Writing as Identity

My being is defined by my writing and lately there has been a dearth of it.   It is my intention to start several writing projects.  Technically, I already started these projects a little while ago when I posted them on 43Things and bought the plain notebook that I've been carting around for weeks.  I want to really delve into them now though.  I used to write so much and now I feel so incredibly blocked.  I have so much to say and want to at least start compiling notes.  My projects will be as follows:

• Submit another poem to Take-it-to-the-Street Poetry
• Submit poetry to Infloressence (a poetry blog project of a friend of mine).
• Participate in a poetry slam (or two...or more)
• Get a poem published in a selective publication.
• Enter some writing contests.
• Draft/write some of the children's stories I started brainstorming
• Come up with a few more short story ideas.
• Start compiling notes for my creative non-fiction poetry memoir.

In doing these new projects I also want to solidify an archive of the work I've already done.  Maybe I can send some of the older work out (probably a good idea for Take-it-to-the-Street and Infloressence.  Hoping that when I start editing and submitting work that I'll feel more creative and then be able to write some new pieces.  Today, while walking to my coffee shop I felt so strongly about a poem.  Each word just poured into my brain but by the time I got to the coffee shop, after stopping to talk to a neighbor and taking time to order my drink, all but the essence of the poem had dissipated.  I tried rehashing the words but only got a rough uneasy sketch of what had been so fluid.  Maybe that will turn into something eventually--that isn't typically how my pieces work though.

Poetry Slam sounds SO daunting to me.  It's something that was suggested to me years ago and I've never thought myself confident enough to participate.  I still don't really know if I can do it but it sounds like a good opportunity to get my words out there.  The local place has contests for cash prizes (which, if I'm good at it, would be really helpful).

Writing contests fall under the same vein.  I've never sent any of my work out so contests and sending to selective publications will undoubtedly take some getting used to.  I'm sure there is just an incredibly amount of rejection happening based on how many amazing poets I interact with on Facebook.  Poetry is such an under recognized art form.  To get published and then really known in the poetic community must be extremely challenging.

Since the last year of college I've had two or three exceptional ideas for short story/children's books.  I wrote them in Spanish and may keep them that way but more than likely I will translate and flesh them out into short children's style novels.  They're heavy in content though--similar to the questionably sad tenor of Le Petit Prince.  I'd also like to do their illustrations.  Once I have them more fleshed out I may share drafts on here--unfortunately though due to some publishing issues and copyright concerns I also may not.  They really are beautiful ideas and if I can pull it off I'd like my name on them rather than some stranger stealing them away before I have the chance!

And then my big project.  The biggest of the big!  I have been dreaming and scheming up this idea for so long: a creative non-fiction poetry memoir.  My poems are typically based on fact--almost rigidly so.  I have this wonderful plan to mesh poetry into prose into thought-flow into more prose into story.  From all of this I plan to create a story arc that portrays a very creative somewhat fictionalized overlay for a non-fiction representation of my life experiences.  While nothing in my life has been particularly spectacular compared to what is already out in the literary world I feel I have something to say, something to teach and a create mode to put it forward that will be captivating (if I can pull it off).

So, there you have it...  big plans coming up.

Namaste.

__________________________________________________________________________________

UPDATE: Out of sheer restlesness I have already tackled the first two submission goals on my list.  I chose one poem for Take-it-to-the-Street Poetry and three other pieces for Infloressence.  I'm pleased with my choices and did some minor editing to a couple of the pieces before sending them over.

Hopefully I'll hear back on Infloressence in the next couple of weeks.

Take-it-to-the-Street is due out for it's next publication on July 1st.  I've asked to be able to submit a sketch to Take-it-to-the Street and we'll see what I'll choose to turn in for that. 

Snapshots of the Drop - May 2011

I'm not a huge promoter of Facebook and other pointless  networking websites but I have found a benefit for Facebook in that I've networked with a lot of poets.  Essentially, the poets have become the point of being on FB.  (My rant on FB will come some other day, I'm sure.)

Two poets started this great project which I've been able to participate in.  They've done it twice before with different themes but I finally was able to get my act together and submit something. 

Here is how it worked.  Lynne and Cornelius (two very creative minded poets) invited all of us other poetic and artistic types to submit our poetry, sketches, and prose to them.  Lynne then compiled volumes of the work.  She ended up creating seven volumes!  I was in Volume 5.  It's called Force Fed (tag line "take it to the streets poetry."  They made a deadline for submissions and accepted all.  Deadline came around and then they began printing and mailed each person two copies of their volume--one for their records and one for the drop.

Unfortunately, mine never showed up.  I'm going to blame that on the bad juju of giving them my work address instead of my home address.  The volumes are all up and available on Yudu so I was able to print out a copy (I don't have a printer so this was sort of an adventure too).  I have one copy in my office, printed a small copy for myself and then printed the small copy in the picture which I left at my current coffee shop.  By the time I left it ended up on the magazine rack where I hope it will stay for a while.  I hope many people read it.

The volumes are all available on Yudu.  Here is a link to all of the volumes.  And, if you have Facebook you can check out the event page.  Eventually, I've been told by Cornelius that a video will be made of all of the photos.  They're really gorgeous and everyone's ideas of where to drop the booklets is great.

I sumbitted the following piece:


Seeds

I sink into this space
between my fingers and my face;
beneath the blazoned fuchsia skyscape
and the salted surface tension
of an ebbing ease-less ocean;
under the solid sway
of the grand gray bridge.

Suspension

          A framework.

The holding of all screamings,
loud and low, that are seeping
and slowly sowing themselves
amongst my ordered throughts.

They grasp at little gaps in
my besotted adoration of This:
your deep abounding sun setting
into hushed abiding dusk.

© Natalie Webster

 

Expansion

Very difficult week.  It's hard to let things go that I've wanted so badly to work and then to deal with that along with money issues, some stress around other people's well-being and a sick kitty.  Needless to say I'm ready for some simplicity for  a couple of days. 

I've realized the following this week:

I want for you to be so happy, so calm and so comforted with security that you can go and do whatever it is you want to do with your life and feel supported and loved.  I hope you find this in your life.

I wish it for myself too.  For everyone I know and for every good person out there in this world (for the not so good ones too--really for everyone but especially for the good people). 

I feel as if my life is expanding exponentially in multiple different directions.  I can feel growth and know the true meaning of the term "growing pains."  The expansion is accompanied by stress, pain, fear, concern.  But, I can feel myself strengthening and opening to possibilities, to my own self worth, to pieces of me that I'd buried out in order to avoid dealing with reality.

So this week, while it has felt devastating in so many ways has also shown me a new courage.  I had four or five things that felt like they urgently required my financial attention, one after the other after the other (coolant for car, then the gas pedal didn't respond, then my medication is way more than I can afford on this month's budget, then my glasses broke, then my kitty got sick).  First half of the week I muddled through in a state of panic but I was able to manage each situation without delving into my hard earned and saved money.   Still strapped and still stressed about how to deal with the issues in the longer term but progress.

In doing this I feel more empowered to stick with this saving goal and to continue to expand in different directions.  This week also I'm completing a writing project (will post a blog), tidying a disaster of a room (it mirrors my emotional state) which I began overhauling last weekend, beginning the brainstorms of my memoir, and being social.  I've picked up meditation, am continuing my finance class and I find myself constantly looking for more ways to keep DOING.  Not as an escape but I'm literally excited for the first time in years at the prospect of what I'm capable of doing.  Not in a godly or pretentious sense of course but as a healthy human.  I wish this for you.  Who knows how  many people function just below this realm of "I'm really ALIVE."

So, Monday of this week, as I was wallowing in my pity-party a beautiful dove and her partner chose my office balcony to make a nest (will take good pictures and post in a blog entry).  Cute little story that I want to post next.  She is absolutely sweet and her partner has been so concerned and caring of her.  I think today she laid her eggs because she hasn't left her nest at all.  She readjusts but nothing more.  She's brought me an immense feeling of calm and an ongoing reverberation of love.  I feel very much like a hippy but really, seeing something as sweet as two loving doves create a home and a family is inspiring in a way that no man-made object has ever been.  It's uplifting.

The doves and the new life they are bringing fills me with a sense of compassion towards myself and the frustrations I'm feeling towards other people in my life.  I'm not entirely sure why.

I hope to post about the doves move onto my balcony this weekend or maybe next week.  I also want to start posting about some of my projects so that this blog starts taking more shape than just my puffy little clouds of thought.  There is enough padding with posts now to really delve into the details of what I find beautiful.

The photo is from a hike I did with a friend a few weeks ago up on Grizzly Peak.  Gorgeous during Spring.

Namaste.

Santa Cruz

A few weeks ago a friend and I ventured off to Santa Cruz re-exploring some of the university romping grounds and then driving up the One to sit on the rocks above a beach watching two couples trying to fly their kites in the 'too windy' weather.  Then we walk along a railroad to where an old train sat (waiting?) alone.

Weekends like that remind me of all of the projects and aspirations I'd like to be achieving.  And, in comparison to the Monday through Friday 8-5 work schedule, I'm reminded how much I feel like I'm not achieving.  It's been a few weeks and I'm trying to keep myself active in my spare time, doing things that I find rewarding and fulfilling for myself.  It simultaneously makes my job more and less bearable.

I've been taking some strides to improve my situation finally. I'm attending financial planning class once a week and I'm beginning to feel a little bit less like the lack of money is the controlling factor in my life right now.  I've saved a little bit of money and it's the first time I can every say I've held on to money for this long (two weeks) without the compulsion to spend it.  Granted I gave the money to someone I trust to hold on to but I'm feeling more and more confident that I'll be able to create my Emergency Savings Fund and then continue to progress through the steps that are set in front of me.

In facing the money issue once and for all I've realized fairly clearly that my idea of "focus" over the last several years (focus on work, focus on making money, focus on paying the debt) was no more than fear.  Fear that kept me running in a hamster wheel with no tangible progress to show to anyone.  Finally noticing this pattern has been big for me.  I feel like a floodgate has been opened and all of a sudden I want to be doing all of these things that I never gave myself permission to want to do previously--either because I was telling myself I couldn't be successful at it or that I wouldn't like it, etc.

Maybe I sound a twinge "self-help" but I'm glad for this small shift and am happy to slowly be inching into a better direction towards my own life.  I would like to write more.  Yesterday I suddenly felt that writing has been very absent lately and so I think I'll make an effort to do that more.  Maybe I'll schedule some specific time once a week to blog and some other time to write poetry or start on memoir sketches.

Namaste.

San Diego

San Diego.  I've been here since Friday midday.  Little blue rental car, uncharacteristically (but expected) cold weather, some rain, good food and adorable man.  I'm in a small coffee shop that looks a bit like a house, with a deck that wraps around it.  The walls are a deep red and it's dimly lit except for the bright blue daylight pouring in from all of the windows.  It's breezy outside but warmer than it's been in a few days.  I came from the beach and so I feel very much like I'm back in Santa Cruz.  The coffee shop is reminiscent of Pergolessi in downtown.

The last day in San Diego always makes me sad and preemptively nostalgic.  Sadness and the feeling of missing something is so present for me all of the time.  But San Diego offers me such a comforted feeling even though here, in this coffee shop, I feel alone and the city is expansive and I know almost no one and I know only one person well... still, I feel comforted.  I don't feel that pang of loneliness that I so often feel at home.  I wonder if it might be different if I came to live here.  Would that lonely feeling follow me even though I don't feel lonely right now?  I'm less alone at home. 

I spent this morning looking for a beach side coffee shop.  I got close, just two blocks from the beach there is this highly reviewed little hole-in-the-wall shop called Pacific Bean.  They're known for their mochas but I bought a latte.  It was good.  I listened to three middle aged men right out front speak Italian and in English about Italy and the differences between it and America.  I wrote in my journal and after an hour and a half or maybe two--after I'd said everything that my sleepy mind was spinning on--I wandered off and drove until I found a parking spot by one of those stair wells down to the beach.  I adore those big wooden staircases to the sandy openness.  The expanse of the ocean never fails to bring me into a sort of centered quiet.  It's huge in comparison to everything, larger than all worries, all stresses, all fears.

Stilettos don't lend themselves to beach stairs or beaches and so shoes in hand I made my way down to an almost empty beach where I sat and read On the Road for a few hours.  I watched two groups of men play in the ocean--childlike--and was approached by a boy who thought he'd try his hand at being manly by flirting.  More reading and then I wandered back to my car.

I made my way to this little coffee shop, that the Boy recommended to me, called Krakatoa and ate a delicious little turkey sandwich with chipotle mayo, onions and tomatoes.  Every time I come to San Diego I'm immersed in this amazing world of food indulgences that I don't allow a space for back home.  I'm coming to see that a lot of my every day reality is more about fretting about finances than about organizing my life around getting stable enough to allow myself a space to enjoy my surroundings.  Having the Boy in my reality or even just new friends who inspire me to try new things  has been good for me.  It's helping me grow in calmer directions. 

The weekend has been full of positive reinforcements but also it's been full of sudden daunting realizations about my innate lack of self security.  It's such a good indication to me that I have a lot of work to do just on my side to ensure that my relationships continue to grow in positive ways.  Work with trust, with openness, with being brave, with looking at things objectively.

Always room for growth and awareness.

Namaste.

Namaste

I started a post a couple of weeks ago that I never completed.  Actually, I only picked the image I wanted to use and then an idea never formed for the post.  So, that picture and post will have to wait.

It's sunny out today but windy.  The weather is shifting and I'm so excited for change, Spring, something new.  There's something new and big coming this year and it feels good. 

Nevertheless, things have been difficult lately.  A week into March and the tone has been set as 'exhausted.'  Tired of old patterns, tired of hard unfulfilling work, tired of not following my heart, tired of ignoring myself and allowing  myself to be ignored.  Advocacy for one's self is so often disregarded.  Not just with me.  I watch people let themselves be silenced in an effort not to "stir up shit."  I do it.  I've spent years preferring to 'get along' instead of speaking up and letting people see the real me with real needs and real expectations.  I've gotten into a pretty major habit of relating to the world as a victim and reacting out of some place of misguided self-defense and preservation.  Not that it hasn't served me but I'm seeing that there are more healthful ways of relating to my surroundings and the people in my reality.

 So, this goes hand in hand with choice.  I/You can make a choice in every situation that arises.  We can choose to be bitter or look at the positive.  We can choose to stay or choose to leave.  Choose to vocalize a need or choose to keep it silent (and then choose to be okay with that choice or to be resentful).  I'm struggling with this because it's so much easier to choose to not say a word and then to be angry about everything later on, to place blame unfairly, to experience life as a victim with out any power or fault. 

We should all know our self worth.  I'm reminded of the greeting Namaste.  It's a Sanskrit word used as a greeting in India and also used in the Yoga communities around the world.  Basically, at it's most literal it means "to bow to you."  Expounding on that, there are several ways that people explain the meaning of the word but the version I've heard that I like the most is that the divine in me recognizes (and bows to) the divine in you. 

Everyone is divine and comes from divinity.  Everyone has worth.  Everyone has an aspect of them that is whole, good, filled with light.  Today, for me, that means the right and the duty to honor that in myself and in others.  To advocate for myself and to listen to others as they too express their needs.  To meet people in their needs as I've had people recently meet mine.  To acknowledge that without putting it forth no one can know what it is I need just as I cannot know what other people need if they haven't expressed it to me. 

This also reminds me of my friend's blog post on a song called Timshel (Timshel means Thou Mayest in Hebrew) and goes back to ideas of choice and how choice plays into our divinity.  You can read her blog post and the song lyrics here.


Namaste.

Choices

Rain is pouring down in the Bay Area this week and it makes me feel comforted but lonely all at the same time.  Opposition of thoughts.  I have a choice.  I can succumb to the feelings of being alone, of loss.  A quiet fear festering in the idea that I don't know with any certainty where my life will be in four weeks.  Or, I can embrace this feeling of envelopment that the Earth holds out to us on rainy days.  This feeling of, "I'm crying with you right now." The sky is crying-softly with relief.  Free and somber.  Tranquil.

It's been raining since Monday.  I went down to San Diego over the weekend and the weather was sunny and warm.  The weekend was framed in anxiety, emotion, unease but centered around feelings of 'home' and belonging.  All of these choices for how I'm going to feel, what I'm going to do, how I'm going to say what I'm going to say.  This is how February is being solidified inside of me.  In the last weeks I'm experiencing a profound shift.  I'll call it a growth spurt of the inner workings of how I react to the world.  It's progress but all the while, these shifts remind me how I hold on to past.  How I'm having trouble viewing each new situation as a new situation.

Sure.  We learn from our past.  We take the lessons we gain and we use them as a foundation for the next step in our journey.  The last years of my life have been defined by a feeling of being trapped though.  While we can learn we can also become jaded and resistant to trust and happiness in a sort of effort for self defense.  The last weeks have been the beginning of a shift.  I'm learning that I not only use what I've learned as information going into a new situation but I also prejudge the new situation almost completely on the internal narrative I've constructed based on that past information.  Instead of using it as a guide, as a "sometimes," it becomes an "always."  I'm closing off opportunities and projecting my insecurities.

February's mantra has become this:  Choice.  I have choices.  I am not trapped.  I have options.  Among other things, I acknowledge that I have the choice to trust, to love, to move on, to forgive, to leave, to be brave, to be vulnerable, to be fragile, to have needs.  I can choose to speak out, or to be quiet, to take opportunities, or let them pass.  And no matter what as long as I remember that I have a choice, I am free.

Transformative Positivity

January has already been full of wonderful new and old/revived experiences.  And retrospectively it's no wonder that I'm exhausted and emotionally turbulent.  I'm learning a lot (again) about how my body and mind process transition.  At the behest of the Girl who I see on a weekly basis for counseling, my Doctor and the Boy I'm seeing I'm trying to morph my life into something healthier.  I begin to wonder sometimes if maybe it's only psychological that healthy habits are so incredibly hard to keep and reform.  There seems to be much more of an instant pay off when doing something "unhealthy" and "bad."  Regardless, January has been this process of relearning how to eat at least twice a day, drink 64 fl. oz. of water, sleep eight hours and exercise.  It's interesting to experience these three people's interest in my well being knowing that each of them have different reasons and motivations for pushing me in this direction.  It's also, I'll admit, interesting to see how I push against and work with them.  On a whole, I've been quite a bit less resistant towards each of them than I have other people--probably because I genuinely like all three.  I'm not pretending to want their support just to placate society, if that makes sense.

It's difficult to take care of myself when I feel like I have obligations to everyone else that need to take priority.  The Girl says I need to learn to love myself enough to care for myself.  The Doctor says I just "have to."  The Boy jokingly makes it about himself (and our small village of unborn babies). Ultimately it comes down to what The Girl said on another occasion, about the Boy and her insistence on my sleeping/eating, "we care."  And if they care, why shouldn't I?

January has also been a whole set of brand new experiences.  I finally was able to attend two committees for Habitat for Humanity that I've wanted to go to for months.  Going to these group meetings is pretty far out of my comfort zone so I'm happy that I didn't let my anxiety keep me from attending.  Habitat for Humanity is an amazing organization when you start learning some of the inner workings.  One committee works with doing initial interviews for potential homeowners in their developments.  They evaluate the families based on need for housing and ability to pay.  Then the committee votes on whether to recommend a family or not.  If the family is approved they move on to an interview with the Habitat for Humanity Board.  Habitat for Humanity offers affordable housing but makes it so that the homeowners who enter into the housing work and pay for what they are receiving.  It instills a sense of worth and value to what they are receiving.  Each family has to complete a certain amount of hours volunteering (sweat equity) on the developments themselves (sometimes event heir own homes).  This goes towards their downpayment.

The second committee I went to works to plan social activities for the communities created by Habitat.  It looks like they plan about one large event per month.  This was the meeting that I felt a bit more at home.  The volunteers were much closer to my age group but while I felt more comfortable I also felt anxious about speaking up.  It's the one I'm having trouble convincing myself to go back to.  Probably because I'd like to be friends with the other volunteers and that will require pushing myself to participate and be social.  Still, I think I'll go back.

And finally, I went and took three private dance classes that I got with an amazing coupon I got from Groupon.    I won't be able to go back since the place is so far away and so expensive, but I was able to take classes concentrating around Swing, Cha-Cha, Salsa, Tango and Rumba.  I liked all of them immensely and am contemplating seeking out local spots to dance in the evenings.  Dancing is one of those "things."  It's just primal enough to remind your soul why it's alive, why it moves, why it is so tied in to Earth and the Universe.  When I'm not stumbling over my, or my partner's, feet I have this moment of "oh yes, everything is as it should be."  Moments like that seem so fleeting in day to day reality.  It's something to hold on to.

A Dream is a Wish

In Mexico there is a new year's tradition in which each person eats twelve grapes at midnight and with each grape makes a wish.  This year I didn't make all of my wishes. Aside from three or four vague ideas and concepts I just didn't have anything to ask for.

There are superstitions that say that if you say a wish out loud it won't come true.  I disagree.  Perhaps it's more that if you DO say it out loud, you really believe that it can happen and you hold true to pursuing it then it really can come to fruition.

January 2011 has been cold and seemingly dark.  Winter always feels dark and having a full time job makes it more so--the most sun I see is on my drive to work as it is just bursting through the trees on Grizzly Peak over the tunnel, if it isn't cloudy or foggy.  As I drive home it's usually already dark or at the very least the sun has gone down and I can catch the residuals of daylight and another cold dusk.   January has this effect on me.  It creates this feeling of quiet loneliness, of cold, of a need to barricade myself inside myself.

This year, with the continued economic recession and with my reality being where it is I made a few wishes for myself and for others centered around ideas of financial stability, emotional security, renewed hope and passions towards creativity and for the continued essence of love in everything we do.   So much of the world is bleak because we forget to hold on to a positive desired outcome.

Positive thought creates positive action.  

Positive expectations garner positive results.  

Positive goals foster a positive soul.  

It's my intention for 2011 that I can continually remind myself of this and keep myself in a frame of mind that is conducive to creating the change that I wish to see this coming year.  It is my hope for all beings that positive energy can lift the cold and dark that seems to be sitting upon the world in this long, long winter.  And, it is my hope for you that you achieve and receive all that you set your intentions on for this year.

With Sprinkles

New Year's Eve was a peaceful experience. Sitting under the San Francisco Centre's beautiful dome looking at the twinkling light strings and snowflakes cascading down we watched the other passing movie-goers stop to take pictures and have quiet conversations. Listening to the last of this season's holiday music while drinking coffee and catching up on the past and dreaming up future possibilities we waited to go in to see the film "Somewhere." The almost empty, closed mall and the tenor of the people passing through solidified a feeling that I hope will continue through the coming year.

After the film my friend and I made our way down to the Embarcadero from the Centre. We gauged the countdown by our phones and may not have caught it at just the second that the new year came upon us, but it did not matter. The new year's first embrace and well wishes were shared and we continued on towards the crowd down by the water. The not-so-distant roar of fireworks filled the sky and we were two blocks out of view as the finale went up--it didn't matter. Rain began to fall as if it had held out just for the festivities. And as it fell the people made their way back to the BART stations. We walked back, hopped the first train and in the car at North Berkeley bart we ate donuts with sprinkles for a good year and began making our twelve wishes with twelve grapes. A perfect end to a long year and a peaceful start to what will be a wonderful one.

Here is to an absolutely calm, positive and love filled 2011.

Among my goals this year are themes of creativity, perseverance and change. I'm looking at it this way: If I concentrate on the things that I find satisfying and if I persevere at making those things the focal point of my time then it will lead me in the right direction. It will help me to become the change I wish to see in my life and it will keep my soul positive and hopeful through the process.