Revitalized

Autumn in St. John's. Photo courtesy of Ray Mackey.

Click to embiggen.

I try not to focus too much on all that ails me. I whine to a tiny selected few who have their own ailments and cranky bodies and saucy organs. And not every day as some days are fairly manageable.

Today I rekindled my writers' workshops and had forgotten completely how I felt in prepping for them, sending out prompts, interacting, discussing ideas and editing and plotting out the release and launch of our next anthology which is in its final editing.

We were all masked and sanitized and distanced.

And it was such a joy being around these enthusiasts. It's been six months since the last one and Zoom was anathema to the majority. Unfortunately. I was just too ill to physically hold them and my concentration had vanished.

Though still with ailments, my spirit has been fed and I have this sense of wellbeing which can only be supplied, I believe, by being fully engaged in the creative process.

Daughter was here yesterday and said she spent far too much time "doom-scrolling." I mean, let's face it, many of us do. The planet is in dire straits on so many levels and we could all be blown to smithereens with one Putin temper tantrum. On top of everything else.

So I said to her why don't you just stay where your hands are and just work on your art? And she was gob smacked. And then her face lit up and she  said "of course." Art of any kind is a great distraction and I tend to forget it myself. 

I can do nothing about the Ians and Fionas and their attendant devastation. Or Ukraine or Pakistan. 

But if I stay with what I do best and feed my spirit I am so filled that there isn't room for anything else.

Mad Writer

 I'm in Mad Writer mode lately. Churning out a lot of my own memoir about my first year in Toronto. A year in which so very much happened, much of it kept hidden and secret. For very good reasons. Held in a locked closet in my mind for fifty six years. I'm very glad I have such a memory for detail and notice, through the Sibling Zooms every Sunday that we all share that ability.

Along with that I have the online writing workshops I'm facilitating. We are all missing the live ones, and these real enthusiasts are producing wonderful work. Which I am critiquing. Which takes oodles of time as well.

I've missed writing here which I will try and rectify but sometimes I just want to throw the keyboard against the wall and do something utterly different.

I love the goings on in Ireland at the moment with the Russian navy off the coast of West Cork.

Daughter sent me this earlier on.  I sometimes forget how the country of my birth has such marvelous humour.

Listening to Irish radio this morning they had a CNN reporter who was on location in West Cork. The reporter was a Kerryman who is based in America. At the end of the discussion about the fisherman taking ownership of standing down Russia (ha) the host of the show then said something like.."C'mere to me now. You're among your own here so I'm gonna ask you what everyone in Ireland really wants to know....did you get paid to come home and visit your Mammy?"

Wintering

 

Wintering is a book by Katherine May which I recently finished.

The blurb sums it up nicely: "The power of rest and retreat in difficult times."

It was fortuitous I read it at this particular time as I gained some new perspective on wintering. The wintering of my life particularly. 

So many here race off to sunnier climes (at least in pre-plague days) avoiding the whole wintering business.

It's a time for being home, for crafting, for making soups and reading and writing for playing music and watching old movies. Embracing a form of hibernation. We've lost touch with all of that. Rising with the sun, bedding down along with it as the day comes to a close.

I was and still am, processing my latest health challenges and this has helped me see life more sharply, through a different pair of spectacles if you will. Hunkering down is OK. Our bodies crave it.

I received this wonderful validation in my email box yesterday from one of the eight people in my weekly writing workshop. It lifted me immeasurably.

M, thank you a million times over for the  magic you are creating in our writing group! I feel so fortunate! So Elated! It;s given me a new confidence and a comfort I haven't felt in my skin for a long time or maybe never! Seeing us all evolving! seeing what B read this week just rendered me speechless. How she evolves! What stories these women carry inside them come to life is the best feeling in the world.

 forever in your debt,

D

A wee flower in winter on my shelf garden.

My Happy Place

I held my first writing workshop in years yesterday after the fallow years of The Plague. 

There was a very satisfying turnout and I held it in the large two storey community room of my building which worked out very well. As I kept the workshop private, we had no "spectators" which happens frequently if tenants are aware of something interesting but only want to observe and not participate which I discovered to my chagrin at another group meeting. Discomfiting to say the least. 

The ambience there is quite lovely with a huge library, a propane stove in the corner, and large windows and glass doors over looking the garden and golf club behind it and upholstered window seats with a piano and a well supplied kitchen and bathroom. I will take photos next week.

I took most of  a week to get everything ready - it's a group sharing effort with prompts from me, a 10 minute exercise to flex those writing muscles and reading of individual pieces which are distributed to each other for critiques to be presented the following week.

There's a ten minute break half way through for tea and buns and getting-to-know-you interaction. 

It went far better than I anticipated. Some written pieces were extraordinary in their emotion.

The group - some of whom had never met before - seemed to get along really well. The relaxation was almost visible.

There's a lot of trust involved in sharing writing. And I observed the empathy develop. And the enthusiasm.

I truly love doing this. And I'm sure it shows.

I took this picture of my dear late friend R playing in the sand. I presented him with the bucket and spade when he stayed with me out here on The Edge. I love this image as his outer demeanor was normally so serious.