy, and asking Abdellah questions about everything under the Moroccan sun: halal vs. non-halal, education, solar energy in Morocco, and more. Abdellah frequently addressed us on topics related to our passage: farming, crops, exports, irrigation, the structure of village politics, cemeteries and burial customs—anything we saw that caught our interest. Other times, we walked along alone with our thoughts, the rhythm of our footsteps the only sound.
After many miles, a village.
The nomads follow the old caravan routes, so our trek eventually brought us to some of the original 1000-year-old kasbahs (walled towns) in the mountains. The family herded the animals around their perimeter, while we passed through two villages. We saw the architecture and gardens up close, and stopped for tea at a B&B.
Approaching the Village
As in Moroccan households, in camp, fresh mint tea was a ritual at every meal. The silver teapot is held high while pouring into the traditional glasses with lots of Moroccan lump sugar.
Fatima shared her daily tasks, teaching us a variety of skills from flatbread baking over the fire to goat milking at dawn. She even applied kohl to the eyes of our women and organized a mock wedding with the “bride” selected from our group and the cook serving as “groom”. The wedding took place on our final night in camp, a celebration that coincided with reaching the nomads’ summer location. There was a bridal procession with singing and dancing, and even “parents” of the bride and groom to demonstrate the details of a typical Berber nomad wedding.
Fatima with Flatbread
Linda Summersea with our Berber Nomad Family
That night was our final night in camp. The following morning we expressed our heartfelt thanks to the family for being such kind hosts and so generous in sharing their culture with us.
We passed along items from our gear that we thought they might be able to use. I contributed my trusty roll of duct tape.
After many hugs and shukran’s (thank you’s), we reluctantly lifted our backpacks for our last hike as a group.
Just before rounding a bend in the trail, I turned back for one last look at the scene of camp activity in the distance. Generations of nomads have repeated this tradition annually in the deserts and mountains of Morocco, but for how much longer, I wondered.
Ahead of us, our van was waiting, ready to return us to the bustling streets of Marrakesh—and our first showers in a week.
After we split up at the hotel, I spent a couple extra days unwinding in the city, eating ice cream, getting a hammam (traditional scrub-down, bath and massage), and exploring the Djemma el Fna Square to see how the cobra charmers were doing.
But that’s a story for another day.
#RockTheCasbah
Follow my adventures on Facebook.
A Return to Morocco after 42 Years
/in blog, Nature, Spirituality, TravelIn 1975 I was twenty-three years old and had never traveled beyond the borders of North America. Yet one day, I got it into my head that I wanted to tour Morocco. Long story short, a few months later my new husband and I were singing “Marrakesh Express” at the top of our lungs in a shiny blue Renault. We were traversing the mountains and deserts of Morocco on a journey that would take us through Casablanca, Rabat, Meknes, and Fes along the undulating ribbon of freshly paved highway that connected them all to the oasis of Marrakesh.
Fast forward. 2017. Intrepid Travel’s Walking With Berber Nomads trip appeared in my Facebook feed. Whoosh! Suddenly I could hear the muezzin’s call to prayer, smell the spices in the medina, and feel the breeze lifting my hair off the back of my neck on the Barbary Coast. I signed up the very next day.
Why Morocco? Why now?
Well, you never forget your first time, right? I had thought of Morocco periodically over the years, and now I wanted to see if Morocco in the digital age had managed to remain the kind, eager-to-please country I remembered so vividly.
“You are Welcome in Our City”
This sign of hospitality on the outskirts of Fes remains my most enduring memory of 1975 Morocco.
See the young man on the motor scooter in the distance? He offered—undoubtedly in the employ of the hotel—to lead us to a reasonably priced guesthouse, petite dejuener included. We followed, and it was lovely. Tiled floors and a balcony overlooking the city, upstairs from a French bakery. Merci beaucoup. At the time, Arabic and French were the prevalent languages.
In those days before Trip Advisor, we traveled unencumbered by reviews. It may have been naive, but times were different.
We never met another traveler on that trip, and once we were outside the cities, we never saw another car. No wonder Jimi Hendrix was hiding out there! We did chat with some Peace Corps volunteers in Rabat whom we recognized as Americans by the Clarks Wallabies on their feet.
Early each day, with an Orangina in one hand and an open box of fresh croissants between us on the seat, I spread the road map on my lap as a napkin and off we went.
In contrast to the few lodgings in 1975, today there are now over a thousand hotels of all sizes—mostly in the cities—in a country the size of California. Frankly, other than these small differences, the countryside we experienced during our Walking With Berber Nomads trip remains very much the same beautiful, undeveloped landscape that I recall.
Between Ouarzazate and the mountains
The twelve of us arrived from the US, Canada, UK, Germany and Australia to join Abdellah, our nomad guide, in Marrakesh. Most of the group were millennials, along with three 40ish, one 50ish, and me, the baby boomer senior citizen at 67.
Abdellah briefed us on our trip details before dinner. We were the very first participants—the guinea pigs as it were—so flexibility was going to be our motto. The next morning we set out on the same switchback roads I recalled. During the 7-hour drive from Marrakesh, we chatted, laughed, enjoyed the scenery, and bonded rather quickly with our shared love of traveling, hiking, and worldwide cultural experiences.
Soon we crossed the mineral-rich mountains of the Low Atlas and rolled off-road to the desolate location where we would join our Berber nomad family. It was springtime in Morocco. The nomads were ready to move their winter camp from the lowland desert to higher elevations for summer, and we would be hiking alongside, 9 to 15 km (6 to 10 miles) a day, an average of 4 to 5 hours a day on foot.
For three weeks prior, I had laid out my duffle contents on a coffee table back at home, adding and subtracting the vital and frivolous contents. Most valuable items: broken-in hiking boots with wool socks, wet wipes, hand sanitizer, trekking poles, solar charger, journal. We each were allowed a duffle bag (40 lb/ 18 kg max) and had purchased drinking water along the way. There would be no water available for bathing or showers.
Meeting our Berber family
As we approached the Berber camp, our van drove ahead to drop off our gear, and we walked the final couple of miles to stretch our legs.
Our Berber nomad family was waiting for us across the plain at a location with smoke darkened caves that had been hand-carved into the banks by nomads hundreds of years ago.
A cook, as well as a contracted team of three men to transport our tents and gear on mules, rounded out our group.
Tucking in the Baby Goats
The animals consisted of 3 adult camels (1 of them very pregnant, and no—darn it—she didn’t give birth that week), 3 mules, 4 donkeys, 53 goats, 8 baby goats, 120 sheep, and 2 chickens. The baby goats tolerated being tucked into blanket pockets on the back of a donkey every morning with the two chickens decorating the top of the blanket pile like the bride and groom on a wedding cake.
Day temperatures averaged low 80s F./ 26 C., and dropped to 40s F./4.5 C. at night. Not too hot, not too cold. “Just right,” said the baby bear.
After dinner in the cave, we retired to our tents and fell asleep listening to the murmur of animals around us. I slept deeply in my silky long underwear with a change of clothes stuffed in the pillow shell of my sleeping bag.
Sunrise Slowly Coming over the HIlls
At dawn, we were awakened by a symphony of cellphones with a back-up chorus of goats and sheep. I hustled into my clothes, laced up my boots and sprang from my tent to greet the day. Watching the low rays of the sun swim over each hill until we were all bathed in its rosy warmth never got old.
Tents Pitched on the hill over the Caves
Breakfast: Mint tea, English breakfast tea, sweet Moroccan oranges, cheese, flatbread and jam.
While we ate breakfast, the crew took down the cook tent, packed up, and set out ahead of us. As Karen Blixen’s houseman Farah had longed to do in Out of Africa, the mule team went ahead of us and prepared for our arrival.
Each day had a similar routine, except for the days when they didn’t. Yes, pleasant surprises were frequent, but the common denominator was the same relaxed pattern.
Privy
Break for Tea in a Dry Riverbed
Solar Charging my iPhone
tents or communally in a cave, write in our journals, or explore.
Mule Team Transporting our Gear
Day Two. The High Atlas before us. Seven hours. Crossing two valleys, countless ridges and a dry riverbed.
Abdellah and Linda Summersea pause at the first 1000′ climb in elevation. Low Atlas behind us, High Atlas ahead of us.
Our guide Abdellah with a member of the nomad team.
What did We Talk About on the Trail?
Everything except politics. Exclamation Point.
When you’re traveling with strangers, you don’t have the same reservations about being judged, so you tend be more frank. In the group, we rarely, I think, spoke about ourselves. This was about cultural immersion and we wanted to learn as much as we could about the nomadic lifestyle. For myself, I found that the conversations I had were about comparing travel destinations, discussing religious philosophy, and asking Abdellah questions about everything under the Moroccan sun: halal vs. non-halal, education, solar energy in Morocco, and more. Abdellah frequently addressed us on topics related to our passage: farming, crops, exports, irrigation, the structure of village politics, cemeteries and burial customs—anything we saw that caught our interest. Other times, we walked along alone with our thoughts, the rhythm of our footsteps the only sound.
After many miles, a village.
The nomads follow the old caravan routes, so our trek eventually brought us to some of the original 1000-year-old kasbahs (walled towns) in the mountains. The family herded the animals around their perimeter, while we passed through two villages. We saw the architecture and gardens up close, and stopped for tea at a B&B.
Approaching the Village
As in Moroccan households, in camp, fresh mint tea was a ritual at every meal. The silver teapot is held high while pouring into the traditional glasses with lots of Moroccan lump sugar.
Fatima shared her daily tasks, teaching us a variety of skills from flatbread baking over the fire to goat milking at dawn. She even applied kohl to the eyes of our women and organized a mock wedding with the “bride” selected from our group and the cook serving as “groom”. The wedding took place on our final night in camp, a celebration that coincided with reaching the nomads’ summer location. There was a bridal procession with singing and dancing, and even “parents” of the bride and groom to demonstrate the details of a typical Berber nomad wedding.
Fatima with Flatbread
Linda Summersea with our Berber Nomad Family
That night was our final night in camp. The following morning we expressed our heartfelt thanks to the family for being such kind hosts and so generous in sharing their culture with us.
We passed along items from our gear that we thought they might be able to use. I contributed my trusty roll of duct tape.
After many hugs and shukran’s (thank you’s), we reluctantly lifted our backpacks for our last hike as a group.
Just before rounding a bend in the trail, I turned back for one last look at the scene of camp activity in the distance. Generations of nomads have repeated this tradition annually in the deserts and mountains of Morocco, but for how much longer, I wondered.
Ahead of us, our van was waiting, ready to return us to the bustling streets of Marrakesh—and our first showers in a week.
After we split up at the hotel, I spent a couple extra days unwinding in the city, eating ice cream, getting a hammam (traditional scrub-down, bath and massage), and exploring the Djemma el Fna Square to see how the cobra charmers were doing.
But that’s a story for another day.
#RockTheCasbah
Earth Day 2018
/in blog, Green Living, NatureEarth Day 2018
Coffee. Walnuts, banana, cheddar cheese. Journal. Coffee. Email. Coffee. Coffee. Feed pets.
Gardening trousers, wooly socks, Black Dog t-shirt, 20+year-old Coolibar hat, ancient Merrills. leather gloves. Basket, trowel, hand fork, weeder, wheel barrow, kneeler.
Kneel, dig, pull, gather, worm, smile, sun. Move, dig, pull, gather, smile. Greenhouse, bonemeal, potash, pour. Garden, bonemeal, potash, sprinkle, rake. Mulch. Water.
Kneel, dig, pull, gather. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Dump wheelbarrow.
Irrigation pipe. Connector broken. Male+Male connector.
Earth Day 2018 Recycle Event. Long line. Drop off dead TV. Smile.
Farmers Market. Donut. “Early Girl” tomato plants. Smile.
Garden center. More mulch. Male+Male connector. Check.
Irrigation pipe. Male+Male connector. Wrong. Hmm. Frown.
Garden center. Exchange Male+Male connector.
Irrigation pipe. Male+Male connector. Right. Check. Turn on water. Success. Turn off water.
Kneel, dig, pull, gather. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Dump wheelbarrow.
Greenhouse. Fish fertilizer. Raised Bed. Dig holes. Bonemeal, fertilizer, potash. Tomato Plants. Mulch. Water. Garden Journal.
Porch. Shoes Off. Kitchen. Refrigerator. Leftovers. Water. Water. Water. Aleve.
Fir cones, storm branches, wheel barrow. Dump. Clouds, Rain.
Kneel, dig, pull, gather. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Mulch. Repeat. More rain. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Dump wheelbarrow. Sun.
Fence repair. Check. Replace section.
Drainage troubleshoot. Pencil, paper. Check. Aleve.
Rock wall analysis. Move slates. Dry wall, think, design. Smile.
Peel trousers, shirts, socks, shoes. Hot tub. Sigh. Float. Sink. Sun. Trees, blossoms, birds.
Shower, shampoo.
Sofa, cheese, wine. The Grave’s a Fine and Private Place, Alan Bradley. 5 pages. Doze. 2 pages. Doze.
Leftovers, email, NY Times crossword.
Alan Bradley. Doze.
Journal. Bed. Read. Doze. Lights out.
6,884 Steps.
Earth Day 2018.
Seasonal Blues: Eventually It All Comes Together
/in blog, Breast Cancer, Health, Memoir, Mental HealthExcept when it doesn’t. But hang in there—this isn’t a blog about pain and misery. It’s about life’s surprises.
When I was diagnosed with breast cancer in December 2017, I actually wasn’t too freaked out. My first response to my primary care physician, who was delivering the news from the other side of the country, was “OK. What do I do to fix this?”
We had the conversation about oncologists, surgeons, reconstruction and hospitals. A few days later, I returned home to Washington state and began the interviews, appointments, and education process. A lot to learn! A lot to take in, and more importantly, a lot to decide.
Where did the time go? It’s almost as if it never happened. Or maybe it happened to someone else. I did, very often, feel as though I was watching someone else’s life. Except for the long voids of empty space in time. The long period of not writing. All the blog posts that I never finished. The long period of doubts and fears and alone-ness (not loneliness).
My point is: when you’re in this situation, the one thing you realize is that you damn well need to get rid of anything that isn’t working because you only have this one life to live (that I know of in this current space in time) and you’d better make this current life the Best it can be.
Then, just when I could do the simple things that were forbidden for weeks—rolling onto my stomach in bed, enjoying a hot restorative bath, easing into a hot tub—doubts crept in.
Yesterday I was seriously— and I do mean SERIOUSLY—considering leaving this writing stuff to the next generation. Maybe, I thought, maybe I was meant to have more time for walking on the beach or binging Netflix. I’ve been reading Ann Patchett’s The Getaway Car: A Practical Memoir about Writing and Life, and I’m watching other parts of my life teetering on a seesaw each day.
I hadn’t re-read my manuscript since pre-diagnosis and yesterday was the day I was going to put aside the delays of the past three months, open Scrivener and see what was there. It was HARD. I did everything I could to avoid it, including walking 7,000 steps in the cold. (I’m on the other side of the country again.)
But then, after nervously consuming multiple items that were beyond a reasonable person’s calorie count for the day, I did it.
That is, I opened Scrivener and re-read Chapter One.
I found a couple of words that needed replacing because they echoed each other’s sounds in a non-complementary manner. I re-shaped the first two sentences to remove any triteness and draw the reader in. I was careful not to change anything just for the sake of changing it. Then, I renamed the chapter to reflect more depth of the content: From a blah “My First Memory” to a significant “A Fierce First Memory”. In short, this three months absence from writing was beneficial. I’m back in the saddle.
Fierceness is my strength. Some people might call it stubborness, but, no, I say that it is fierceness. Tenacity. It’s what has had my back throughout these sixty-seven plus years. I can see now that “A Fierce First Memory” at age three is all about everything that would—and will—keep me together for the rest of my life.
I fell asleep feeling pretty good. Feeling as though I’m on the right track and able to assess the memoir content from a reader’s point of view.
This morning, if any doubts were lingering, I was surprised to greet three reinforcements from the Universe:
“The more you don’t believe in Polish people, the more determined we are. To prove themselves, Polish people will endure everything. If you aren’t willing to suffer, you can do nothing. You can sit and die. This is the only one thing you can do.”
Doba has a deep, almost performance-art-like sense of this. You can be made small by life or rage against it. “Nie chce byc malym szarym czlowiekiem,” he told me. “I do not want to be a little gray man.” This is a common expression in Poland — and a good motto for us all. (*Dziękuję, Mr. Doba!)
I accepted this trifecta of Polish-ness as a positive message because I rarely come in contact with much that touches on my heritage, so I am happy to acknowledge this as a happy accident of communications.
Seasonal Blues. Eventually It All does Come Together.
*Thank you, Mr. Doba
Make Beautiful Music
/in blog, Memoir, News, Publishing, Spirituality, writingLast night I dreamed that I was getting married. My female relatives, young and old, were gathered all around me. It was a consummate summer scene in a fragrant apple orchard with vivid green grass and brilliant blue sky.
Instead of a frothy veil, I wore a simple crown of daisies in my hair. This crown was just like the one I had braided in my kitchen from a bouquet of Stop & Shop daisies shortly before I was married nearly forty-three years ago. This time there was no groom to be seen.
I innately knew that this marriage was mine alone.
I watched my sister approach carrying a banjo, in spite of the fact that she has never played a musical instrument.
She handed the banjo to me, in spite of the fact that I also have never played a musical instrument.
I sat down with this instrument in the midst of the wedding guests and looked down at the fretboard that crossed my lap. It was a light-colored wood that made me think of birch forests. Or maybe aspen.
I tentatively strummed across its taut nylon strings with my thumb, and was surprised to hear amazing music, so I continued to play. I played as if I knew what I were doing and the music kept coming, clear and beautiful.
The relatives moved in closer, surprised at my sudden talent.
And then it was gone.
I think that my dream means that sometimes we underestimate our abilities and our capacity for creating our own joy.
The banjo is a less respected instrument than guitars and violins and cellos, but it’s capable of beautiful music. Just because we’re different doesn’t mean that we can’t be beautiful.
This year, embrace your uniqueness and your dreams of the future. Don’t depend on anyone else to get you there or you may find yourself disappointed.
You and your path, like the banjo, might be uncommon, but they’re no
less deserving of success. You can get there on your own. I know you can.
Happy New Year.
Follow me on Facebook.
Write from Passion. Write from Pain.
/in blog, Memoir, Publishing, writingWhen I began writing my memoir, it was a bonfire burning brightly, my fingertips hot on a keyboard that had never revealed my thoughts or memories. To anyone. I looked down upon my small-child-self from a bird’s eye view, flying low, watching the small child whose introversion was created by responsibilities and fear.
The small child ran and ran, never getting away, and the story ignited.
It burned tall as the trees, like the annual winter brush-burning that took place in our woodlot. We pulled scorched potatoes and sweet corn in twists of aluminum foil from the ashes and ate them greedily while setting fire to yet another pile of scrub.
The writing has been like that. I have grasped the fiery memories, explored the value of what stays and what goes. Yet even after several front to back revisions, and a chronologically accurate piece, I still didn’t feel comfortable that it was done. Whole. Meaningful.
It was accurate in a literal sense, but the pulse beneath the outward story was lacking.
I kept looking for guidance and have finally found it in the opportunity to study my work and the work of seven other writers meeting weekly since August.
I began what I’m now thinking of as a “Misfit’s Holiday”, taking the train down to Portland on Tuesdays and returning on Wednesdays after a manuscript class with Lidia Yuknavitch and a sound night’s sleep in the bunk room at The Society Hotel (Seattle Times: “Hotel Hip”).
We’ve met eight times with four to go, and man, I have grown!
The class series is called The Body of the Book and involves going deeper, going Corporeal, Lidia’s unique approach to teaching writing. It’s for eight writers who dare to go beyond the traditional critique models to “engage in collaborative art making.” (from Corporeal Writing)
As it says in the course description, after acceptance, participants agree to commit to “helping one another see the patterns at work in their material, helping them hunt for hidden metaphors, pointing out distinct rhythms and repetition and images, and supporting the writers in daring to develop them further, in the ways that other workshops insist on plot, narrative, and action.”
In a sense we are sharing the role of teaching and I dare say that, with Lidia as our teacher facilitator, it has clicked for all of us. After about four weeks, we were all in the groove, seeing those patterns in our own work as we saw them in each other’s, and you could see the growth in our pages. For me, it was the eighth week that was the bombshell.
I had set up a spreadsheet where I transcribed the notes from my peers for each chapter, so that I could go back and take another look at my work.
Bingo. Some hidden memories blasted to the surface. Other chapters fell out of the manuscript, no longer necessary to the overall story. My language evolved, advanced, grew. Paragraphs moved, watery chapters thickened.
Eight weeks in, I have nearly 30,000 words revised. Along with reading and critiquing 90 pages of my fellow students’ work per week, it’s a big task to tuck this into a life being lived.
I’ve been staying up till midnight—no— till one, till two in the morning—not wanting to close the lid on my laptop, and often remembering a better way to say something as I fall asleep, then sitting up to quickly note it before it disappears on the back of my eyelids.
Most importantly, I’ve gone full frontal “corporeal, in the body” in this revision and I’ve regained my writer confidence.
I can’t wait for Tuesday.
Like me, Follow me.
Misfits
/in blog, Memoir, Mental HealthMisfits are all around us, sitting next to us on trains, wrapped in sleeping bags on wet sidewalks in doorways of businesses darkened for the night, taking deep cleansing breaths on adjacent yoga mats, directing us in traffic, speaking to us from the fronts of classrooms, handing us change at cash registers, sipping a mug of coffee beside us, selecting a disk of perfectly matching matte makeup masking much. Glancing sideways at stop lights, ignoring the rain dripping inside collars, shivering, sweating, disguised, dark, diagnosed, undiagnosed.
Misfits probably maybe definitely usually hide themselves from the general public from their mothers from their fathers because they have to want to need to today tomorrow forever maybe.
Misfits walk with eyes shades drawn with minds scarred more than wrists than knees. They’ve fallen gotten up fallen again. And again. Again.
Misfits, if they’re fortunate, find a kindred spirit in their midst.
The Misfits Manifesto arrives October 24, 2017. Embrace it.
Lidia Yuknavitch will be speaking at Powell’s Books in Portland OR on 10/24/17.
She’s a wonder.
Lidia also has a TedTalk of the same name. View it here.
Like me on Facebook. Follow me. Thanks!
Writing the Body of the Book
/in blog, writingEvery morning I brew Folgers-nothing-fancy in my headboard bookcase so that I can begin writing fresh from my dreams. Pajamas or nearly naked, depending on the season. Darkness or daylight, depending on the moon. Before I feed my dog and cats. Before I rummage in the pantry for breakfast in bed. Before the bald eagle flies low over the water outside my window… and he just this moment did...right on schedule. The white of his head and tail feathers so purely bright bright bright. I sigh. Every time.
For the past five weeks, I have written nothing new, other than a few watered down Facebook posts and I’ve not shared the reason. Till now.
During the summer, I subscribed to Lidia Yuknavitch’s mailing list and, heck—I couldn’t believe it—that very same day I received a message that applications were open for her The Body of the Book workshop, where eight writers with unpublished manuscripts would meet for twelve Tuesday evenings to provide feedback and support. Not trite feedback-and-support but real, committed, feedback-that-feeds-support.
Omigosh. I began work on my application immediately. Cut to the chase. I was accepted.
I’ve been taking the train to Portland every Tuesday, booking into a wonderful little hotel that began as a sailors’ lodge in 1881. I’m loving the fifty-bucks-a-night coed hostel-style bunkroom. On the first day, the twenty-something clerk asked if I wanted her to show me how the key card worked. (WTF. Exclamation point. Yeah. I blanched. I blinked. But I simply said “no”. Ageism?? God bless me when I finally let my hair go grey. But nevermind. It’s a great place and at some point I guess I have to share that our brain cells don’t blink out like fireflies once we turn 65.)
The class is all positive good stuff, all inspiration, all writerly comradery. Warm, hot, winey, and most of all, a safe space and politics aside, although we all share the same politics. Politics: the process of making decisions applying to all members of each group.
When we were accepted, we committed to bringing everything we’ve got to the other members in the group. Feedback and opportunity. Ninety new pages to think hard on each week. Pure responses.
So that’s what I’ve been up to.
We’re midway through the process.
I’m going to miss these brilliant woman and their stories when it’s over, but for now, I’m going to continue to respond with the same fervor that I appreciate from others.
As if that isn’t enough good stuff, it’s harvest season. When I return home, it’s blackberry jam, pickled beets, zucchini relish, homemade blackberry brandy fermenting in the downstairs closet, tomato sauce simmering on the stove, a lovely chunk of brisket brining in the refrigerator for my homemade pastrami.
It doesn’t get any better. Growing, nurturing and harvesting stories. Feeding our souls and our bodies.
Follow me on Facebook.
Thanks!
Willpower
/in blog, Humor, Reading, writingWillpower is not my strong suit. It’s not my weakest weakness, but I could do better. What are the biggest weaknesses in my willpower folder?
Writing and Reading.
Writing should not be an issue for a writer. When I get these ideas in the middle of the night, when I awaken with my teeth clenched in my mouthguard and my eye mask askew, my hands shaking with the visage of the ethereal nightmare that I’m watching grow smaller and smaller as it drifts out the window, lifting up into the naked branches of the cherry tree, and beyond, into the clear clear clear dark sky, I reach for my laptop.
I open a Word doc and type the sentence I want to remember, the sentence that will fuel my message later. Much later. I have too many writing prompts on too many topics.
But Reading. That’s my biggest downfall, my Achilles’ heel.
I am constantly finding one thing after the other to read online! (Exclamation points are another weakness but I have almost conquered that one, and you’ll note that the previous exclamation point is warranted
!.)The New Yorker tells me that I’ve hit the wall. I’ve read all the free articles they’re going to allow me. “Subscribe for $1 a week and get a tote.” I have too many totes, but I very nearly do it. I fear that if I subscribe to one, the rest will follow like literary dominoes. The Wall St. Journal, The Washington Post. Like the 12 Temptations of Christ, they’re calling out to me from their individual browser windows until I have filled way too many hours of my day with an endless loop of reading.
The New York Times is a deep bottomless pit of content. Yes, I do subscribe to The New York Times, digital edition, so it’s my own fault. I had been a faithful print subscriber to The Wall Street Journal for years, and then, damn it, the he/she faceless, anonymous paper delivery person kept forgetting (even when I left notes) that on Wednesdays, if he/she left my Wall St. Journal in the Beachcomber tube, the weekly Beachcomber would not be delivered. They penalize us like that. (Fair enough.)
I finally had enough of occasionally missing out on Wednesday’s local news, obits and the Calendar. I called The Wall St. Journal and told the man in India about the tube that the he/she, faceless, anonymous paper delivery person was hijacking everyday and, with unfortunate results, on Wednesday’s. “I would like to cancel my subscription.”
I would miss Dan Neil, the automotive columnist, whose blend of wit and mechanical knowledge is quite attractive to me. I wouldn’t miss the $5000 Gucci handbags in the monthly magazine section. I wouldn’t miss the Financial pages because I never read the Financial pages. I wouldn’t miss that humor guy whose pieces appear in the lower right spread “below the fold” on the Opinion page. (Below the fold is where they put the lesser content.) I can’t remember his name, but I sincerely believe that I could write a humor piece as good as he. (And don’t tell me it’s “as good as him”. When did the world switch from “he” to “him” in this context? It’s everywhere. Don’t they read Grammar Girl?)
Here I go again, off an another reading tangent. I googled* “Wall St Journal opinion page humorist” and after Peggy Noonan (!) I find a list of Top Humorists. Stephen King is #1 on this list. Joan Collins is #3. What? Art Buchwald, my childhood idol (You think I’m joking?) is #7. Tsk.
The man in India asked if I would keep my subscription if he directed the he/she, faceless, anonymous paper delivery person to install a proper tube for The Wall St. Journal. Like a good customer service rep, he diffused my annoyance and I agreed to allow 2 weeks for the tube to be installed.
I waited 4 weeks. Still no tube, and yet another lost Beachcomber issue. I called and there was no distracting me this time. I cancelled my subscription and went online to subscribe to The New York Times. I’m sure that Rupert Murdoch is not going to miss my $99 per half year.
Now I’m reading a whole new litany of favorite columns. Modern Love is best. I crave warmth like the Pillsbury Doughboy.
Facebook is my love/hate relationship. Why does someone have to ask a question of their readers that I feel responsible to answer?
This morning a fellow writer, a friend, who is writing a novel set in the time of Boccacio, posted “Who can tell me what the paste left after the oil is pressed from olives is called in Italian? In medieval times, it was a treatment for arthritis and joint pain.”
I responded,
“No, I cannot. However, thanks to your question and my lack of self-control with Google, I now know more than I need to about olives— production, harvest and economics!”
I’m incorrigible.
I found a solution to my lack of willpower with respect to Reading online.
I decided that, beginning today, I shall unplug my laptop when I begin to read online. When the power percentage reaches 0% and my MacBook powers down, that’s it. Tough luck. I’ll have to proceed to the items on my “To Do” list.
Did it work? No. As soon as the pop-up warned me that I was at 5%, I ran for the charger. I needed to finish “How Weed Got Me in the Best Shape of My Life”. What? I don’t need weed to exercise. But I was curious. This is Washington state, after all.
I should note that the day after I cancelled my Wall St. Journal subscription, I found that a shiny new Wall St. Journal tube was in place at the end of my driveway with the morning’s issue.
The very next day, it was unceremoniously removed.
*Is the verb “google” upper case or lower case? When I google it, I get everything to do with the search engine and nothing to do with the verb. 😉
Read more stuff.
Anticipation. In the garden and in Life.
/in blog, Green LivingI’ve been watching the fruit and vegetables in the garden grow and mature. Weeding, watering and wondering. When exactly is the first tomato going to be perfectly ripe for the picking?
Anticipation, I’ve always said, is a big part of any experience whether it be harvest or travel or concert or film or other highly anticipated event. The days creep along, the calendar dates change slowly. Finally, the day arrives.
Last week, a few tomatoes began to ripen in earnest. Pale orange became pale pink became reddish became almost red but not quite true ripe juicy red. I wandered around the plants, lifting a leaf here and there. I wondered which tomato would be first.
The Early Girl plants are massive, the Jet Stars half their size. Pacific Potager, where I bought plants this year, had at least three dozen varieties of tomato plants to choose from. This being only my third summer in the Pacific Northwest, I was uncertain of which to try, so reliable Early Girl was my first choice. I chose Jet Star plants because they were sturdy with a maturity date several days beyond than the Early Girls.
Surprisingly, when it came right down to it on Thursday afternoon, it was a Jet Star that would prevail.
I was harvesting parsley in the shade of our wisteria-covered pergola. Had pulled up the plants, roots and all. Rinsed off the roots with the garden hose and was snipping the parsley off the stems into a tub in preparation for chopping in the food processor before filing away in the freezer.
After a half hour of snipping, I was ready for a snack and remembered that it might be time for First Tomato.
A few steps away, there she was. Bright red, perfectly red and ready. I tenderly removed the tomato and placed it on a plate. “Tenderly”?
Yes. This was no grocery store tomato, not even a farmer’s market tomato, but a tomato to be consumed in the garden, minutes after picking.
Returning to the pergola table, I slowly drew my knife through its center, the fruit yielding perfectly to the bite of the serrated blade. I cut again, and again, until the tomato lay before me in perfect bite-sized unadorned fragments. Twenty of them. I took the time to count.
Is this beginning to sound obsessive-compulsive?
It was pure anticipation and enjoyment and I was delaying consumption as long as I could.
I sprinkled black pepper and then ground a few twists of pink Himalayan salt, watching the salt dissolve as it landed on the wet surfaces.
Then, the fork. The first taste, the flavor.
First tomato of the season
I spent a good fifteen minutes enjoying that tomato, while thinking about how I need to cherish more moments like this with pure anticipation and enjoyment.
What’s your tomato today?
The Time is Ripe.
August and Oceans
/in UncategorizedIt’s August. Summer vacations are drawing to a close.
Did you ever see the ocean when you were little?
The closest I came was a postcard from Cape Cod. From my godmother. She and her family had rented a cottage not far from the beach.
I stared and stared at that postcard. It was the only postcard I ever received as a child.
I wanted to see and hear and breathe and immerse myself in that ocean. But Daddy didn’t go far from his chair near the fireplace where he chain-smoked into the dark each night.
Maybe that’s why, when given the opportunity, I fled to Cape Cod to live and teach at age 22.
It’s in our DNA. I wanted to feel it up close, to be enveloped in it, to be drowned/not drowned in it.