Where You’ll Find Me

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On Friday, August 16, at 7 p.m.,
I will be reading from Body My House at Elliott Bay Book Company.
I’m thrilled (of course) and very very grateful to poet Ed Harkness and Elliott Bay Books for inviting me.

Wouldn’t it be lovely
if about 50 of my nearest and dearest friends could join us?

(Yes, it would!)

Bethany

 

Writing the Labyrinth

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Some experiences seem beyond words. That’s how I’m feeling about my week in Chartres. And yes, I know it was a writing workshop, and that I should be perfectly at home, writing about it. But.

So I went to Chartres for a writing workshop with Christine Valters Paintner. I wasn’t expecting a  spiritual workshop focused on Chartres Cathedral and its nearly 1000 year old labyrinth (and its 2000 year history, pre-current cathedral). Even had I known that the labyrinth would be a central aspect of our week, I don’t think I could have fathomed how profoundly meaningful this location was going to become for me.

I’ve walked labyrinths before, and I have always found meaning in them. At a Courage to Teach retreat years back (my youngest daughter wasn’t yet in school, so I know it was at least 15 years ago), I encountered a lavender labyrinth and one of the reasons I remember the event is because I wrote a poem about a conversation I had with a friend while standing in that labyrinth. (Did we “walk it”? Did we know that was a thing?)

Thanks to my dear friend Janet, I attended an Episcopal Women’s retreat in 2015 and again (I think) in 2016, at St. Andrew’s House on Hood Canal, and walked their labyrinth. At the first retreat I learned about the history of labyrinths, even about Chartres, though I had still barely scratched the surface. At St. Andrew’s, the labyrinth is outdoors, in a wooded area, and it’s lined by white rocks and shells. I wrote about this labyrinth, too. (Not a successful poem, but one I put through numerous drafts.)

When my mom was in care, I sometimes stopped at a nearby church, St. Hugh’s,and walked their labyrinth. It was always comforting and peaceful. In Ireland I walked a number of stone circles, and at least one actual labyrinth, on my mom’s 85th birthday, as it happens (and, yes, tried to write about it).

This past April during Holy Week my church put down a canvas labyrinth in the sanctuary (apparently, they had done this before, without my clocking it), and I signed up to facilitate a 2-hour slot, and I walked it, of course.

So I am not unfamiliar with the labyrinth structure and spell and movement.

You can find labyrinths all over the world, by the way, by searching this link: https://labyrinthlocator.com/home.

If the other labyrinths were difficult to get into words, the labyrinth at Chartres is proving impossible.

But here I am, typing away and…trying.

I think the best experiences in our lives are exactly like this. I’ve never been able to do a great job, for instance, in writing about my daughters’ births, and I know I have much to do before I’m finished writing about the deaths of my parents. Perhaps some people can be glib about world hunger and climate change and homelessness and the current state of American politics…but I find them daunting. Does that mean I shouldn’t write about them, that I have nothing to say? Or that what I have to say doesn’t fall out of my pen, polished and perfect?

That a subject calls us to write about it and yet proves difficult to capture, is not a reason for us to avoid it. If anything, that’s how you know that you must keep approaching, keep circling, keep trying to put the words down.

Maybe it isn’t a blogpost. Maybe it’s a 30-page essay about tears and healing. Maybe it’s a book.

If you feel called to write it, no matter your conflicting feelings, then I want to encourage you. I am willing to bet that there’s someone out there who needs to hear it.

Me, for instance.

 

 

 

Wait, what just happened?

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Astonished. That was the word I chose during our writing workshop in Chartres, to describe my journey — to France (how did I get so lucky?); through the 12th century labyrinth in the cathedral (frankly unexpected); and in my life generally. It’s a word that nicely describes my second week in France, too. Paris was astonishing and I was astonished. Think stunned. Think stoned. That was me.

I’m now home (3 days since — but when will I remember how to sleep at night and be awake during the day?) and I’m still feeling pretty astonished.

After months of anticipating my trip to Chartres and Paris, after years of thinking that someday I would go to France and see what all the fuss is about…it’s over. I’m still feeling jet-lagged (the nine-hour time difference has my days and nights mixed up), and a bit in denial that I’m really really back home. I’m still feeling the wave of excitement that came with the trip, and simultaneously feeling let-down. (Did I say I’ve not figured out how to sleep?)

No wonder it’s so hard to process.

Winged Victory, The Louvre

People ask me what the highlights were and — if I skip over Chartres (which was like a long tidal wave of highlights — and go straight to Paris, I get stuck again.

We. Did. So. Much.

We visited Père Lachaise Cemetery and saw the graves of Jim Morrison, Oscar Wilde, and Heloise and Abelard.

We had an amazing 2 hour personal tour of the city (enhanced by a moon-lighting rock-musician tour guide ).

We went to the Musee de L’Orangerie and sat in the oval rooms Monet designed to showcase his waterlilies canvases.

We couldn’t go inside Notre Dame, of course, though we visited Sacre Coeur and Saint Pierre’s at Montmartre (near our apartment), and stood in line to see (more) stained glass windows at Saint Chapelle, plus learned about the arduous and scientific process by which the windows are cleaned and restored.

The Lady and the Unicorn tapestry (ca. 1500) at The Cluny

We went to the Rodin Museum, the Cluny, the Louvre (of course), and Musee D’Orsay.

How exactly do I even begin to touch on the highlights amid the art treasures I saw, when there were so many? Although I took several memorable Art History courses as an undergraduate, seeing the buildings, paintings, and sculptures in person was — just as my professors often said — mind-blowing.

Every day we rode the Paris Metro, and that, too, has to be experienced first-hand in order to be understood (so many trains! so many people!). I kept thinking of Ezra Pound’s couplet, “In a Station of the Metro” —

The apparition of these faces in the crowd:  Petals on a wet, black bough.

So many faces, such a press of bodies and odors and colors and sound.

What else? Of course we went to Shakespeare & Co., we ate a lot of terrific food, and we walked miles and miles (4-5 miles per day). We took naps (much needed, as our sleep was all cockeyed while there, too).

And, being writers, we wrote.

Oh, and we went to #spokenwordparis at Au Chat Noir and READ OUR POEMS on the open mike (it’s a gathering of mostly anglo-philes, but I still can’t believe we had the nerve to do this).

What else can I say? (So much.) Paris was not what I expected. (What did I expect?) It became clear to me by the end of the week that I could go back every year and discover another Paris. I’m grateful to my friend Francine for inviting me to join her (and who can parlez-vous Francais way better than I — though I did  figure out how to order coffee).

I really wanted to let you know how the trip went, so forgive me for giving it all in a rush and with so little detail. There is a lot more I could share.

But all I really want right now is to sleep for about 10 hours straight. Then maybe I’ll have the presence of mind to begin unraveling all the pages and pages I scribbled while on this astonishing trip.

 

Procrastination Kills

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OK, so no one was killed.

For years I’ve been opening my wallet and thinking,

“Why do I carry all these credit cards? Wouldn’t it be a hassle if anything ever happened to this wallet?”

Ever since I began my habit of walking trails — usually combined with going to the library or a coffee shop and writing for an hour or two — I’ve been leaving my bookbag in my car, but thinking,

“I really need to stop leaving my bookbag in my car.”

This small inner prompting was usually greeted with a small inner shrug. “Soon,” I told myself. (Usually I hid it, sort of.)

Soon, I told myself, I would winnow through my cards and perhaps even follow advice and make photo copies of the 2 or 3 I decided to continue to carry. Soon I would come up with a backpack or start dropping my bag at home before I walked. Soon, I would take seriously this persistent inner voice.

In fact I had stopped using my purse, most of the time. I kept my driver’s licence and debit card in my phone wallet, and carried that with me on my walks.

Then, last week, I had my purse and my bookbag with me as I ran errands. I wasn’t going to walk, then I found out that my hubby was supposed to report to Urgent Care for a problem he was having. He wasn’t home, but called me and said he could meet me at home in 30 minutes. I would drive him. That gave me time to stop at a local park and take a 20-minute walk.

My bookbag and purse would be fine for 20 minutes. There were people around. It was broad daylight. No problem!

Right?

Wrong.

I came back to find my passenger door window smashed and my bookbag — and the small purse tucked inside it — gone. The police were called. One of my credit cards sent me a fraud alert (within minutes). Three other cards were successfully used — all within about 1/2 hour. I’m not liable for charges on stolen cards, or so I’m told, but it still felt awful. I felt like an idiot. And I had hours and hours of work ahead of me getting cards canceled, my checking account closed and reopened, and my Euros for my upcoming trip replaced. (I didn’t just feel like an idiot; I was an idiot.)

I lost all the writing time I thought I would have in the week before my trip.

I have had to remind myself that 1) I wasn’t personally harmed and my family is okay (even my husband, whose problem was resolved); 2) I am lucky to have resources and abilities to handle a setback like this; plus, 3) I am pretty good at learning from the bad stuff and this event proved an especially great teacher.

This also made me remember something that happened in (or to) my writing life many years ago. My daughters were young, I had my first full-time teaching job, and I told a writing friend that I would write…later. I may have said that maybe I wouldn’t ever get back to writing. In any case, I gave the clear impression that despite an MFA in poetry and all my huge writing goals, which my friend knew all about, I was going to put off writing.

She wrote me a letter — old school, sat down and wrote it in long-hand and mailed it to me (of course, that happened more often back then, but we did have email). She said something like this:

No one cares if you write. The world is not going to come and pound on your door and insist that you write. No one will miss it if you don’t write. They won’t even know. Meanwhile, life will unfold. You’ll get older. You’ll get farther and farther from your writing dreams. Eventually you’ll say to your grandchildren, “I used to write.” But your grandchildren won’t especially care either. It makes no difference whether you write or not. EXCEPT TO YOU. A place inside YOU will dry up and never be expressed if you don’t write. YOU will miss it. YOU will care. The only way to keep your writing alive, to keep this important part of yourself alive, is to write.

I probably have this letter somewhere. I should have framed it. I took it seriously (even though it was like that small, inner voice that I so often don’t heed). And I kept writing. Often, I didn’t have much time; I had little kids for a lot of years; I had a teaching career; I had teenagers and a mother who was ill. Nonetheless, I made a little time every day and I wrote. Some days the little bit of time turned into enough time.

And it has mattered. It has mattered to me. Writing has sustained me and saved me and even made things like parenting and teaching richer and more enjoyable. I am glad that I kept writing.

So this is what I want to say to you today. Is your small inner voice nagging you to do something? (To write?) Take 5 or 10 or 15 minutes right now (no one will miss you for 5 minutes), and do it. (Writing, or whatever it is.)

If you don’t, if you procrastinate (i.e., if you never do it), no one will be killed (probably). But I guarantee you’ll be glad that you took the time.