The Reading Life/2
By the Blue Light of a Cell Phone by Katie Consamus Dr Chmiel, I just flipped on CNN after getting home from rehearsal and immediately thought of our encounter on New Year’s Eve as I…
Category: Writing to Wake up
Writing to Wake Up 2020: A Winter Course in Creativity and Community
Writing is essential to my life, like breathing. I can live without a husband but I cannot live without writing. By writing I become one with the world and with myself. —Nawal El Saadawi What…
The Writing Life/1
At My Wake, Someone Will Hear Someone Else Say… “He was always telling me to share my writing…” “You, too? He said that to me, like… weekly!” “Weekly? He’d badger me daily for a fortnight…
Blasts from the Past
Hold It All It must have been 1983, springtime: I asked former classmate Ray Pruitt what he’d been reading. “Last night, Kierkegaard, Proust, and Phil Berrigan.” Things Have Changed It was back in 1982 We…
A Time of Sacred Confusion by Michèle Shimizu-Kelley
My house is a thin-feeling place where I sit witnessing the fog roll in on a time of Sacred Confusion. I’ve been reading The poems, The prayers, The mantras of The wisdom-speakers Reminding us of…
Lauren Shared with Me, and I Now Share with You
“So easy in the woods to daydream and pray to the local spirits and say “Allow me to stay here, I only want peace.” –Jack Kerouac, Big Sur Listen here. If you find yourself laying…
The Firstfruits by Sarah Hartmann Burkemper
Sarah shared this writing in our Facing the Future class this autumn, and I am happy to share it with you! I generally am not a mindful eater. I eat breakfast standing at the counter,…
“Nobody’s Going To Do It for You”
Anne Waldman and Laura Wright, editors, Beats at Naropa: An Anthology Coffee House Press, 2009 I read Beats at Naropa exactly nine years ago, 2009. In my notes on the dialogues, essays, and interviews are…
Writing to Wake Up: A Course in Creativity and Community
Think about it: Even with all our sophisticated technologies and modes of communication, who feels as though there is enough time? And yet, we need time, as community activist Grace Lee Boggs has said, to…
White Gods by Zenique Gardner
Zenique was in the summer Writing Rejuvenation class, and she contributed to our rejuvenation in several ways. She gave me permission to share the following. I was in Africa for less than a week when I encountered their…